035: Don’t Be Afraid to Dream Big

Hello and welcome to The Hope Podcast. I’m Aneel Aranha. Today we are going to talk about how our God is Lord of the universe so we shouldn’t be afraid to dream big.    

Have you heard the saying, “Shoot for the moon; even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars”? It essentially means that if we aim high, although we may not achieve our intended goal, we will still end up doing something pretty awesome. This advice generally holds true for all humankind, but even more so for the Christian believer because our faith in Christ makes us adopted children of God. Remember John 1:12? “Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”

As children, we have inherited a few things from our Father. One of them is his imagination. He has a great imagination; anyone who made the giraffe and the kangaroo has to! Unfortunately, we tend to waste our inheritance on silly fantasies instead of using it for the purposes for which God intended, which is for our well-being and success. If we want to achieve both, we have to change how we see ourselves because most of us have a feeble self-image. Isn’t this true? But God doesn’t create junk, you know. We are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14), but unless we recognize our true identity in Christ and the potential available to us through his Holy Spirit, we will always think less of ourselves than we should. Consequently, we will be less than we should be.

When we are in the wilderness—lost in sickness, sadness, sinfulness, whatever— we have the choice to resign ourselves to our fate or try to change our state. The former is defeatist, and we are doomed to wander in the wilderness forever. The latter offers freedom, but to obtain it, we first need to visualize it! We need to see ourselves as healthy, happy, and whole because this is how God created us to be. 

Then, we need to speak it. God didn’t think the world into existence, he spoke it (see Genesis 1:1-24). As people created in his image and likeness, our words have power too (see Genesis 1:26-27). So we have to speak what we see, declaring it boldly and confidently. “I am healthy. I am happy. I am whole.” And then we will see things begin to change in our lives. 

We don’t need to stop there. We can continue to dream, knowing we limit God only with our own imagination. Do you want to save the whole world? Dream it! God is big enough to do anything. But let's not forget to do our part, or we'll be only dreaming!

So, start dreaming. And don’t be afraid to dream big because your father is Lord of the Universe, who loves to make dreams come true; the bigger, the better!

May the Spirit be with you.