As we dive into our dreams…

As we dive into our dreams, I pray that we all allow God to be that guide. There are so many fears and anxieties that comes with our aspiration-chasing, but where there are fears, there is also faith to abound. I have witnessed so many of my friends drop everything to pursue their passion. Friends like my roommate from college, who has a degree in psychology but is the founder of FYI Fashion, leading her to host fashion shows, connections taking her to award shows, and contributing her fashion expertise to local magazines. Friends like my longest and best friend, who has been working long nights to promote her home/business organizing and interior design business, Immaculate Touch. God has placed in our soul a burning desire for something. The sad part is, through ungodly decisions made by us and even towards us, those desires tend to grow tainted with sin therefore plagued with shame, causing them to be misguided. Misguided desires are more common than we can think, psychologically speaking, it is a similar concept of “transference”, or in a metaphysical sense, exerting our energy towards something destructive in oppose to something elevating. I believe our desires are pure but due to life and its unfortunate events, we can get distracted which can lead to us aiming for that desire in an unhealthy way. For example, licentious ways can be stemmed from a desire to be loved and feel wanted, but instead or trying to identify the “why” behind our behaviors, which may lead to us seeking self-love, we seek to fill that void through sex. However, by the grace of God, He makes everything work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. Therefore, we do not have to allow our decisions to define us nor do we have to remain stagnant, paralyzed by the fear of "screwing up" or remaining to be "insufficient". Why? Because I can testify that if we ask Him to reveal to us our desires in their purest form, He will. I can testify that once He has answered and you ask Him to reveal to you the origin of this desire (from Him or brought on by circumstances over the course of life), He will. Lastly, I can testify that if you ask Him, “What am I supposed to do next?” or “What do you want me to do with this desire?” He will show you. This revelation crossed me: though the world and people around us may make us feel inadequate, if we do what the Lord has called us to do, then we will fulfill our purpose with joy and to the point of overflow. There is this irrational belief that to follow God would mean that all of us have to drop our lives and move across the world and serve in missions and sing “Kumbaya.” God has designed each of us with very specific purposes that crosses from missions to even those in fashion. Think about it, there are so many roles in this world, God has a reason for each of them and those He has called to do it. It baffles me how people quote that the church is like a body, each of us serving to be a different part of said body which allows us, as a whole, to move forward however everyone is trying to be the same part of the body, the head. No one wants to humble themselves to be the feet, the pinky toe, the nail…everyone wants to be the head. Everyone wants to be seen. I don’t believe God intended this for our hearts, for our motives. If God is truly omniscient, then clearly, He knew the state the world was going to succumb to, even technologically. He knew how much weight technology would play in our current world and yet He still allowed for someone to receive that knowledge and continue to push the envelope. I believe all knowledge comes from the Lord, but we decide how we are going to use it. With this being said, if God gave you a desire to be a designer, then you go out and make clothes that are beautiful and becoming; and if you quit your job to pursue this desire, for the Kingdom, He will honor it and elevate you. In “Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear” by Elizabeth Gilbert, she encouraged that even if your desire/passion, “is healing for you, or fascinating for you, or redemptive for you, or if it’s maybe just a hobby that keeps you from going crazy,” as long as it is done in love and from a heart of authenticity, it will exhume positive energy, impacting someone (now whether or not you are seeking quantity or quality is based on your own personal expectations). I believe we place much emphasis on honoring Him, loving Him, embracing Him, that we forget that He too honors us, loves us and embraces us. The difference is, His honoring, loving and embracing will remain to be loyal, faithful and without wavering; perfect in its deliverance and consistency. Scripture tells us that perfect love casts out fear, so if we hold firm to not our wavering display of love towards Him but rather His perfect and consistence love towards us, we will be able to tap into that strength and bravery of pursuing our dreams, without expectation. We will realize that Yahweh's love is strong enough to carry not only us but also our failures. We will have courage to follow, the vulnerability to cry to Him when we fall, the security to lean into Him for comfort and the strength to stand back up, and not because of us but because of His perfect love for us. Any desire that God has bestowed upon us, in its purest, is to be done in love, by love and through love and more miraculously, is ours! I encourage you all to seek out your God given passion, desire and dream and pursue it! That is exactly what I am doing now, with this blog; I always wanted to be a writer, this was a dream that died and had to be resurrected. I prayed and accepted this as a dream that God placed on my heart years ago and declared to pursue it on His basis. Will I reach the masses? Or will it be seen by one faithful person, I do not know but what I do know, is that I enjoy it and for now that is all that matters. As long as I remain humbled by this motive, any expectations of something greater will fall to the wayside. I pray for each of us, as we pursue our calling that God has predestined us to live out, that we pull our strength from His perfect love towards us, casting out all fear. And I pray that we go boldly to the throne with our requests for as His children living for the Kingdom, He surely will answer them.

“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.” - Langston Hughes