A song spilled forth today as I sang my sorrow at the keyboard.  I began to sing each line, and then grabbed a pen, and the whole song poured out.  It wasn’t until the end that I realized the title was to be “The God who Sees” and that this was the name Hagar gave the Lord when He met her at the apex of her own broken dreams.

After fleeing from a situation that was crushing to her spirit the Lord met her and told her to ‘go back and submit.’  It wasn’t that God didn’t care about Hagar’s unhappiness but that it was better for her to submit in a difficult situation than to die in the desert.  However, the Lord also sent her back with a promise that she would have a son and that He would multiply her offspring.  Hagar could still dream, she would just have to do it in the midst of difficult circumstances.

And so, Hagar could go back to the situation she fled because now she had seen the One who saw her – she had a confidante, a friend whom she knew saw and understood all the pain she had endured.  So when her mistress would further mistreat her, she now had a strength to draw upon that she didn’t have before encountering God in the desert.  Hagar knew, even if unloved and unappreciated by her mistress, God loved and appreciated her, and in spite of man’s betrayal of her,  God would fulfill His purposes for her…God remembered Hagar.  God saw her in her distress and He revealed Himself to her with a promise of His ongoing blessing in her life.

The God Who Sees

You are the God who sees.

You are the God who remembers.

You are the God who knows what I’ve endured.

You are the God who cares.

You are the God who has known me.

You are the God who was there when I first dreamed.

And now as I stand on this mountain alone,

And lay my head down on Your chest.

Here in this place where the eagles can soar

and dreams rise higher than they ever did before,

I am kneeling down at Your feet – waiting for destiny;

feeling Your hand holding me though I weep,

I’m waiting here where dreams still reach.

(because…)

You are the God who knows

You are the God who remembers

You are the God who danced o’er my soul.

You are the God who comes.

You are the God who answers.

You are the God who has counted all my tears.

And now as I turn to the Author of life,

And breathe my last breath of hope,

I’m counting on His mercy to revive me again,

and show me the way to cope

until I arise from His feet

to embrace once more destiny

in the glory that rises from the tears I weep,

the glory that restores me from the years that keep,

it’s the glory of Your holiness

because You are the God who remembers

and I remember this:  You are the God who sees me!

“She gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”  (Genesis 16:13).

REMEMBER ME!

I wrote this melody and the chorus in a dream…I was surrounded by a group of people that represented the dreams I once had.  I’m reminded of a bird that’s circling in the sky looking for a place to land, she headed for the place of her migration to give birth, but the storm came and the only land that opened to her was a land of exile…a land of refuge…but a land without the beauty of her homeland.  But maybe some day she will have the chance to fly again…will she still have the heart to fly?

Right now I struggle over the constant reminders of failure and empty landscapes.  Though I know God must have allowed it all for a reason.  But I am like a songbird still singing my song – waiting for my destiny to answer me – to hear my cry, recognize it and choose me.  Like birds do…only now I am not in the land of my migration…I am in a foreign land singing my songs.  But I must keep singing for my own sake, even if I am the only one who hears…I need to know I’m still here.

And then each day I go through the motions of sowing seeds and bearing fruit where I can…but like Israel, how can I forget my homeland?  My dreams?  My call?

REMEMBER ME!

Remember me! Remember me!

Remember me, O God, oh!

Remember me, remember me,

Remember me, O God!

1.  As I walk these roads of pain and loss

and reach for dreams once born

Will I turn around and see the cross

arising as I mourn?

2.  And the day will come when I’ll hear the sound

of armies in the sky.

And I will dance for the second chance

of the life that passed me by.

Remember me!  Remember me!

Remember me, O God! oh!

Remember me, remember me.

Remember me, O God!

3.  In God’s hands, the circumstance

that stole my dreams that night

And in God’s hands the second chance

to rise above in flight.

Remember me!  Remember me!

Remember me, O God!  oh!

Remember me, remember me.

Remember me, O God!

4.  For dreams once lost are at the cross

where new life springs again.

And sorrow flees as darkness leaves

and I’m clothed in Heaven.

Remember me, remember me,

Remember me, O God!

Interesting.  Just as the Lord is teaching me to let go of dreams and embrace calling, He is speaking to me about being faithful to His promises, which to me speaks of the promises He has made to my heart – some of which are in fact dreams.

