Dare Dream Again

Give God A Chance I said to her.

I have six sisters and two brothers. Needless, to say we are a family of predominately girls. So, sometimes we are identified by birth rank or what number you are in the girls. For privacy, in November 1965 the last girl was born in our family.

We celebrate her as a beautiful person. Even so, her start was rocky at birth. Her legs from knees down to her feet were turned slightly inward, so she didn’t walk for a long time. Her speech development was abnormally slow. The doctors kept saying in response to questions about when she would talk, “We’ll see.”

She was almost two before we knew she would talk. When she finally did, she had the sunniest personality. When she smiles on a rainy day, you think the sun came out. (cheesy but true) She wore leg braces a long time as a toddler. Now her legs are the straightest and best formed in the family.

I noticed something else growing up around my special sister. Good things would seem to come to her without effort. Like when we were teenagers, and we all went shopping for school clothes. We, my other sisters and brother were serious bargain-hunting type shoppers. Well, the sisters were anyway; I couldn’t say the same for my brother. My sister would walk around talking to people or doing everything but shopping.

When we got home, my other siblings and I would take out our clothing, looking over the great deals we got. Without fail, most of us would have something that didn’t quite fit like we thought it would. To make a long story short, each piece of ours would fit my sister like a glove and like she picked it out herself. I mean the colors were perfect, too.

So, fast forward to adulthood. My sister progressed leaps and bounds in development as a child to adulthood. Through special education, she received her diploma. But she still wasn’t able to legibly fill out any type of application, along with other needed skills. She needed life skills like counting and budgeting money, paying household bills.

So, it looked like she would have to live with our mother for the rest of her life. That would be, o.k., if one wanted to do so. For her, she’s always wanted the independence of living on her own. It was her big dream to live on her own.

In fact, one day (me and each of my siblings had moved away from home) my mother called me and said, “Could you talk to her? She won’t stop crying. She says she’s going to run away…”

I found out a lady in the community had moved out of her mother’s house. Although, the lady was much older, she also had lived at home with her mother for a long time. So, after she moved out; someone said mean things to my sister. Like, you’ll never move out. You’ll be at home the rest of your life…

So, I instructed my mother to go ask her if she would talk to me or just listen. When she came to the phone, I asked her if she would tell me what was wrong. Knowing my mother had already given me details of her wanting to run away. Yet, I wanted to hear what she would say.

I had compassion for her plight. I’ve always had the GO in my inner being. I recognized the same thing in her. I knew how miserable and frustrated I would feel, if I didn’t have my independence.

I listened; not understanding most of what she was saying. But feeling her pain so deeply that I began to cry too. Then it burst out of me, “Give God A Chance! Give him a year and see what he does. Give him that time to work something out. I just feel something is going to happen for you. He knows how you feel…” Long story short, she said o.k. and we ended the call.

About a year to the week, my mother called and put my sister on the phone. She said, “I got a place!” Of course, I said, “What do you mean you got a place?!!!” Her reply was, “I’m moving in Thursday.”

I burst into tears. All I could say was, “You remember last year when we talked…” The details don’t sound near as glamourous; that is if you don’t know the before and after of this miracle (to us).

My sissy is now living her dream in an assisted living apartment building, about fifteen miles from my mother. She attends a life skills center five days a week. And someone is assigned to her to oversee paying bills, washing clothes, grocery shopping and other life skills that she couldn’t manage on her own.

I’m simply saying, my sister with special needs had a dream that she kept pursuing and asking; it eventually came true. The fulfillment of her dream, inspires me to keep asking, keep knocking and pursuing my dreams. As a result, I came up with five life lessons that I’ve learned if you need to Dream Again, and most importantly, if you need to give God a chance:

Flip Your Perspective. Varn and I delivered a message to a group of servant leaders and armorbearers called the ‘Precious Gift Of Impartation.’ Within that message, we talked about flipping your wrong perspective to a right perspective. Let me tell you, if you’ve ever experienced hardship, persecution or troubling circumstances it’s pretty easy to get a wrong perspective. For me back then, we were being persecuted for something we didn’t even do in the first place…Varn turned to me and encouraged me to do what we have been preaching all this time to others, “Flip it.” It was time for us to flip our perspective and count precious all the things we had received. It’s your time. Not assuming everyone is going through troubling circumstances but if you are there right now, you have to go through and find the lesson (s) God is wanting you to learn and count them precious. When you can do that, you know that you’ve successfully flipped it.

