You can't. You wouldn't be able to do it even if you tried. Even if you wanted to. Even if you thought you had the biggest dream ever, because it's impossible to out-dream God.
I have to admit I stole the title of this post from the pastor's wife at my boyfriend's brother's church. I was visiting this weekend and my boyfriend's mother was praying on the way to church that each one of us would receive exactly what God wanted us to receive from that service. This is what I received from it.
Andrew has been applying to transfer recently, and this has placed a lot of pressure on me because we are hoping to be closer in vicinity to one another within the next year. Unfortunately, he has to make his decision a year earlier than I do and I currently don't have a clue where God wants me to be, nor where I even want to be. But then there's Columbia. An Ivy League that I never would have dreamed of even thinking about applying to until last year. And until recently, I pushed that thought aside because my dreams seemed too big. I didn't get accepted to my "dream college" when I applied as a freshman, so why would anything be different now? What a horrible mindset to have. I 'll tell you why I didn't get in: God had better plans for me. If I were to have gone to Hamilton out of high school, I wouldn't have been able to major in speech pathology and I wouldn't have met the people I have met or done all that God has called me to do where I am right now. Things would have been different and I wouldn't have been happy because I wouldn't have been in God's will. Columbia might be different. Who am I to limit where God wants me to be just because I don't think I am "good enough" to be accepted? And if I do get accepted, where is all of this money going to come from to pay for me to go to grad school there? Well, let me tell you something pretty cool. I have a God who provides for all of my needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. I also have a God that I can put full trust in.
Although I am still a year away from applying to graduate school, over the next few weeks I plan to begin a study about DREAMS. God dreams. I have heard this preached a lot recently, in various settings, so I am taking advantage of it.
"Awakening and owning the dreams that God has placed in our hearts isn’t about getting stuff or attaining something. It’s about embracing who we are and who he has created us to be. In him. He is our dream come true, and the one true love of our life. But we can’t love him with our whole hearts when our hearts are asleep. To love Jesus means to risk coming awake, to risk wanting and desiring."