Just the other day as I pondered the financial challenges before us with our house build, a song came to mind:  “Remember Your people, Remember Your promise.”  This morning I was singing and the word “promise” leapt out of the song so I knew the Lord was telling me to expect a time of seeing His promises come to pass (verses the devestation and discipline that has characterized much of the present passing season).

And then I got the following word in my e-mail.  I share this for all who can relate to the journey of needing to know God as the limitless One, even after much hope deferred.  This is from teh ministry of Kitty and Russ Walden.  Their website is http://www.fathersheartministry.net.

• I have not called you to limitation says the Father. Neither are you destined to live out a spiritually anemic existence. When you call I will answer. I will answer your petitions with an outstretched arm and a mighty hand. I will make bare My arm in response to your cry says the Father. Let your voice be heard today says the Father.This day says the Father your faith and My fidelity will come together and reshape your future. Don’t look to the things that are behind you and consider not the former days. Consider this – that I am a faithful and loving Father who will establish your goings and raise you up to new heights in Me in the coming season. Despise not the promise says the Father for it was purchased by the shed blood of Christ. Rather know this – – that faithful is He that has promised and He will perform it!I will roll back the years of devastation and disappointment. I will restore that which you thought was irretrievable. I will fulfill My promises in your life in this season says the Father and you will laugh the laugh of faith as you see the whitened harvests become bread on your table and victory in your life in this season!

  
  

Maybe it’s because I turned 40 this year, in combination with the fact that after 2 plus years of building our own home the great finale I expected turned out to be a great challenge instead.  My husband and I are only starting to recover from an experience that has left us battle weary, broken, and well, instead of rebuilding us has left us in another season of rebuilding.  In the end, I have been left looking at the last decade of my life and feeling that the dreams I once dreamed are past their prime, so where do I go from here?

One thing about me is that I am an intercessor.  I pray for heaven to come down.  I seek divine strategy, I hear and obey…I expect the answers to manifest according to my prayers.  But one thing about that is this:  rather than a surplus of abundant breakthroughs I have found the past decade to be full of “if the LORD had not been on our side when men attacked us, the raging waters would have swept us away.  Praise be to the LORD, who has not let us be torn by their teeth” (Psalm 124:2, 5,6).

I have said to the Lord, “God, oh how I value Your mercy that has kept us but sometimes, rather than being saved yet again by Your mercy, I wish the story would go like this:  “We believed God, and we got the answer to our prayers.  We are stronger than ever.  We have a happy ending and everything is as it should be.”  Am I dreaming?  Maybe, that’s it!  Well, now here is what I have learned about dreams.

Dreams are not bad, but God is not obligated to fulfill my dreams…

Although faith is a good thing, it can be misplaced, and when it comes to dreams I think that’s happened in my own life many a time.  But I’m realizing, that beyond faith, dreams are dependent upon exterior things in the world around us, and like they say “it’s a jungle out there.”  Hence, dreams get attacked, and sometimes, yes, they get broken…even if we had faith…even if we prayed…even if we received a prophetic revelation on how to pray…even if…So what do we hold on when our lives are torn apart and our dreams lie in the dust?  I think it’s okay to still hold onto the hope of a dream rising again…but more than that, we hold onto God.  That’s the obvious answer isn’t it.  We hold onto God.

A couple weeks ago, I poured out my heart to the Lord about all of this.  He is often all I feel I really have, and isn’t that the truth.  And yet, somehow, I have felt He was obligated to fulfill my dreams if I just did everything right.  You know – God PLUS my dreams is what I can expect to have…but life isn’t that simple, nor is that belief exactly biblical.  But I guess the thing with faith is we don’t always couple it with wisdom and discernment, and the thing about dreams is that they come from such a deep place inside, that it can be hard to believe God isn’t the One calling that dream into fruition the way we envision it.

In any case, I am trying to find the balance between knowing God is my support and trusting He knows best, even when He allows suffering to touch my life and dreams to be tested or even broken.  Part of letting go and trusting Him has been possible for me because of the precious pearls He speaks to my heart when I seek Him.  So as I was saying, a couple weeks ago, I told Him how I felt, what I couldn’t understand, and how nothing seemed to make sense after the storm my husband and I had just gone through.  He lifted me up in a dance and He told me I was still in His hands.  He told me that over and over.  It was enough to lift up my soul in renewed strength.  But He was even more gracious, opening my eyes to some things I needed to see and understand. What He told me is helping me cope with things that have not turned out like I prayed, hoped, believed…needed, and part of that was the sudden realization that God is not obligated to fulfill my dreams as I stated earlier.  But He didn’t stop there or I would been left with understanding but without comfort, and so He wisely spoke another truth to me at the same time:  “But when your dreams break and you hurt, I hurt with you.  I cry with you over those broken dreams.”  To know that what matters to me matters to God even if He wasn’t even in on it touched me deeply.  He really cares about me!

