Dream Guide

One of the most exciting things we do in the beginning of the year, every year, at least the last four or five, is we released something called the Dream Guide. And you guys have loved it. You guys have used it. In fact, last year I think there were like 20,000 downloads of it. It's crazy how many of you start your year with it. We want you to know it's out! You can get it, today you can get it. We’re releasing it earlier and earlier because you're thinking about it and wanting to make plans to use it. So we have it for you right now. Let me tell you about it. If you've never done it or never heard of it, let me tell you what it is.

It's a chance for you to reflect on the last year and to dream about what is ahead.

Zach and I have done this our entire marriage, usually we would do it while we were driving to see family or driving home from seeing family after Christmas. What I would do is I would just take my moleskin, which I was journaling with at the time, and I would write these different categories and together while we drive, we talk through, "How did this go last year and what do we want to do differently this year?" It's everything from physical, working out, to spiritual, spending time with God, but also big ideas and dreams that we have and what does it look like to do relationships in our neighborhood better? We always walk away with probably a handful of exciting fun things that prior to that we wouldn't have thought of. Now, some of you aren't married, you're not going to do it with your husband, but there is a value in doing it with somebody that knows you.

I would gather a few friends and say, "Let's do this at the beginning of the year."

And maybe you do it right now before everything gets crazy. But I do think there's something so important and special about when the year turns because I don't know, I love clean starts. I love to be able to go, "Okay, let me wake up and start back in my routine rather than the things I've let go towards the end of the year," which let's be real, we all let a lot of things go at the end of the year.

Let's talk about dreaming for a little bit. Why I care so much about that.

Does God care about that? Is that something we've created on our own or does God care about it? God is a dreamer. He is a dreamer. And part of his redemptive work in the world is to have his people dream of how to make it better.

We are the hands and feet of Christ today on this earth. And the way that we redeem it is by taking... Tim Keller talks about taking chaos and causing thriving. And so how can we take chaos and cause thriving without dreaming of a world that is better. And by a world that is better, sometimes that's within our four walls, sometimes that's within our own body. Sometimes that's within the greater world that God's given us. Dreaming is such a heartbeat of God. You see him do it throughout scripture, you see his people do it throughout scripture, and you see people today doing it with their gifts in the world.

So yes, God cares about this, and let me tell you how simple it is.

It's really just looking at what God has already given you.

I wrote a book called Restless, and that might be helpful for you in this, but it talks about laying out the grid that God has given you specifically in your place, with your people, with your passions, with your gifts, with your past, with your history, with your scars and stars.

What does it look like to take all that God has given you, the threads of your life and to obey him with it? Y'all, it isn't complicated. It's funny, Restless is pretty simple. It's the things that are already in your life. How do you take those things and dream with them? Okay, so let me walk through some of the parts of this guide.

We're going to talk about what we're thankful for right now in our lives. There are four categories to this guide, the first one is spiritual. And you're going to take a look at two questions.

First, you're going to look back at your last year and say, "How did you grow in the last year spiritually and what are your goals?" And then you're going to walk through these different places of spiritual service, spiritual connection with God, different components of your life spiritually.

You're going to work through those and process both how you want to grow in this year, and how you grew last year.

Then next we're going to look at relational. We're going to look at your relationships. Who are the people that you want to invest in this year? Who are the people you need and who are the people that need you? So we're going to look at our friendships. We're going to look at marriage and kids if it's applicable, and then also extended family, neighbors, coworkers. How are we investing in those relationships? We’re going to look at our personal health, food and exercise, books we want to read, dreams and memories we want to make, travel we want to take this year. Work, we're going to look at our finances, our personal growth and education, because I think so many of these things, if you don't think ahead about them, the year goes by and you have done nothing to invest in yourself, to invest in your creativity, your work.

Some of the highlights of my year in the past year have been the time and the money that I've spent in investing in creativity and life coaching and people that could help me take greater ground for the kingdom this year, my job, but also my family and my personal life.

And then all of us have projects, we all have different types of projects that we're working on, different types of ministries that we care about. So you want to look at your giving, but also your time and where are you spending it with the projects that God's given you and the passion he's given you. We added some conversation cards, a little scripture. We want you to talk about this with other people. We want you to talk about this with your good friends, if you have good friends that actually could be brought into this part of your life.

We do this with our small group. So first, my husband and I do it together, and then we take it to our small group. It's so cute, last year my small group... It was their idea, they all downloaded the dream guide and did it together. We all came together and gave our answers. It was so fun to hear the different ways we all were dreaming and to be able to hold each other accountable to those things as well. We care about you so much, and our hope is that these different tools are causing you to grow. They're causing you to think differently, to come out of the box of the ways that you're currently thinking and to help you dream bigger. And that's why we build these things for you. So I hope this is a super simple fun way for you to start your year to end this year and to start the next one.

This week I was talking to one of my kids and it was interesting. They were spinning about two huge subjects in their life, and it was really big, I'll say this, it wasn't just like math tests, right? It was like the future of their lives. As I listened to this child tell me what was going on in their life, I stopped them and said, "Hey, have you prayed about this?" And this is a child that would pray about it. This is a child who walks with God deeply, trusts God deeply. And immediately... I love this about this child is they said, "No. No, I haven't. I haven't prayed about either one of those things." And I was like, "Wow, thanks for your honesty." And I said, "You know what? What I want you to do is I want you to get off the phone with me, and I want you to pray because scripture is clear."

