We Raise Our White Flag!

Whenever you ask someone whether or not they have accomplished everything in their lives, rarely do you get an answer like ‘Well, now that I am a managing director of 10 stores, all I want to be right now is the CEO of this company that I have poured into these last 20 years! Then and only then I will know that I have accomplished all that I have set out to do!’. Ridiculous, right? No one in their right mind should say that. They shouldn’t place work so high on their agenda. Not that work is not important, there are so many parables about those who do not work, and about how ‘if you don’t work, you don’t eat’, and how in the Bible, “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat." (2 Thessalonians 3:10). But rather, when it all comes down to it, I know what everyone will probably say, or, I know what I’ll say. I know I haven’t accomplished everything that I want to do in life, because there is so much to do. I haven’t been to the places that I want to visit. I just went to Hamburg, Germany and London, England, not that long ago, and if I can plan right now for my next trip, it’ll probably be somewhere in North America, somewhere like Toronto, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or maybe even the Big Apple itself. Having said that, I know that this thing inside of us, this yearning of exploration, discovery and the worldly notion of ‘finding yourself’, is getting more and more ‘important’, ‘popular’ and even ‘encouraged’, and even I can realise that yes, work is work, and work pays the bills, and work can even get promotions, and you can even become everything that you thought that you ever wanted to be, but if that happens, and you are not happy, then, you need to start and rethink some things.

I know that work is not everything in life. Going on holidays has kept it all in perspective, that there is a world to explore, and there are things, apart from work, that everyone should think about. Personally, I know that I haven’t kept in contact that much with my high school friends and acquaintances (aside from a few close friends). I haven’t thought about whether I’ll like to branch out in cooking a different cuisine, whether I want to learn a new language, or whether I can even stop everything, seek the Lord, and just grow deeper in relationships with Him. I could also take up a sport (possibly cricket), maybe even read a few books, or one day actually be at a Passion Conference, live. Like I said in a previous blog, everyone has dreams. And everyone wants to see their dreams turn into reality. And everyone should expect their dreams, especially if they’re given by God; to become reality. If we do not dream, and hope and long for a better day, if we do not wish for ourselves to break out of the mould that is holding us back and accomplishing everything that the Lord has in store for us to do, then we will become stagnant. Definitely not in our faith, but we’ll become stagnant in where we would love to be, in a year, 2 years, 3, 5, 10 years time; and whatever the Lord has planned for us will be just seen as another problem that we will have to overcome, rather than knowing that with God, we are overcomers.

I know that sometimes I could feel like that. That my dreams aren’t turning into reality. Has everyone has heard of the mid-life crisis? There’s a book by Erwin McManus, ‘Wide Awake’; that really hits these dreams stuff on the head. Here’s a quote that I think we all should ponder: Have you ever had one of those conversations with someone? Or have you had one of those conversations in your own mind? No matter what kind of training you pursued, there’s another dream that keeps haunting you. If your career path doesn’t seem to match your heart’s longing, it may be you have a skill that doesn’t match your passion. You were good at something, so it seemed obvious that is what you should do. Or maybe it was a choice between career and family- and you always put others above yourself. You have no regrets, but you do have unfulfilled dreams. You can’t escape that there are hopes and passions inside you, waiting to come alive. You know there is so much more you have to offer, though you don’t say it out loud. You’ve carried these dreams in your heart for too long, it’s now time- way past time- to do something about them. Life is not a stationary experience. Your dreams are not a portrait fixed in time but a story still being written. Even if all your dreams have come true, there’s never a time to stop dreaming. When you stop dreaming, you stop living.

Frightening, right? If you stop dreaming, you stop living? Is that really true? I mean you live, right; from day to day, doing the mundane 9-5 jobs that you were doing yesterday and the day before, and possibly even today and tomorrow; but what else would you want to do? What dreams have been dormant in your heart, just waiting to come out? Everyone can be alive, but not everyone fully lives. I’ve realised that. Not everyone fully uses the potential that has been given to us, by the God of the universe. And that’s sad. Everyone wants to feel that they are worth something, that what they bring to the table is not just another serve of mediocrity; that their contribution is worth more than anyone could know if they weren’t even there in the first place. Work isn’t everything, and what keeps us grounded is the Lord’s promises that what He has spoken into your life, whether by words of affirmation, encouragement and hope by people around you, or by just listening to songs, or hearing phrases that just speak to you. The Lord does keep His promises, and what He wants for you will work out in the end. We just need to realise the yearning and longings that are deep within us. We need to know whether our dreams are God’s dreams for us or whether it’s just our hopes and wishful thinking. For if we are not in alignment with God’s vision and direction, then we are just toiling with human strength, and we will ultimately fail in our attempts to change our reality.

Before I finish this post, what dreams have you had in the past that you have thought about giving up on? Rest assured, the Lord always keeps His promises, and is always with us. We just need to surrender, all to Him. We need to say that we are laying everything, and this really means everything; at the foot of the cross, to say ‘we raise the white flag’. The white flag, normally a term of surrender and defeat, should be acknowledged in this way; we are surrendering everything that we are to the Lord, that we raise the white flag high for the world to see, proclaiming that we are not surrendering in defeat, but we acknowledge that we can’t but He can. I’ve raised the white flag. Will you?

Til next post,

Jon