When
George Muller was a young man, he had a dream--an
earnest hope for his life and legacy. He wanted
to become an evangelist, who would take the
message of Christ to the world. After several
unsuccessful attempts in his twenties to follow
this vocation, he concluded it wasn't in God's
plans for him. He gave up.
Until age 67. At this unlikely
point in life, the dream finally materialized.
For the next twenty years--until he was
87--Muller traveled thousands of miles, carrying
out numerous speaking missions, and becoming one
of the foremost Christian statesmen of the
nineteenth century.
Muller's experience illustrates
one of the most fascinating and encouraging
aspects of God's providence that we encounter in
life. It's the fact that certain dreams we have
for our life that we assume to have failed and
been forever denied by God, do eventually
succeed--but at a later point than we expected.
In some cases a dream comes about much
later in life than we thought possible.
The corollary is that waiting
often proves to be well worth it. By taking a
circuitous route to our dream, we are better
prepared to enjoy its benefits--and really do
enjoy them more than if we had achieved our goal
quickly and easily.
Often, too, we're more effective
in carrying out the responsibilities that the
dream entails. This was clearly true in Muller's
case. En route to realizing his dream of a
speaking ministry, he spent several decades
building orphanages for the urchins of England.
He achieved broad recognition for this work and
for his remarkable faith-based approach to life
and ministry. Through it all, he gained a
platform from which to speak that would have been
absent if he had jumped into evangelistic
ministry when he was young.
The Long and Winding Road
Muller's example, of course, is
unusual, dramatic and noteworthy enough to make
the history books. I'm not suggesting that most
of us will experience a late success with such
notoriety. Yet if we remain open to God's
leading, and optimistic about his possibilities
for us, most of us will enjoy delayed
accomplishments which to us are dramatic--in
light of the expectations we have for our own
life.
These late-realized dreams may
occur in a wide variety of areas:
Many accomplish important vocational or
educational goals later in life than they had
hoped-but they do reach them. I was impressed
recently with the value of a friend's
long-persistence toward a dream. For many years
he has wanted to become a pastor and gradually
has taken steps toward this goal. He finally
began pastoring his first church this past
month--at age 56.
The best openings for friendships and
relationships may occur when we are well into our
adult years. Some find an excellent opportunity
for marriage late in life, even for the first
time.
Creative, artistic and recreational
accomplishments can occur at improbable points in
life. Some even begin, in their later years,
activities that usually benefit from an early
start in life, and succeed impressively with
them. My mom took up painting for the first time
at age 63. Over the next fifteen years she
developed a significant talent for landscape
painting, winning a variety of awards in women's
club competitions. I think also of a friend who
began playing tennis at 65, continuing avidly
into his 80s and achieving a professional level
of skill.
Efforts we make to influence someone else that
seem to fizzle, sometimes do bear fruit over
time, long after we've given up. A friend of mine
just recently found that letters she had written
to another friend about faith in Christ over
twenty years ago had finally been retrieved by
that woman in a moment of need, and had sparked a
turning point in her spiritual life.
Our Critical Need for Hope
It may seem simple enough to say
that God brings certain dreams to pass at
unlikely points in our lives. Yet I'm certain
that most of us do not begin to appreciate this
aspect of God's work nearly as greatly as we
should. The result is that our hope for the
future often falls short of what it could be.
It's hard to exaggerate the
importance of hope in accomplishing personal
goals and in realizing our potential for Christ.
Without hope, we can miss obvious opportunities
that God brings across our path. Hope sharpens
our alertness to them and to God's guidance in
our life. It give us that extra emotional edge we
need to risk--to try new ventures of faith in
career, relationships and other areas. Hope can
make that hair's-breadth difference between
knocking on a door that will open for us and
deciding that it just isn't worth the effort to
try.
Healthy and Unhealthy Hope
I don't deny that we can have too
much hope, or that it can take on unfortunate
dimensions. We can take solace in unhealthy
fantasies which keep us from facing reality and
taking responsibility. We can be too patient as
well. Opportunities do not present themselves for
ever, and the point comes when we must act.
Taking too much refuge in the future can thwart
our initiative.
