50. To Dream Again

Hello again! In the last few blogs, we’ve been looking at the subject of dreams and how, when you’re in a wilderness season, you can lose sight of your dreams. For me, the future became a scary, rather hopeless place. When you want to avoid any more disappointment, you will tend to shut down your dreams, goals, and any hopes for the future, and just focussed on surviving one day at a time. That's what I did.

I need to say at this point that, compared to millions of people all over the world, my family and I were not living a bad life. Having come from Africa, we had witnessed extreme poverty first-hand, and I want to acknowledge that, in the context of world-wide poverty, we were blessed: we had a roof over our heads, we had food on the table, warm beds to sleep in, a family who genuinely loved each other, and a God who loved us passionately.

I busied myself with trying to be thankful for what I did have, instead of facing the fact that I was actually just surviving. But, on that day at the Creative Workshop where I had my meltdown, everything changed. The true ugliness of the victim thinking I had unknowingly embraced was exposed, laid out in front of me in full technicolour glory, and I was confronted by the devastation it had brought about in my life, as well as the lives of my precious family.

Recognising that you have a survival and/or poverty mindset is the first step to changing it. It’s similar to an addition in that you have to look it straight in the face and say, “My name is Nicky and I have a survival and poverty mindset.” I’m told they do this in Alcoholics Anonymous groups and I can see why, because acknowledging your addiction is the first step to changing it. (Although I must be honest, I do feel it would be good if they also said something that spoke hope over them, rather than leaving them in the place of 'I'm an alcoholic' …but that’s just a personal opinion!)

Once I had confessed this before God, I asked Holy Spirit to reveal what it looked like for me (because everyone’s circumstances and life experiences are so different), and to give me a strategy of how to change it. That started a process that took years and which, to some extent, is still ongoing. In order to get rid of these debilitating thought patterns, I needed to know what to replace them with.

Time after time, especially when I was making a decision, the gentle voice of Holy Spirit would ask me what I was doing and why. So often, my decisions were motivated by fear. He helped me unravel the spaghetti junction that my thought life had become until, little by little, I started to realise what He wanted for me and what that looked like in my life. I learnt that the opposite of survival and poverty was abundance.

I asked myself, what does abundance look like? I was quite adept at ‘just enough’, but I didn’t know what abundance looked like, even in the first world nation that I was living in.

I needed to know the truth so that, every time I felt my victim and survival mentality rising up, I could take that thought out of my head and replace it with God's truth. I needed to know what abundance looked like.

2 Cor 9:8 says, “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work”.

Wow! What a fantastic scripture that is! That’s Father’s heart for us – He wants us to have ALL grace, ALWAYS having ALL sufficiency in EVERYTHING we do, so we live a life of ABUNDANCE!

Our loving, lavish, extravagant heavenly Father does not want us to just survive. He wants us to flourish and thrive, no matter what our circumstances seem to dictate. He created us to live a life of abundance, with fullness of joy, and He has given us everything we need for life and godliness. That’s what abundance looks like – there’s always more than enough.

We don’t have to fear because His love, His goodness, His provision never runs out! When we start to focus on our Father and how much He loves us, fear loses its grip, just like it says in 1 John 4:18: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear.”  A victim or poverty mentality is rooted in fear; fear that there’s never enough. But an abundance mindset knows how to trust the God that loves us, no matter what the circumstances say.

One thing that was really helpful for me during this time was asking myself what was motivating me to do something; was I doing it out of fear or love. For example, was I buying a ‘reasonably priced’ (i.e. cheap!!) birthday present for my friend because I knew that was exactly what she would love for her birthday, or because I was fearful of running out of money at the end of the month if I bought her the thing that I knew she would actually really like.

Or was I not opening up and sharing what was really on my heart with someone because I felt that to love them best was not to say that, or out of fear that they might reject me if they saw the real me. Love takes risks, while fear shuts you down.

A survival mindset will buy a cheap gift because it is fearful of running out of money, but an abundance mindset will buy the gift that it knows is really wanted, because it understands the love of a Father who is always enough.

A survival mindset will not let you dream of bigger, better things, because it is fearful about the future. An abundance mindset will help you to dream and imagine all the wonderful things that God has planned for you and those around you.

Dreaming is a natural by-product of a heart that is in love with God, a mind that is convinced of His goodness. When we dream with God, we dream good things, because Father God has put that in us. It is inherently part of who we are because we are creative beings, just like our God who created us.

God is the one who transforms our hearts and minds and helps us to dream; our part is simply to partner with Him. After my meltdown at the workshop, it took about a year before I started dreaming again, and it wasn’t even a conscious decision on my part. I didn’t ‘put my mind to it’ and decide to dream something up, it just happened organically. I was just talking to Holy Spirit when, all of a sudden, I found myself thinking ‘I’d love to do that…’ and then I realised, “Oh my goodness! I’m dreaming again!” I had started thinking about the future and about what I’d like to do, without consciously realising it.

One of the dreams which I’d had in my heart for many years, but which had been buried in the ‘back room’ of my heart, was to write a book. My first novel, ‘Into the Wilderness’ is the fulfilment of that dream.

You can choose to dream again. The power of choice is yours, given to you by your Father. Find any prophetic words you have been given over the years and start thanking God for the promises He had spoken over your life. Find scriptures that speak about hope and destiny and pray them every day.

Choose to trust His word.

        Choose to hope.

Choose to trust.

Put your hand out and open that wonderful Narnian wardrobe door that leads to a new world of unlimited possibilities.

You can choose to dream again!

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Until next time ….

Ask Jesus to show you what thriving looks like for you, in your life and in your family. Ask Him to give you a revelation of His goodness and abundance.

When making decisions, ask yourself, “Am I making this decision based on fear or love?” 

Read 2 Cor 9:8, write it out and put it on your fridge/cupboard and memorise it if you can, or ask Holy Spirit for a scripture specifically for you, which you can do this with.

Find any prophetic words you have been given over the years and started thanking God for the promises He had spoken over your life.

Ask Holy Spirit to help you make a list of things that you would like to do, places you would like to go, things you would like to experience. 

 Nicky Heymans is an author of historical fiction who is known for drawing fresh life and inspiration out of familiar Bible stories. She would love to hear from you! Please feel free to share your thoughts or ask questions by scrolling down to the bottom of this page and clicking on the 'contact' link, and she will get back to you.