I love when scripture is commanding to me and bossy because I actually think bossiness is helpful when especially you are anxious. I talk a lot about this in “Get Out Of Your Head” that sometimes when you're spinning and spiraling, you really just need somebody to grab you by the shoulders and tell you what to do to stop the spinning. So this is a verse that a lot of you are familiar with, but do we actually bring this out when we most need it? So when my kid was spiraling, I answered this verse to them- Philippians 4:6 through seven says, "Do not be anxious about anything." So it starts off with very clear, "Do not be anxious about anything." And I can't imagine what Paul was thinking when he wrote that. That's a very dramatic statement, to not be anxious about anything.

Think of all the things, big things there are to be anxious about in the world, but do not be anxious about anything.

Some translations say the next word as instead, which I like. So it's a replacement.

This translation that I'm reading, the NIV right now says, "But." "But in every situation..." Or instead of being anxious, you're going to, "In every situation, by prayer and petition, with Thanksgiving, present your request to God." So he's telling you what to do with anxiety. It's as prescriptive as the Bible gets here, he lays it out.

He says, "Don't be anxious." So when you're spinning, he's speaking into the anxiety, right? He knows when he's saying these words that these listeners, that these readers are going to go inward to their anxiety and they're going to notice that they aren't trusting God. They're going to notice that they're trying to control their lives.

They're going to notice that they're spinning endlessly and that there's really no way to stop unless, instead of being anxious, there is something to do. He doesn't leave them with “just don't be anxious”.

That would be a horrible verse if it said alone by itself, not couched in other helpful phrases. But he says, "Hey, I'm going to tell you to stop doing this and instead to pray. To present your requests to God." So this kid that I'm talking about was worried about two important things in this kid's life that were spinning and wildly going around their mind that they could not set down, that they couldn't figure out and they couldn't solve. And my instruction to them was, I want you to get off the phone right now.

So I love first of all that my kid said to me, "Hey, I haven't prayed about this. I just genuinely haven't." I love the honesty of that. And then second, I said, "Okay, right now, I want you to get off and I want you to get on your knees. I want you to physically get on your knees and I want you to present your requests, the desires of your heart to God. I want you to tell him exactly what you want to happen. I want you to say, 'In my perfect world, God, this is what would happen.' And I want you to pray specifics. I want you to ask God those desires of your heart, and I want you to say them out loud to him. Present your requests to God." That's what the verse says to do. It doesn't say, "Quit wanting the things you want."

See, trust in our minds is give up the life that you want and just accept the martyrdom life that God is giving you.

God's not that simple.

Yes, pick up your cross and die, you have to be willing to walk the road that he puts before you. And no, we cannot control that. We rarely ever can control our circumstances.

However, he does say, "I want to hear what you want. I want to delight in the desires of your heart. I want to hear what you wish would happen. I've got a plan and I'm going to work it out." But the mysterious thing that happens when we set our desires before God is a relationship happens.

Instead of grasping and manipulating, we're saying, "Hey, God, here's what I want." And so I just want to say to all of you, you have a God that desires to know your desires, that wants you to trust him with your heart, to trust him with the things that you hope for and wish for.

For some of you, that's marriage. For some of you, you are middle of your life and you want to still get married, and you've been afraid to pray that. And I get that. Because it may not happen and it hasn't happened, and you can't totally control that. And so I just would say, do not be afraid to keep praying that, to keep asking him for it. There are times it's a no, right? We all know that, I don't have to say that. There's plenty of times that what we want we don't get, and God is powerful enough to give it to us, and yet we don't get it. And we are grieved by that. That is where grief comes in, where we aren't afraid to feel the longing and the desire that was unmet, that we didn't get what we wanted, but it's about the relationship. Something mysterious does happen when we bring our desires to God that we build this trusting relationship with him.

What I love is that Jesus was on earth and he empathizes with our weakness. He actually knows what it feels like.

Now, I know we're talking about silly examples, and some of you, it's that you feel like you want to have children and you can't, or you want to get rid of the diagnosis that you have, and you can't. This is not happening for you. Believe me, I'm in that world right now with so many people that I love dearly, so dearly, and I want to fix it for them. It's just not going to be fixed. And so I know what that feels like too. And what we have in Jesus is we have a God that empathizes with our weakness, that understands our desires and our longings, that knows what it feels like to not have what we want or even what we need at certain moments, and yet to still trust his father.

The ultimate picture of this is Gethsemane. He's wanting to avoid death, he wants away from it. And he asks his father, he says, "God, spare me. Take this cup from me. If there's any way, if there's any other way to accomplish our will and desires to redeem these people, would you take this cup from me?" And then he says, "But not my will, but yours." And rather than grasp his own life, he lays down his life. He says, 'Father, whatever you have for me, it's not my will, but your will. It's the ultimate trust.

It's the ultimate, you know what? This may not go how I wish, and I'm still in. I still love you because where else am I going to go?" It's the painful reality of our lives that we would open our hands and say, "God, I'm yours. And I'm going to go where you call me and I'm going to do what you call me to do."

The Dream Guide is completely free, and in the back of the guide we even created some conversation cards for you to do as a group and other resources like that. We are just really excited to have this in your hands, and we want to hear from you.