New year...same old ramblings

This may be all over the place...but we'll see.  Have you ever felt like you get a thought or question or whatever in your head, and no matter what's going on, it keeps popping back up?  It's kind of annoying, and that's where I'm at right now...and I blame Mark Batterson.


For those that have no idea who Mark is, he's the pastor of our church in DC.  He recently released a book called The Circle Maker.  It's pretty awesome and thought provoking and all that so far...I'm only about half-way through it right now but I'd recommend it.  Anyway, the first major section of the book focuses on dreaming God-sized dreams (beyond our ability to fulfill) and praying specific prayers related to those dreams.  One idea that Mark emphasized really punched me in the gut.  He said "God isn't offended by big dreams; He's offended by anything less."  Later, he said "If you've never been overwhelmed by the impossibility of your plans, then your God is too small."  But really...how many of us can claim that we have dreams that are beyond our ability to fulfill on our own?  How many of us truly give credence to the idea that we can pray to God about things that are way beyond our means or ability and actually expect results?  It's sobering for me to realize that I (like many) believe that God created the universe with a thought and a word, while doubting that God takes an active role in doing amazing things in, through and for us.


Unfortunately, I think this lack of faith has impacted my ability to dream.  Most of us have become so self-reliant that we don't even begin to dream about things that we can't accomplish with the right amount of work, luck and/or money.  And ultimately, our dreaming becomes so stunted that we settle for extremely cheap satisfaction...extremely cheap ideas of success.  Donald Miller opens his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years with the following: "If you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you wouldn't cry at the end when he drove off the lot, testing the windshield wipers.  You wouldn't tell your friends you saw a beautiful movie or go home and put a record on to think about the story you'd seen.  The truth is, you wouldn't remember that movie a week later, except you'd feel robbed and want your money back."  But how many of us have become so self-sustaining that we've settled for the dream of a Volvo, or a vacation home, or pick-your-own thing that eventually crumbles into nothing?  


So would we dream better dreams and pray more specific prayers if we weren't so capable of providing for our families and building security blankets (and I use the word security very lightly)?  Not sure I want the answer to that question...at least not in the applied sense...but that's just another example of my refusal to trust God completely.  A couple days ago, I finally watched a video that came out a while back...and of course it struck this same nerve.  You can watch the video HERE.  For those that don't want to watch a 15-minute awesome video, it's a breakdown of the Lord's prayer and a discussion of the fact that maybe we need to be more intentional and cautious with the words and attitude we bring to God.  In it, there's a discussion of how we say things that we don't even understand.  "If God just gave us our daily bread, many of us would be angry."  But I honestly believe that if we depended on God for our sustenance on a daily basis, most of us would dream better dreams...pray better prayers.  


So looking back on this, it's a bit all over the place, but there's no way I'm changing it now.  This weekend, many people made resolutions for the coming year...they set goals for themselves with confidence in their own ability to succeed (or try again next year).  I'm not a big fan of resolutions...but my goal for the rest of my life is to be a man that dreams God-sized dreams and prays persistently for God to work out His goals.  If he burns my security blankets to the ground, my goal is to depend completely on him through it all.  If he lets me keep them, I hope to use them up in a life serving my family and others.  I have no chance of succeeding in any of this on my own...so I guess we can call this my first God-sized dream.  


To finally finish this up, I'm stealing a Tozer quote from somebody else's blog (here's the link!)...


God is looking for people through whom He can do the impossible.  What a pity when we plan only the things we can do by ourselves.