For most of us, the problem is
quite the opposite. We suffer from a chronic lack
of hope, and need plenty of reassurance that God
really does desire the best for us. It isn't that
we don't want to have hope for our future. But
it's difficult for us to understand how hope
should interplay with accepting reality and
surrendering to God's will. If we've made a
reasonable effort to pursue a goal, yet haven't
been successful, don't we reach a point when we
should assume that God is saying no? Isn't our
most reverent response then to accept that God
has closed the door and to let go of our hope?
The answer depends upon the
nature of the dream we're embracing. If we find
that a dream doesn't match our potential very
well, we should discard it, or at least revise
it. Yet if a dream fits our gifts and long-term
desires, we should be slow to let go of it. It
may in fact be a point of stewardship to hold on
to this dream. We are responsible during our
lifetime to realize the potential Christ has
given us, to the best of our ability. We discover
our potential in large part simply by coming to
understand our gifts and abilities--those things
we naturally do well--and the desires that are
deepest and most consistent within us and have
stood the test of time. Dreams that genuinely fit
these talents and interests shouldn't be quickly
discarded.
Short-term vs. Long-term Hope
We do need to be careful not to
fixate on specific ways we imagine a dream must
be fleshed out. It's here that we're most
susceptible to caving in to unhealthy hope.
I may dearly desire to be
married, for instance. If my potential matches my
desire (I'm capable of being a good partner to
someone), then I have excellent reason to hold on
to my hope for as long as it takes to find a good
opportunity for marriage. I should continue to
pray that God will make marriage possible for me,
and to look creatively for someone suitable to
marry.
The challenge will come if I
become attracted to someone who isn't willing to
marry me. I may be tempted to hold on to the hope
of marrying this person longer than is
reasonable, or even to conclude that I couldn't
be happy married to anyone else. In reality, God
is fully capable of redirecting my romantic
energy to another person, and giving me a
marriage with that person as good or as better
than I would have enjoyed with my present
attraction.
Faith may demand that I let go of
my hope of marrying this person, and work through
my grief over this loss. But the failure of this
specific dream doesn't mean that my long-range
hope for marriage is inappropriate. Indeed, most
of us will go through at least several
disappointments--and some many--en route to
finding a good opportunity for marriage.
This distinction between
short-term and long-term dreams is one that we
should keep in mind in all areas where we take
steps of faith. When specific opportunities do
not open to us after a reasonable effort, we
should accept that the door is shut, and move on.
Yet we should hold on to long-term hopes that are
based on a good understanding of how God has made
us, and continue to look for new opportunities to
move toward these dreams.
The Benefits of Delayed Dreams
Even with a good understanding of
this distinction, staying hopeful about our
future is a challenge. We are human, and most of
us find that disappointment hits us hard. We tend
to reason from the specific to the general when
disappointment occurs, and assume that one or two
setbacks in moving toward a dream mean failure in
that area forever.
In fact, failure often
contributes to future success, for we are able to
learn from mistakes and become more effective at
points where we've failed. But success is only
possible if we try again--and this won't happen
unless we're optimistic enough to believe that
God may enable us to succeed. Just how can we
keep this hope alive?
One thing that helps greatly is
appreciating reasons that God may delay the
fulfillment of a dream in our life, and the
advantages that may result for us in the long
run. Some of these benefits may include--
Saving something for act three.
When we're young, we imagine we would like to
have all of life's treasures at our feet at once.
As we grow older, we're grateful that some of
life's best adventures have been delayed. God
graciously proportions his blessings throughout
our life.
Putting success in the right perspective.
Any success we enjoy has the potential of taking
on too much importance for us. It can become the
central focus of our life, stealing our affection
from God. God delays in bringing certain dreams
about, I'm certain, so that we can first deepen
our faith in him and strengthen our relationship
with Christ. When success finally comes, we're
less likely to make it an idol, but are more
inclined to appreciate it as a gift of God and to
relate to it responsibly.
