How Did You Know For Sure?

A few months ago I spoke at a high school about following God-sized dreams. In the Q&A time a young lady asked, “How did you  know FOR SURE this was what God wanted you to do?”

I didn’t have a quick response, but if you’re going to encourage young folks to take risks and follow Jesus, it’s the sort of question you ought to be prepared to answer.

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You don’t meet the dream in its final form. It grows with you from seed to flower.

He also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head.” Mark 4:26:28

First there’s the seed, that first ride, the sense of freedom, the hint of possibility. It’s enough to keep you going, to change a habit, to let you see a horizon hidden so long you forgot it was there.

So you keep moving, and then you feel the urge to establish the first big goal. It seems crazy, partly because the goal’s outrageous but mostly because you’ve drifted so long with no real sense of direction.

You announce plans to ride 1000 miles in a summer.

You’re mystified by your sense of assurance. Your friends don’t want you to experience another disappointment, and you listen to their concerns. Then you move forward, and three months later your odometer reads 1000.0.

You really don’t imagine it going anywhere beyond that, but you keep riding because you enjoy it. Then a couple of years later your best friend calls with the cancer diagnosis.  The out-of-pocket bills, even with insurance, are exorbitant.

The seed grows a bit more.

You start telling everybody you’ll ride 1250 miles in a summer if they’ll pledge a penny or two per mile. A bunch of people respond, and at the end of the summer generous folks contribute more than $12,000 toward your buddy’s medical bills.

The idea sorta sticks. This thing you love can also help people. But you can’t see past your own limitations, so the dream has to percolate for a few years.

In those years the dream takes shape. You practice visualizing it. But you also get good at rehearsing the story that says guys in wheelchairs can’t do cross-country bike rides.

Then a couple of things converge—your 60^th birthday, a book called A Million Miles In A Thousand Years. In the convergence, that story about the limitations of guys in wheelchairs loses some of its power.

A dream is calling, inviting you to write a different story. You realize you don’t have forever, that one day the window will close. It feels like God’s voice, but you’re not anxious to use “God told me to do this” as an excuse.

You pray about it. You talk to people you trust. And this thing starts to emerge. You don’t recognize it at first, but as you listen it becomes as clear as God’s voice can be. You’re sure you’ve been blessed with a God-inspired dream.

He offers a choice: will you follow?

You know you’re not ready, and you know you’ll never be ready. But you also know it’s time. You have to decide. Either you’re going to take the risk and step into the unknown, or you’re going to accept the terrible forever “what if?”

So with the love and support of your wife and a circle of people who believe in you—you begin.

It’s not all smooth. You make mistakes, you get lost, stuff goes wrong, but you learn mostly that’s all part of the following the dream. In fact, the detours make for some of the best stories.

You also meet amazing people, folks following their own dreams, overcoming adversity, or searching for hope. You learn that telling their stories is a big part of what the dream is about.

You also learn that the dream isn’t something you do, it’s a part of who you are. Following the dream changed your path.

And when someone asks how you knew this was what God wanted you to do, you realize there’s no nice clean answer that’ll really make sense to anyone else.

It wasn’t a dream…until it was. And then you knew, and that was enough.

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