Imagination A Gift From God

Wild Dreams

So what do we need to do to have wild dreams?

I was once again taken back to my childhood, when I thought about how I dared to believe that dogs could talk. Pretty outrageous I know, I like to think that I had a wild imagination here, because of how active my thoughts were around such a strange topic. Now Some might think and have uttered these words to myself, “What kind of childhood did you have?” We are all created for wild and big dreaming, thinking to extraordinary levels. How do some become millionaires and entrepreneurs and more? They think outrageously. When I was a child, I always had big dreams about things, with an overactive imagination to match it. I loved thinking big about all circumstances. Anyway, back to my story about talking dogs. As a child I loved dogs. In our family we never had a dog ourselves – we always thought our Mother was cruel, not letting us have a dog. My mother just never liked animals in her house, plus they are a lot of work to look after. When I would go around to friend's houses though, who owned a dog, I would spend more time playing with the dogs than my friends. That's another whole different story. I truly believed that the dogs I played with as a young boy could talk, they were just very shy about talking in front of me. They just would never speak when I was around, even when I would try sneaking up on them hoping to catch them in the act. I never succeeded of course, as dogs cant talk but I was so sure that they could talk to me.
That thought only got bigger when I watched the movie homeward bound. After watching that, I was now truly convinced that dogs could speak, I just had to try harder to catch them out. Such great memories.

As I got older and as I mentioned in previous chapters, my imagination began to fade. Reality and sin entered my way of living, as I became that dreadful dream killer. For years I thought to myself that I had to grow up at some point. Which is true and we all do need to grow up, it's all a part of the process of change. The big question I had was, why do I need to change the way I think and believe in my hopes and dreams? For myself as a child nothing was impossible, if I believed that I could do something, I just simply went ahead and did, remembering that this was how I thought as a child. I never thought or worried about the outcome. Most of my friends thought I was crazy thinking that way, I just had wild dreams of being someone who took risks. Whether it was wanting to be the fastest runner in athletics, or be a great cricket player – which were my favorite sports at that time.

Climbing the tallest trees to the very top, not worrying about falling down the tree. Nothing had a limit to myself, if I wanted to do it, I found a way to achieve that goal. I had so many wild dreams, as I got older something changed within me (which we know was sinful desires) and it all went wrong. Then settling for second best, I mentioned earlier.

I have to confess, I was a lot more fun to be around when I was younger. I like to say that because it was far better than that boring, dream killing adult person I slowly became. So I tried to have visions for life, for my career, for my family and at times things were good, filled with fun and joyful moments. I still just felt that there was something missing from this life (which was God). That's when the bad times would hit us as a family. Some of the bad times were down to myself being a vision killer, other times it was down to manipulating individuals trying to control myself and my family. I slowly stopped believing in my dreams and ambitions, then slowly began to shut myself off from everything. I didn't see this process happening at the time, but by doing this I was shutting myself off from God as well. I had no more visions for my life and I stopped my wild dreaming, not allowing my imagination to run free. I had let my thoughts and emotions control my decisions, which began to create a negative way of thinking in my life. Having wild dreams doesn't mean I dream big but then limit myself by not doing the things I dream of doing. This was what I always ended up doing.

I needed to act on these wild dreams, then allow God to work in my life. This was when I began to ask myself another deep question of, why do we have negative thoughts? Why do we stop wild dreaming? Why do we doubt our own dreams, thinking that they might be impossible to achieve? Every time we start thinking that way, it just slowly destroys our wild dreams. It made me doubt everything, even when it was possible to achieve goals like a promotion at work, being trusted with more and all I needed to do was take a step forward, I doubted and made it impossible. Another way that the devil tries to make us feel less about ourselves, is by trying to make us believe that we won't be right when good things come our way. For example, like a promotion at work, the devil makes us doubt that we aren't right for such a great achievement, so it's better to think to ourselves that its impossible. Scripture tells us the truth – Scripture helps me to see the lies that the devil always tries to put inside our thoughts, which stops our wild dreams.

Matthew 19:26 NKJV
But Jesus looked at them and said to them, "With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."

I am always blown away by the power of Scripture because Jesus Christ makes the way through. By myself things are always going to seem impossible – as we can come up with ways not to progress in life, like a job promotion. Now with God all things are possible, as we see how God makes the way when we can't see the way through. When I looked at myself in the mirror, all I saw was a person that was going to fail. No matter how hard I try I will mess up somehow. I never really accomplished much in my life, all because of this process of negative thinking. This is why I believe, that this is what the devil wants. He will do anything he can to make us think negatively about ourselves, destroying every hope and dream we have inside, keeping us in a place of misery, as he steals all our dreams.

John 10:10 NKJV
The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.

The enemy (that's the devil), will do everything to stop us having wild dreams. He will feed us lie after lie, in doing this he is stopping us allowing God to work through our lives. All I saw during this process of my life was negative situations. All that God sees is the positive in every outcome of our lives. Isn't it so much easier to see things with a positive outlook, instead of always worrying if we will ever be good enough? Even if we are never good enough for great things in this life, it's still so much better to feel positive about our lives. I wanted to change my way of thinking, of negative emotions and see the positive as God sees.

I wanted to change the way I saw myself – I may feel I can't do things, God says you can do all things through Him. I felt I might not be strong enough to accomplish certain tasks, God says that He will be my strength through all circumstances. God sees me always in the positive, no matter how negative things can be. Having wild dreams is thinking just like this – always seeing a way through the impossible. God is the One who shows us how to think this way, because it is how He sees us, and is how we should see ourselves. Only then after this way of believing could I begin to remove the negative way I thought. I had to allow God to fill me with nothing but pure positive thinking (wild dreaming). God always works on the positive within our lives, never in the negative. When we feel that our circumstances are proving to be impossible to overcome, maybe we are dwelling in too much negativity.

Thinking positive was my next step, of myself learning to take risks on my wild dreams. What was the worst that could happen? Things may not go quite as planned – or is it worse to never even try at all, as we keep thinking what would have been if we just took the risk. So what are wild dreams? I feel that having wild dreams are the things that give us hope, it gives us that ability to do the impossible. As children we can dream about being superheroes and cowboys as I stated in the beginning. We dream about being princesses and ballerinas, and so much more. This is why I feel that God created us with wild dreams on the inside of us, which gives us that ability to have a vision of what we want to do, a purpose of why we want to do it, and a hope of accomplishing the impossible dreams we have. In return this gives us a positive direction in our lives. Without a vision in our lives and a purpose, how can we have desires to accomplish dreams? Wild dreaming makes this all possible – the bigger the dream the better the desires. The more we allow ourselves to let go of self-control, the easier it is to be risk takers on our visions, on our dreams and on our desires.