A related problem is that we may
think of certain blessings of life--such as
marriage or a golden job opportunity--as a
panacea, solving all of our problems and bringing
endless happiness. In reality, the improvements
these benefits bring are typically more
incremental than global. God's concern is not
only to help us put our expectations in the right
perspective, but to help us learn to enjoy daily
life in the face of many unfulfilled needs. The
fuller our life is apart from a dream being
realized, the more likely we are to benefit from
its being met. Because we aren't banking on the
dream being the answer to our happiness, we are
less likely to suffer a letdown when it doesn't
deliver perfection, and better able to enjoy the
benefits it actually does provide.
Handling the responsibilities of success.
Any dream that we realize brings new
responsibilities into our life. While we might
imagine we're fully capable of taking on these
burdens now, God often does us a favor by giving
us more time to get ready. One of the best ways
we can invest our energy during life's delays is
in preparing more fully for the responsibilities
a dream will require if it comes about.
Fitting our piece into the larger puzzle.
The most unfathomable fact of God's providence is
that he fits the details of our life into an
infinitely bigger picture. He not only has our
own needs in mind in the timing of a dream's
coming to pass, but those of countless others.
And he integrates our own life-situation into an
endless variety of other circumstances.
What's most encouraging about
God's providential oversight is that when a dream
delays, we often find that circumstances are more
favorable for it when it does come about than
they would have been earlier.
Some thirty years ago, when I was
a young Christian, I looked seriously at the
possibility of beginning a radio ministry. For
various reasons, it didn't seem to be the right
direction for my life at that time. During this
past year the opportunity has opened for me to
provide audio recordings of talks on the
Internet, through our Web site with the Gospel
Communications Network. Through this arrangement,
we are able to make radio-type talks available to
anyone anywhere in the world who has a multimedia
computer with an Internet hookup. Unlike
scheduled radio programs, these programs are
available at any time someone wishes to access
them. We are also able to provide them at a
fraction of the cost required to air a program on
even a single radio station. Yet this technology
wasn't even available several years ago.
We simply cannot predict the
direction that circumstances will take in any
area that relates our life. When a dream delays,
we should remind ourselves often that
circumstances may actually fit it better at some
point in the future. We do well to stay hopeful.
The growth of anticipation. A
friend once took me boat shopping with him. After
we had spent some time looking at different
models, I asked him if he was ready to purchase
one. "I don't actually intend to buy a
boat," he confessed, "for then I
wouldn't have this dream to look forward
to."
My friend's somewhat
tongue-in-cheek comment actually points to one of
the most important keys to patience and
contentment that we can learn. Anticipation has
value as an end in itself. There is great joy
possible in the mood of anticipation; it's an
extraordinary stimulant and motivator for us. If
we can learn to enjoy the process of
anticipation, we have the most effective possible
antidote to rushing a dream prematurely and to
losing heart if it delays. Patience is natural
for us in this case.
If we can
become comfortable with anticipation, then it can
grow over time. The end result is that we
actually enjoy the fulfillment of a dream more
when it delays than when it comes about quickly.
This is what M. Scott Peck has in mind, I
believe, when he stresses the importance of
"the delaying of gratification" as one
of the vital qualities of maturity in The Road
Less Traveled.*
Divine compensation. There is also a more
mysterious, spiritual dynamic to the postponement
of dreams that's hinted at occasionally in
Scripture. God, in compensation for the waiting
process one endures, may increase one's
experience of joy in a dream's finally being
realized. Isaiah 61:7 and Zechariah 9:12, for
instance, speak of joy being doubled in return
for a long-delayed blessing. To be sure, we would
be wrong to take such passages as a guarantee
that God will operate in our own life in such a
way. Yet they do give us a basis for hope, and
remind us that the delaying of a dream can mean
an increase in the blessings we eventually
experience.
A Dream Fulfilled--And Then
Another
While focusing on the benefits of
a dream's delaying can help us stay hopeful in
the face of disappointment, it also helps greatly
to have real-life examples to encourage us. When
we look for them, we find many examples--both
from history and from the lives of people we
know--of those who realized important dreams at
unusual points in life. Such stories also
permeate Scripture and are one of the most
inspiring parts of biblical history.
My favorite of these biblical
examples is Zechariah's temple experience,
described in Luke 1:5-25. Zechariah and his wife
Elizabeth were the parents of John the Baptist.
