“Delight yourself in the LORD; And He will give you the desires of your heart.” (Psalm.37:4)
Building muscle is hard work. I remember going to the gym the first time and getting stuck into the weights section. I did what seemed like endless sets of progressively heavier weights, sweating profusely and feeling the burn. I felt invincible! The next day I took a long hard look at my flexing biceps in the mirror but there seemed to be no difference. Heart breaking stuff! I very quickly realised, this muscle building thing doesn’t happen over-night.
Similarly, faith is like a muscle. It can be weak or it can be strong, depending on how much we use it. The question is, how does God build your faith muscle?
One of the first things God does in order to build your faith is give you a dream. This dream, or deep desire, will be about what He wants you to do, what He has wired you for, and how He’s going to use your life to impact the world for His glory.
There are many examples in the Bible of this:
- God gave Noah the dream of building an ark.
- God gave Abraham the dream of being the father of a great nation.
- God gave Joseph the dream of being a leader that would save his people.
- God gave Nehemiah the dream of building the wall around Jerusalem.
Below is an exercise in building your faith muscle by activating the dream God has placed in you:
IDENTIFY IT
How do you know when a dream is from God or when it’s just something you’ve thought up yourself?
The Bible tells us that God “by his mighty power at work within us is able to do far more than we would ever dare to ask or even dream of — infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, or hopes” (Ephesians 3:20). In simpler terms, if a dream originates from God, it will be so large in your life that you just can’t do it on your own. If you could do it on your own, you wouldn’t need faith. And if you don’t have faith, you’re not pleasing God, because the Bible says that it is impossible to please God without faith (Hebrews.11:6).
God starts to build our faith by giving us a dream. Maybe God has been speaking this dream to you for a long time, but you just haven’t recognized it for what it is. That dream you have, the idea or concept you’ve been thinking about doing that would be of real benefit to other people – that desire is from God!
PRAY IT
God is a relational God and He is wanting us to pursue Him first, not the dream, as the deep desires of our heart are only activated when we delight ourselves in Him. So speak to Him. Quick side-note on this, God will never tell you to do something that contradicts his truth. In other words, he won’t give you a dream of leaving your family and kids and moving to Hollywood to be a movie star. If you have that dream, then you can know it is not from God. So as you pray, keep reading the bible as God loves to speak through His Word.
WRITE IT
Put pen to paper as soon as you can. Writing things down (be it scriptures, thoughts, prayers) starts to give us the ability to start running at something.
SHARE IT
Take what you feel God saying and share it with another faith-filled friend. Ask them if they see you and your dream being a natural fit.
DO IT
Take a first step. You don’t even have to have the whole picture unfolded, but just start small and let God do the big. Don’t fall into the trap of sitting idle, waiting for that big break “one day when…”
God starts by putting a dream in your heart as he works within your life to build faith. We start by delighting ourselves in the Lord. Step into this today and don’t give up like I did at gym!
