Well, I had one of those last night.
See, a few months ago I experienced something that really hurt me. I stopped talking to people and God about it after a while because I felt like it was old news and I should have been over it. I wasn't.
For a long time I wasn't able to even look at the person without all that stuff being dragged back up again. I'd forgiven them for what happened, but just couldn't get over that rejection and pain that had become almost normal every time I saw their face.
A couple of days after this experience happened I went to the National Day of Prayer at Wembley. I haven't told many people this but it's a key part of this story so I shall share it!
I was sitting in my seat at Wembley with some friends and it got to a part where we had to turn around and shake people's hands and hug them.
As I was hugging some random old lady behind me, someone grabbed hold of my arm and didn't let go. It turned out to be the man sitting behind one of my friends. I'd never seen him or spoken to him before that day, however he started talking to me about my situation and about me!
He told me he felt God had told him to talk to me and that there were areas in my life where my lack of confidence held me back. So true. He said some other stuff and I cried for like the millionth time that week. The coolest thing of all though, was that he said he felt he'd come all the way from New Zealand to meet me!!!
After that he gave me his card so I could email him when I got home because he wanted to pray for me, so I put it in my pocket. Whilst all this was happening, the song 'The Voice of Hope' was being played; the words of which exactly described everything that I was feeling.
As I was leaving Wembley, the card the man had given me for some reason fell out of my pocket. In the middle of a crowd of people, I felt a little tug in my mind which told me to turn around, and as I did I saw the card on the floor and went back to pick it up! As you will find out in the next part of the story, this was probably one of the most important things I could have done.
When I got home, within a couple of days of receiving the card, I dropped the man an email. Several days passed but then I got a reply. I was a bit surprised because his actual message was very brief, however he had attached something to the message.
It was a devotional entitled 'Ask God to Give You a Dream'.
Initially I read it and thought 'Oh, that's nice.' However, on reading it again over the weeks and months after I'd got the email, more and more began to stand out to me.
The closing line went like this:
"Acknowledge your motives, ask God to heal your heart, then ask Him for a dream that He can back up!!"
In fact, it got to the point where everything in that short piece of writing spoke about my situation so much I had to do something about it! So I acknowledged my motives, asked God to heal my heart and asked Him for a dream.
Slowly but surely my heart began to heal and I became more passionate about different aspects of the work I was doing, especially mentoring my young people.
The person who hurt me briefly apologised which helped a lot, but it was only yesterday that I realised I'm actually okay now. It's taken about 9 months but I finally made it with God's help! It's funny how that's the time it takes to make a new person, and I feel like that was the case for me as well.
My point is, without this hurtful thing happening to me, I would have never sat where I did at Wembley, I would never have met the man, who would have never sent me that email, which would have never encouraged me to turn to God to give me vision for the future that wasn't born out of my attitude towards myself, but rather God's attitude towards me.
This painful experience equipped me to be able to move towards fulfilling the dream God has put in my heart and has filled me with empathy for others who go through similar experiences.
"When God gives you a dream, He gives you the resources and relationships needed to fulfill it."
For ages I felt bad because I thought this thing happened because I didn't listen to God, and maybe I didn't; but He turned it around into something good and more perfect than I ever would have experienced otherwise.
So, why don't you ask God to give YOU a dream? If you give your whole heart to Him you never know what will happen. But the biggest thing I've learned is that He will use every situation, no matter how painful or hard, and turn it around into something good!
"And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them."
Romans 8:28