Get A New View Of Failure. Thomas Edison famously gave us a new view of failure. It took him more than 10,000 attempts to invent the light bulb. He said, he didn’t look at those 10,000 attempts as failures but as experiments because he learned from each one of them what not to do and what didn’t work.

My point is somewhere along the way, he figured out what did work. The rest is history, his name resounds across the globe because of his tenacity and dream for a brighter future with people turning on a lamp with a light bulb to light their lives. Know that all of life can become an experiment with this little tweak in your thinking. We all want a brighter, bigger, better future. All we have to do is pick ourselves up, get a new view of failure and learn from each mistake.

Do The Dream With All Your Might. The Biblical King David was a man of principle and passion. He is famous for doing whatever he did with all his might. Remember, he danced with all his might when they brought the Ark Of The Covenant to reside in the city. Recently, during a study of his life I noticed a little phrase I had never noticed before.

It says, “King David ‘prepared with all his might’ for the building of the temple. Take a minute, examine your life. Can you say you’re doing your dream with all your might? Can you say you’re doing anything with all your might?

If so, yeah, keep going! If not, here’s the thing, you can change that, you can start now. Here’s another voice of encouragement, the Ecclesiastes writer said, ‘Whatever your hands find to do, do it with all your might.”

Dream Again. At this point, I have another question. Have you ever had a major setback? Did things not work out like you thought? You lost the house anyway. You went to prison. The school you were putting your life’s work into closed. You lost what was considered by everyone, including you, your perfect job. Have you even experienced a valley where you had multiple setbacks or challenges that led to failures?

The reason I mentioned more than several categories is because dreams usually die in either of those circumstances. Not long ago, I went through a valley in my life that caused a major setback. While in the valley, I began to think about other points in my life that the same kind of ephimamy (different details) came to me. I had to make the same kind of decisions to Dream Again.

So, I encourage you whatever the circumstances may have been, Dream Again.

Give God A Chance. Even with all the encouragement, I’ve just given you there’s one more perspective that I must mention. Just like I told my sister during her time, I must tell you, Give God A Chance. It really is true, God can work it out much better than we can. The battle really is not ours. The battle is the Lord’s battle.

Promise to do only what he prompts you to do toward this dream. Then when he prompts, leads, do it with all your might, quickly. God’s timing is very important. His timing is perfect. When I wrote my first book, a troubling circumstance rose up. It was so intense, I put the book down with intentions of never picking it up again.

So, much to my surprise I lost the anointing in my other projects. I went to Father God with my concern, He immediately said to me, “When you go back to what I first told you to write, there you’ll find the anointing. I did and it was. I finished that first book He gave me and I’m still on the journey. So, give God a chance. He will not disappoint you.

What dream died in the valley of circumstances that surrounded you? Maybe they were even sent to snuff out your dream. Either way, it’s time to Dream Again! Only this time, give God a chance. He is for you. Remember, if God is for you who and even what can really stand against you. I’m dreaming again. I’ve released it and giving God a chance. Won’t you join me? Let’s dare to dream again and do awesome things together in Christ.

Dreaming Again,

Earma Brown, 12 Book Christian Author
END OF ARTICLE
Copyright (c) 2016 – WOW! Women Ministries – http://wowontheweb.com

If this message has been a blessing to you and you would like to see more like them posted on this site, you can help make this possible by your gifts to Nasa Ministries. 

Please prayerfully consider helping us with a financial gift today.
Your contribution allows us to keep expanding our outreach for the kingdom of God. Click here to donate today.

Earma Brown, twelve book Christian author and founder of WOW! Women Global inspires women around the world to become women of destiny, purpose, and victory through speaking engagements, her books, Bible curriculum and studies. She is author of the trilogy of Wow! Women books: Women of Worth, Women of Destiny and Women of Legacy, the Armorbearer Training Series, Prayer Fulfilled Life book set and Writing A Book God’s Way book and course. She currently lives in Arkansas.