What do you do when things don’t go according to plan? When you have a dream, a call, a vision that doesn’t play out the way you thought it would. In this episode Gina’s and singer/songwriter Rheanna Downey. Have an honest conversation about dreams, disappointment, expectation, surrender, trust and identity.
You can learn more about Rheanna Downey and her music at rheannadowney.com
Click below to listen starting at 23:40 to follow along.
Co-Creating Dreams with God
Rheanna:
My journey with dreaming has been, dreaming with God, as opposed to just dreaming my own dreams, learning how to co-create. Sometimes part of co-creating is that you have to make adjustments along the way. One of the amazing things about dreaming is that, in order to do it well, you have to get solid in your identity.
Your dream isn’t going to be able to come out as accurately as it could, unless you are pressing into who you need to be in Christ. Because He tells you who you are and through telling you who you are, they go hand in hand, then your dreams start to flow out. Who you are, is attached to the things you dream.It’s all one beautiful tapestry He’s weaving.
That’s why I feel like identity is super key, sitting down, listening to the Lord pour over you. When I was younger, someone asked me one time, this was in a very religious legalistic church that I sort of grew up in. They said, “Sweetheart, what do you want to do when you get older?”
I think they were expecting to hear, “I want to be a lawyer. I want to be a doctor. I want to be a teacher.” I said, “I want to be a musician.” I may have used the words “rock star”, because I don’t know if I knew what the difference was. I know the difference now.
But they looked at me and they said, “Sweetheart, you don’t want to do that. That is of the world. Worldly things are attached to that.” I had this moment, I think I was 13, where I felt everything that’s inside of me, that lives, was just shut down, unknowingly by this person that caused me a few years of difficulty in trying to figure out who I was.
But as I’ve spent time with God, He’s healed up some of those places. This is absolutely who I am. We don’t have to be ashamed. There’s also this weird thing of like, “Don’t get your identity mixed up. You’re a Christian first, then you’re a…” Everybody’s so careful, the reality is God is like, “No, it’s okay. You’re a musician. You don’t need to be careful about that.”
Rooted In Christ – The Safest Place to Dream
Gina:
I think that the danger there is when your identity is rooted in what you do, then your worth gets placed there. There is a danger, if that’s where the identity goes. I agree with you, we haven’t learned how to celebrate how God made us.
Psalm 139, you were knit together and fearfully and wonderfully made. It’s a beautiful poem about the complexity and the intentionality with which we were made. What does it look like when we can accept those things and be excited about those things and then join with Jesus? We get to do this. That’s what could be so freeing and so significant.
That’s not all put on us by church. That’s put on us by our family of origin, our upbringing, the weight of expectations. How do we lean into the Lord? How do we not let those things become our identity, have our identity rooted squarely in the truth about Him and the truth about what He says about us.
Being planted is such a theme in the Bible. There’s so much reference to where we’re planted, Psalm 1, Jeremiah 17:7-8 talks about being planted, that roots will go deep so that it can bear fruit. Then 2 King’s 19:30, Isaiah is giving a prophecy about Judah and declaring some hope for them. He says, “The remnant that is escaped will, once again, root downward so that they could bear fruit upward.”
A couple of things that I love about that is if a tree’s roots doesn’t go deep enough, then it’s not going to be able to withstand the weight of the fruit when it comes. The winter season, where the leaves fall off with grape finds, they just look like dead twigs, so apparently there’s no life, but in fact the work is happening on the inside. It’s being rooted down.
It’s being replenished inside so that when the spring comes and when the leaves start to flourish and then the fruit comes, then that stock, that tree, that trunk, that plant is going to be able to then sustain and hold the fruit that comes.
We’re conditioned, as humans, that if something is disappointing now, or the season that you’re in, these things aren’t happening, therefore “I’ve been disobedient. I’m not doing the thing. I’m a failure.” Rather than going, “We’re in this season of preparation, we’re in this season of rooting down, we’re in this season so that when, it may be look differently than we think, but something’s coming, there is that expectation.”
Rheanna:
Sometimes that’s only in your heart. Sometimes you’re not going to get a word about it. Sometimes you’re not going to even get a Scripture, you’re going to look and search all around. Sometimes it’s very important that we don’t get that. I don’t think anything great can come unless you can sit in the quiet places.
I don’t think a person is developed unless they know how to be and not have everything moving a million miles an hour. We weren’t even designed for that. We have to have these places that almost feel like they’re not moving. Totally stagnant places.
I do cherish it because I understand that it’s in the places that feel like there’s no movement, that there’s no life, there’s no growth, that I’m getting to understand what I believe and who God is for me, in that minute.
You don’t get to know yourself outside of that. God is just revealing so much to me about my own heart in these quiet places. it’s been sweet. If I am going to be honest, it’s been hard and painful, but it’s been sweet.
Closing Prayer
Gina:
I loved this conversation. At the very end there, Rheanna said, “It’s in the places that I feel like there’s no movement, there’s no life, there’s no growth, that I’m beginning to understand what I believe and who God is.” It’s in that place that Jesus starts to reveal things.It’s in those places that there’s room for stuff to come to the surface.
If you are someone who is finding yourself in a place that feels stagnant now, or a place where the things that you were hopeful for, maybe you thought there was momentum or direction it could be with school, with relationship, with job career ministry, whatever it might be.
I want to encourage you to just stop. Sometimes it’s hard to be still in God’s presence, to wrestle with and be honest with our disappointments, our fear, our pain, the loss of some things. I think about Abraham and Sarah. I think about that promise that was given to Abraham and the waiting, the excruciating waiting, the grieving of what they thought was.
Then the desperation that led them to some pretty poor decisions when they took it back into their own hands. Rheanna even shared that she realized a lot of the rejections and disappointments that she went through were because she was trying to take things into her own hands.
How often do we try to manipulate or force something? Our insecurity, our fear drives us. That very thing becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We begin to face the very things that we’re fearful of. God is always inviting us. He’s a loving Father.
That loving Father comes with authority. That loving Father sometimes comes with a firm hand. That loving Father sometimes is silent. That loving Father sometimes gently, but firmly says no. Sometimes that loving Father, just like a child on a bike who’s ready to run into something just comes and scooches our handlebars a little bit so that we don’t do a face plant, but we actually make it.
Let your loving Father guide you. Let Him convict you. Let Him pick you up and dust you off and set you on the path. Let Him be silent next to you. All of those are expressions of His love.
Father, in Jesus name, I thank you that You are good, that You are loving, that You are intentional with how You made us. That You’ve molded and shaped and dreamed up and equipped Your kids for a purpose.
Father, I thank you that You are inviting us to step in with great expectation and open hands. Father, would You show us the areas that we have tightened our grip so hard that we’ve maybe even choked out the things that are in our hands?
Lord, would You help us to loosen and to surrender, to lay down, and maybe to let our ideas die so that there’s room for Your plan. Father, in Jesus name, would You bring encouragement and hope, peace, awareness of Your presence? Would You restore joy? God, we love You. I thank you, in Jesus name, amen.
Check out Rheanna Downey
Check the rest of this conversation Derailed Dreams
Check out the Dwell Meditations