The next thing that became all the more clear to me is that dreams and calling are two separate things.  Again, as noted above, dreams are dependent on external factors to come into fruition and they can be broken and so affect our happiness.  Calling, on the other hand is the gift that keeps on giving and it will fuel our passion without breaking our hearts.  Unlike dreams which take on the form we determine for them, calling is not contingent upon external things, and will express itself in an abundance of ways.

As an example of a dream verses a calling, just last night I was telling my husband how much it hurts that I don’t see my neice and nephew anymore.  I was their nanny when they were young.  I was the “aunt” that loved on them and who wanted to see them grow up to know the Lord and pour into that.  However, circumstances don’t allow me to play an active role in this way now.  My husband said to me, “But you’re teaching piano to a lot of girls who need an “aunt,” you’re giving that to them now.”  Hence, my “dream” of being in the lives of my niece and nephew and sharing what we once had is gone, but my calling to act as an “aunt” has simply taken on a different form.  And that is what calling does – it adapts and evolves according to circumstances, whereas dreams break or thrive according to circumstances.

As for dreams in my own life, as I look back at the last decade of my life, it’s been hard to reconcile the death, or at least the slumbering of many dreams as I simply fought to survive and find my place in this world.  There have been many serious attacks by the enemy, and many broken dreams.  BUT what I also see is no matter what I was going through my calling always remained in tact.  In the beginning, I was flowing in prophecy and sharing words with others and I had such a passion for this.  Then the first major storm came and I couldn’t even spend time reading my bible because of the spiritual abuse I had just survived.  But I needed my Beloved, and I needed to express my love for Him.  And I found myself writing new songs.  Then it was books.  And now I’m teaching piano.  My calling has persisted, simply in a different form over the years.  Dreams break, but callings adapt.

Again, looking at my life personally, I can’t look back and point to a tangible record of tenure in regards to holding a position of ministry or fulfilling the dream I always longed for…but in heaven, I have a history with God of a life that continued to spread His fragrance even when my dreams and my plans did not come to pass.  In other words, I have walked in my calling.

This leads me to my next point:  callings are what we give (back) to God, and dreams are what we give to ourselves.  That is to say our callings serve God’s purposes and His glory, but our dreams, though containing some of these elements are moreso based on self fulfillment.  So we can understand why sometimes, the latter is not always fulfilled.  Know that I am not saying dreams are necessarily “selfish,” but that they are not always necessary.  They may make us feel good, they may even be a source of doing good, but they may not be necessary or fitting into God’s plan for our lives and His purposes and glory.  We need to be willing to accept that.  Likewise, let us recognize that we can fulfill our callings without having our dreams fulfilled.

I said to my husband the other night “Dreams can make a life happier, but calling gives a life meaning even when dreams don’t come to pass.”  And you know what? I’ll still dream.  But I’ll also accept, God willing.  And part of the reason I can find the courage to do both is because after all I’ve been through I know that whether or not my dreams come to pass, my calling will never leave.  The life of Christ in and through me will always find expression in this world – one way or another – and there is great joy in that.  Even so, although God is not obligated to fulfill my dreams, I’ve yet to see Him close the door on the overflow of my calling.

Having said that, let me make one more clarification at this point:  we can fulfill our callings without having a ministry.  If I am a teacher, and I walk in wisdom and live out of that gifting whatever circumstance I am in, I am fulfilling my calling.  It MAY at times take the form of “ministry” such as teaching a group at church, but it doesn’t have to in order for me to be fulfilling what I was created to do as a “minister” or “called” one of Christ.

Although we may have to strain and strive for our dreams, only to be denied, although we may have envisioned a “ministry” only to find ourselves nameless and faceless in the back pew of a church, yet we who are one with Christ will be found fulfilling our calling.  For unlike dreams, callings pursue us – they find us – all we need to do is say “yes.”

