‘For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.’
Isaiah 43:19 (NLT)
Dreams. Dreams keep us hopeful. They keep us moving forward. They keep us excited and passionate. And sometimes they frustrate us to no end when they don’t work out as we thought. Sometimes they leave us feeling mournful, resentful, empty - like we have never reached our full potential. The potential we feel that we were designed for…
Isaiah 55:8 (NLT) “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord.
“And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.
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For just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so my ways are higher than your ways
and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.
I started to lose joy in writing songs or performing after I had been 'dropped' from my label deal and had my record shelved. My life had drastically changed direction and now it seemed like I wasn't going to be able to make a career out of my passion. I was so devastated. When it came to trusting God with my dream of singing, I had allowed the world's view of success to come in with a big black marker and draw strong lines surrounding, containing, and reducing the chance of joy overflowing at every small win. Perhaps this caused me to restrict God from ever colouring with his heavenly palate outside the lines of the picture I had drawn for myself.
Think about it. We give children crayons and colouring books and they rarely stay inside the lines. They colour squiggles all over the page. And as they get older we praise them for becoming neater and restricting their creativity to something we can clearly understand and recognise. But is that what God does? God calls us to have childlike faith (Matthew 18:2-4) not to be childish, but to bask in the freedom and joy of a life lived in closeness with him and outside the lines of normal.
‘Outside the Lines’ is written as a prayer of a fresh understanding of surrender. Of giving my dreams into the hands of a God who is ON THE MOVE - a God who is never described as a stagnant pond but only ever as a river, or a bubbling stream, a God that only works in the NEW and FRESH things! I think I am about to embark on a season of life that is more exciting and joyful than any other I have had, and yet it is completely different from the original blueprint I was working from before. I have no clue how to navigate these waters, but am pretty excited to just be sailing again, and am massively enjoying the restfulness that comes from not being the one steering.
In the past, you may have stepped out of the boat onto the edge of your dreams, found yourself walking on water only to then sink down into the waves. Perhaps now you are sitting back in the boat wondering what just happened, feeling a little embarrassed you put yourself out there and asking God why the miracle and excitement came before the drowning...same. But honestly I think the time of mourning our past disappointments is OVER. It’s ok to be dissapointED but God does not want us to live in dissapointMENT. Not when he has already begun working on our future, one of fulfillment because it works together with others all of his Glory.
Perhaps there was treasure in the waves that you were too heartbroken to notice. But for now, why don’t you reflect, and then ask Christ, who is in the boat with you, to steer it elsewhere. Pray for new open doors and don’t close the ones that you feel you are not qualified for and so have believed that they must have accidentally creaked open. They may be strange, but God is the creator of the universe! Every pattern we have ever come up with is an imitation of something he has already done on the wings of a bird or the scales of a fish. His artistry is much higher and heavenly than our own, and he knows YOU and your gifting much better than you know yourself. Allow him to colour outside the lines of the picture you have drawn for yourself. We have limits but he is limitless. How electrifying is that? How thrilling is that? Dream with the dream giver. Dream with the only original dreamer there is. Dream with the almighty God who cannot and will not be restricted to our colouring books made up of pictures of animals and landscapes that he made in real life with his own hands, from his design. He is still the inventor! So allow him to reinvent you! Allow him to breathe new colours into your life that you don’t even know the name of. Open your heart up for a new and fresh direction for your little boat that’s been drifting on the blue and mourning the past storm for far too long.
It's time now to ask God 'What's next?'.
‘For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.’
Isaiah 43:19 (NLT)