Mark

Stratmann

We need to dream more and we need to dream bigger.  Really, isn’t that what makes us tick in times of discouragement and discontentment?

I’ve been talking to some people lately that I’ve discovered have no real dreams in life.  It’s like they’ve lost their desire to be great in life.  I remember being a child, and thinking of how I was going to grow up and be someone great  What young boy didn’t have dreams of hitting the grand slam to win the World Series for their favorite baseball team, or who didn’t dream of being the firefighter who saved some old lady from a burning building in some heroic way?  I know I did…maybe I was just crazy, but I think most of us had dreams and aspirations in life that drove us to excel in our youth.   I remember sitting in the sandbox (or in my case a large tractor tire filled with sand) thinking of how I was going to dig the deepest hole to china…and some days I worked hard to get there…only to realize I dug a hole about 12″ deep at best…but still, I had a dream and a goal to get somewhere and accomplish something that day (yes, I thought I could get there in a day…mock me if you want!)

I find it interesting that as we ‘grow up’ we realize that not all of our dreams and aspirations in life come to pass.  This is a crucial time for us.  We make choices that we don’t even know we are making at the time.  We stop dreaming with God, and allow Satan to tell us things that aren’t true over us.  Instead of dreaming about being a world changer we start to do just enough to get by. God’s got more for our lives, but since we stop dreaming and realizing what we can accomplish in life, we start to see that it is safer and easier to settle in and do what is simply expected of us.

It becomes a dangerous intersection in life, the intersection of dreaming big and realizing our potential.  As kids we somewhat over estimate our life potential, as adults we underestimate it.  More and more “life” happens to us.  Hard times hit us, friends hurt us, finances drain us, cars break down, disappointment creeps in, on and on and on I could go, but the point is we begin to doubt ourselves rather than believe in ourselves.  As a 9 year old, I was fairly well convinced I could make millions playing in the big leagues, now I wonder if I can even run the bases without a nap somewhere between 1st and 2nd.  Ok, maybe that’s a little exaggeration, but you get the point…we stop believing in ourselves.

I truly believe that life circumstances force us to dream differently, but I still absolutely believe that we NEED to dream in life.  If we don’t dream about something, what are we living for?  What are we working towards?

I have many dreams…I want to see people set free.  I believe I have some key roles in setting people free.  I’m starting to accomplish this by working with The World Race, and I know it will be a launching pad to seeing people set free…We see this time and time again in training camps and in people’s lives being changed through their time on The World Race.  We see the participants set free from the garbage they’ve walked through in life.  We see it in the ministry we do working with people enslaved in the red-light districts of Thailand.  We see fruit from all of this ministry, and I’m glad to be right in the center of it all.