This post is actually an article I wrote for a friend’s site – a “non-religious” approach to serving Christ.  It is a more distilled version of some of the thoughts I shared in my previous post – finding meaning when dreams die.  God continues to bring my attention back to HIS limitlessness in accomplishing His purposes, even in the midst of much brokeness. He is AMAZING!

GOD UNLIMITED

As a young believer, I had big dreams of going across the globe and ministering in various places as I pursued what I thought my calling (prophetic teacher and encourager) should look like.  Shortly after taking the first steps toward these dreams the bottom fell out and I was faced with the reality of long term health conditions and my inability to pursue or sustain the dreams I had once had.

This past summer I spoke to a church leader about all the ideas I still carry and my longing to be well enough to “do” and put these things into practice in my local church.  Her response to me was simply, “You don’t need to do all these things.  Just become friends with some of the ladies and you will make a great difference that way.”  More than just a comforting remark, there seemed to be something of solid reality in that word.

Months later I returned home from a ladies meeting at church.  My husband asked me how it was.  I said, “Well, I think I sat at the wrong place.  For five minutes I had gotten up from my seat and visited in another part of the room and the ladies were engaging, asking questions and we had a great time.  But then I went back to where I had been seated and it was hard again.  I was the one initiating almost all the conversation with the person beside me.  I just feel I wanted someone to sit with that could have made me feel like I belonged.”

My husband responded by saying: “So why did you go back to sit at the same place if you had such a good time around the other ladies?”  I said, “Because I didn’t want the lady I was sitting beside to feel rejected or alone.  She didn’t know anyone else there really.”  My husband replied:  “Well, then you were at the right table, because you just spent the night loving Jesus.”

At that point, a light went on and suddenly, instead of feeling empty, I felt full:  I had just “ministered” without even realizing it simply by being myself.  In so doing, I had given the very gift I had wanted to experience that night:  a sense of belonging.

As I reflected on these things I remembered a prophetic word I had received a couple weeks prior which went something like this:  “You feel like you’ve been on the shelf as far as ministry goes, but God says He has a place of ministry for you.  But you’re not going to even have to do anything.  You just need to show up and be yourself, and people are going to know God loves them because you have loved them.  They are going to feel included and not forgotten because they have known your friendship.”

Considering all this, I guess it’s time I accept that ministry is a lot simpler than travelling around the world to share what God has given me.  It’s as simple as seeing those around me with compassion and reaching out to them with love.  It’s not so much about “doing” as it is “being,” even as the kingdom of God is not about achieving results but bearing fruit (John 15:5).

Taking things a step further, I can only conclude that heavenly calling, unlike human dreams and ambitions is something that flows from the very fibre of who we are and hence, is not contingent upon external things.  That is to say that no matter what situation we may find ourselves in, whatever direction our lives may take we can still fulfill the mandate of what God has made us for, by simply being who He has made us to be.

Calling is simply the unique expression of Christ’s life in you and through you.  Hence, although its form may change, and its expression be more difficult in some instances than others, yet the life of God in a believer can never be snuffed out and neither its innate purpose (life begetting life).

I can’t help thinking of Paul the apostle at this point.  The word “apostle” means “sent one,” and yet, over the centuries, Paul has reached more people through the fruit of his times in prison (the epistles), than in all his years of traveling and preaching!  That’s not to mention the strengthening of the Church that came about as the result of his bearing up under the burden of prison!

As for me, I can also attest that the years of dealing with “imprisonment” in regard to limitations imposed by health and circumstances have probably produced more kingdom fruit in me and maybe even through me than travelling the world could have done.  Moreover, I am still fulfilling my calling to teach others about the things of God; only instead of prophesying before congregations and teaching at conferences, I am set among those God puts on my path to prophesy through words of encouragement and to teach through an example of love (1 Cor. 14:3).

Clearly, my limitations do not hinder God’s unlimited creativity and grace in my life.  In fact, like Jesus, by sharing in the sufferings of mankind, I am being perfected into the likeness of the Son of Man to minister to the sons of men.  Even so, God is fulfilling His mandate in this world through me because Christ, the Hope of glory – the limitless life of God is living in me! (Col. 1:27-28).  And it’s the same for each of us who bear that Name.  Yes, it’s as simple as being in Christ, living in Christ, and loving in His love.