If you Dream it...You Must also Believe It

Few things challenge us as parents as much as our children. It can happen in many ways…but perhaps the most challenging is when you perceive a problem that you cannot fix.

Quite some time ago I wrote about our son Mike who experienced a seizure about a month after our family moved out to Utah. It was totally unexpected, he had no history of seizures and it scared my wife and I unlike anything we had ever experienced. He has had no signs of anything since then and I know he will never experience anything like it in the future. But for those moments and for the following weeks there was a helpless feeling my wife and I had. We felt powerless. And this is exactly what the enemy wants. To make us feel powerless.

We learned so much through this situation, and one of the greatest lessons I learned is that we are never powerless. And if we feel as such it is only because we have given up the power God provides us with to the enemy.

Matthew 9:23 – “’If you can?’ said Jesus. ‘Everything is possible for him who believes.’”

When Jesus spoke these words he was speaking to a father who had a son that was possessed by demons and the demons would take control of the boy and cause him to do violent things that endangered and injured the boy, to the point that the father was obviously concerned for his life. The father felt helpless…until he met Jesus.

Last week I used the quote from Walt Disney that “If you can dream it you can do it.” That is true…as long as you can also believe. There are things that I have dreamt of that I didn’t believe in and they never happened. You have to believe.

What are you believing for right now? Whatever it is that you are believing for, you must also believe in. James tells us that the person who doubts is like somebody being tossed around in the waves. He can’t really expect anything in particular to happen.

I recall as a child being with my family in our little 16-foot tri-hull boat. It was a good enough boat for the lakes in northern Wisconsin, but on this particular occasion we were in Door County and my dad took us from the Bay of Green Bay through the channel to Lake Michigan. It is here that I experienced what James was talking about. On this particular day the waves on Lake Michigan were much more than what this little boat was ever designed to handle. When you are being tossed around by the waves you really have no control what so ever. Fortunately my dad didn’t go too far out into the lake, instead he immediately did all he could to turn us around and get us back into the safety of the channel.

So many people venture out into the waves with the spirit of whatever happens – happens. And that is not the life God designed for us. He wants us to control our destiny by using the mind of Christ that he gave us. He wants us to enter situations with assurance and confidence and he desires that we be the ones calling the shots. But you can’t do it if you are full of doubt. As soon as you doubt it is as though you are jumping out into the waves in your little boat…subject to where the waves take you. You really shouldn’t expect anything because at that point there is no guarantee. It would be very much like my dad continuing out onto Lake Michigan. There would have been a chance that we would have made it to our destination okay…but we would have had no reason to expect it…we were totally subject to the waves.

Today…BELIEVE…DON”T DOUBT…and know that anything is possible!

Have a blessed day,

RodZ

© 2008 – Rodney Zimmerman – All rights reserved