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by Kenny Luck
No one likes regret.
That’s why we work so hard to make sense of our lives. We want to contribute, be meaningful. Sometimes we may sense our calling. But my problem, and the problem I see so often with people is that when we get serious about our legacies, the ways we go about finding them are shallow and performance oriented. And when we inevitably fail, we’re left with the very thing we didn’t want – regret.
The year was 1993, and I was twenty nine years young. I was attending seminary, working full time and had been assigned a clinical pastoral rotation on an oncology unit. One evening a week we met in the basement of the Western Medical Center in Anaheim with about thirty cancer patients and their families or friends. To describe this time as a defining moment seems to cheapen this chapter of my life but it captures the ethos of the year in which my world was beautifully ruined by God. It was a year of first time encounters with reality….first time I was afraid to show up for work, first job in which mortality was a daily reality, first funeral, first big crisis of faith, first time I caught a clear vision of life and heaven.
What did I see for the first time? I control nothing. Trauma dissolves the trivial. Relationships define riches. Personal discomfort leads to discovery. Reality, however painful, is where we find eternity. God’s vision for me is different from my vision. Physical poverty produces spiritual clarity.
A cancer support group was God’s agent of new meaning and purpose in my life. I didn’t like His choice, but He didn’t care. He let me borrow His glasses. He decided that’s the kind of reality I needed to get clear in order to see Him and in the process see myself.
He made me face my tendency to rewrite reality to make people feel better. He pointed out how I wanted to teach more than be taught – to be someone’s solution versus process an issue. I like prescriptions that cure and solve, not processes that end poorly or remain unresolved.
He showed me that it’s possible to prefer Heaven so much that it leaves little room for the real emotions and problems of earth. He showed me just how much I like my version of serving God and being God’s man. But my version wasn’t working for Him. It was time for an Etch-A-Sketch moment. I turned my screen upside down and erased the picture that was there. I didn’t want to start fresh but it happened.
Glad it was me not you? Not so fast. You’re going to get to wrestle too. God wants to erase what you’ve drawn on your Etch-A Sketch and instead draw His dream for you. Will you let Him?
It’s easy to feel like you have this course of life wired. And just when it feels familiar – you guessed it – a million little pieces.
God’s vision for you is solid, invincible, and has been in place for a long time. It is an oak tree. It is unstoppable. Only arrogance or ignorance would attempt to displace it, try to change it or ignore it. And yet we do. We presume to design what we will become in Him. We chase our fantasies over His chosen vision. We forecast and fashion our lives in our own image. We reengineer ourselves for cultural acceptability. We shape our dreams around our own insecurities and dysfunctional tendencies.
And then there is the fatal error: we take God’s plan for our lives and make it something to be conquered. We get behind the wheel and take over. I wonder what God thinks of all our presumptions, our engineering of His plan for our lives.
The dream we have for ourselves is unnatural. It is not God’s dream for us. God tells us in numerous places and in numerous ways, “My version of your future is not your version. Your dreams are not My dreams. Your paths are not My paths. Your ways are not My ways.” If salvation is not a result of what we do then why would we think that His vision of greatness as a man would be dependent on our exploits?
God’s dream for us is not something we chase; it’s something we become.
God set Samuel straight when he set about looking for a God’s man among Jesse’s sons:” Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). God’s dream for your life is not external, designed to impress. It’s not internal, a value or a purpose. It’s not even a spiritual discipline or set of beliefs. God’s dream for you is a heaven – owned vision of greatness, a God’s man image built upon that of the God-Man.
When life isn’t going well, we long for a better life. Even when life seems perfect, we long for more. You were made to dream creative visions, because you were hardwired for more.
You don’t have to accept less or feel bad about wanting to transcend reality. You’re Daddy’s boy – you are made to be great like Him.
From Dream. Copyright © 2007 by Kenny Luck. Used by permission of WaterBrook Press, Colorado Springs, CO. All rights reserved.
An expert on men’s issues, Luck has appeared on numerous radio and television programs, including ABC Family, Christian Broadcasting Network, and over 100 other radio and television programs worldwide. He has been a featured contributor to Rick Warren’s Ministry Toolbox, New Man Magazine (where he writes a bi-monthly column), Men of Integrity, The Journal, and Young Believer Magazine. Kenny Luck's book, Dream, is available from WaterBrook Press.
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