The general story of their conceiving John in old
age is well-known, and a staple of the Christmas
story. The angel Gabriel appears to Zechariah in
the temple and announces to him, "your
prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will
bear you a son, and you are to give him the name
John" (v. 13). Even though Zechariah and
Elizabeth are both "well along in
years" (v. 7), Elizabeth soon becomes
pregnant, and when her term is finished, gives
birth to John.
While the fact that this
miraculous birth took place is inspiring enough,
there is more to this story than meets the eye.
Zechariah was a priest, whose division of Abijah
was on duty at the time of his encounter with the
angel. Like other priestly divisions, Abijah
served the temple only two weeks each year. Many
of the priests lived away from Jerusalem, had
secular jobs, and traveled to the holy city only
by choice when their division was on duty.
Each day one priest was chosen by
lottery to enter the holy of holies and offer
sacrifice. What is most significant is that a
priest was only allowed this honor once in his
lifetime, and many never experienced it at all.
When Zechariah was chosen for temple service that
morning, it was the prize of a lifetime. Here on
this one day, late in life, he not only
experienced the angel's promise of a child, but
enjoyed the fulfillment of a major vocational
dream as well.
What a Difference a Day Makes
One thing Zechariah's experience
reminds us of is how remarkably our life can
change in the space of a single day. Harvest
experiences do occur for each of us from time to
time, and sometimes--as in Zechariah's case--we
are completely surprised by them. I believe we do
best to begin each day with high expectations for
that day. While we shouldn't base our well-being
on whether serendipities occur during that day, a
certain hope for them is healthy, for it makes us
more alert to the special openings God may
present to us.
Hope for the Future
Zechariah's experience, of
course, not only inspires hope for the day, but
hope for the future. His being chosen for the
temple service brings out how long-term
persistence toward a goal--and
availability--often do pay off. Zechariah
undoubtedly had been making the sojourn to
Jerusalem for decades before this cherished
opportunity finally opened up.
Then there is the revelation from
the angel. Most interesting is that Gabriel says
that God's promise of a child is in response to
Zechariah's prayer: "your prayer has been
heard." Most likely Gabriel is referring to
prayers Zechariah and Elizabeth had made for a
child long before this, when she was in her
childbearing years. This is one of Scripture's
most graphic examples that past prayers are not
forgotten by God. Time and energy we expend in
praying do bring results--sometimes quickly,
sometimes over time.
We shouldn't conclude from this
incident that God will normally bend the rules of
nature and enable a woman past menopause to
conceive if one simply prays hard enough. God
obviously can perform this miracle if he wishes.
Yet the Bible gives only one other example of his
doing so (Sarah's conception of Isaac), so
Scripture clearly is not presenting this
possibility as the norm.
What Zechariah's experience does
show unquestionably is that prayer can make a
radical difference in our destiny. Unless we have
clear reason to know that God has shut a
particular door, we have reason to stay hopeful
when we have prayed earnestly, that God will
bring about a certain dream. And if the dream
doesn't work out, we can still be confident that
the prayers we have made will bring benefit to
our life in many other ways.
Keeping Our Own Hope Strong
Have you lost heart over a
personal dream which hasn't been fulfilled? Yet
to the best of your knowledge, does this dream
fit your gifts and interests well? Is it a good
match for your life as God has designed it? It
may seem that pessimism about the future is your
best defense against further disappointment. But
keep in mind the benefits of hope, and the
reasons for staying hopeful, that we've
discussed. Be careful not to write history with a
gloomy conclusion before it happens. Stay open to
opportunities to move toward your dream that God
may make possible for you.
Ask him to give you the divine
ability to live in two worlds at once--to stay
hopeful about your future, but to be happy right
now even with certain dreams unfulfilled. Through
his grace, you can achieve this balance in your
outlook, and it's a vital part of the active
attitude of faith.
Most of all, remember that
whatever happens, Christ desires the best for you
and is working out an ideal plan for your life.
That alone is an incomparable reason for hope.
Take confidence from knowing it. And may it give
you the courage to take steps of faith.
|
