Holding On To Your Dreams And Standing Strong Against Unbelief

“Unbelief is much more dangerous to your Dream than any Giant!” ~ Bruce Wilkinson

The other morning when I woke up I heard in my Spirit, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” I was surprised and wondered why the Lord was saying this to me. So I asked Him.

“You’ve allowed unbelief to creep in and rob you of your dreams. I want you to dream again.”

I fell to my knees in awe. How well He knows us. I had to be honest with Him and with myself. The truth is I had become complacent, living my life on cruise control, allowing doubt and unbelief to get into the driver seat of my thoughts. Consequently I’d become weary, apathetic, lukewarm. I had stopped inviting the Lord’s power into my desires, my dreams.

Unbelief is a very slippery slope, and if we aren’t aware of its effects, we will never achieve all that our good Father has planned for us. Unbelief and doubt are demons. They are arrows the devil uses to steal, kill and destroy our desire to reach our dreams.

When was the last time you thought about your dreams? Do you have a vision for your life? The Lord wants us to dream. He says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish. . .” (Proverbs 29:18). God wants His children to flourish, to live a rich and satisfying life.

Your vision for your life is made up of your dreams and desires. Every single one of us was created with a destiny, a calling from God. In Psalm 139:16 it is written, “You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.” God has planted dreams within us before we were even born. However, it is up to each one of us individually, to ask, seek and find the destiny God has for us. God is the Dream Giver. An inspiring book to read is The Dream Giver: Following Your God-Given Destiny by Bruce Wilkinson. This book was life changing for me. When I read this book I realized that I had a love for writing ever since I was a little girl. I now understand that it’s my Creator that put that desire within me.

To accomplish His will, God puts desires in us and He takes desires out of us.

If you are living in intimacy with the Lord, then you can trust that the desires you have are from Him. The enemy of our soul, however, comes to attack our God given dreams. And some of the tools he uses are doubt and unbelief. When things don’t happen in our timing we begin to lose hope. The reality is, it often takes time to reach our destiny. Unfortunately, waiting on God’s timing is not an easy thing for most of us. We are impatient and if we don’t see change in the natural, we begin to doubt God’s plans for us. God, however, is always working on our behalf, even if we don’t see it. This is why pursuing a vision for your dreams, purpose and desires will require radical faith. There is a process to stepping into our destiny and we must always be aware of the spiritual attacks of the enemy to delay God’s plans.

Holding on to your dreams and standing strong against unbelief will require a battleplan, a strategy to persevere.

Here are seven ways that help me to hold on to my dreams and stand strong against unbelief. I hope they will be an encouragement to you.

1.How big is your God

The first step in fighting off unbelief and keeping the vision for your life is to ask yourself “how big is my God”? Be honest, how do you see God? Is your view of Him of a good and loving God? Do you believe with all your heart that He loves you and desires to give you the desires of your heart? Do you see Him as the God of the impossible? When you have been waiting on Him for answers to your prayers and nothing seems to be moving, does weariness settle into your spirit, or do you continue to persevere by faith?

My hope and prayer for you is that you see God as a big, mighty, powerful, good and loving God. Keeping the perspective of an able, and willing God will help you to on your journey of reaching your dreams-the dreams your heavenly Father has planted within you.

2. Write down and meditate on all the “Red Sea” times in your life.

Reflecting on all the answered prayers that God has already answered for you are what I call “Red Sea” times in your life. It’s all those seasons where the Lord has shown up in your life and “parted the Red Sea” for you. Nothing stirs up my faith more than when I think of the many prayers the Almighty One has answered for me.

For example, one of my dreams is to live near family. When we wanted to move across the country to be closer to two of our three children, it truly felt impossible. I remember feeling sad to be living so far away from them. However, I kept praying and not allowing doubt to settle in my heart. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the Lord opened a door for my husband with a job that fell in his lap. With this job we were able to move to Colorado and be with our family. A week after our move we were informed that we were going to be grandparents for the very first time. Only a good, powerful loving God would have planned this for us. He gave me the desires of my heart and today I have two granddaughters that live only 15 minutes away.

There are so many “Red Sea” stories I could recount. I have seen the Lord’s faithfulness over and over in my life. I hope you too can reflect on the goodness of the Lord as well. We must hold on to those Red Sea Stories of the Lord’s faithfulness. Maybe even write them down in a special journal.

Faithful He has been. Faithful He will be.

3. Read your Bible and find Scriptures that encourage you

The Word of God is alive and full of power. It is very important that you find Bible verses to meditate on when doubt and unbelief tries to creep in. One of my favorite Scriptures is Psalm 27:13, which says, “Yet I am confident I will see the Lord’s goodness while I am here in the land of the living.” Another one I hold on to when I’m struggling with unbelief, is Lamentations 3:25. It says, “The Lord is wonderfully good to those who wait for Him and to those who seek Him.” When I pray these verses, (and there are many more), I find renewed hope and strength to keep pursuing my dreams. After all, it is through the Lord’s power that we reach our destiny.

4. Speak life out loud

Proverbs 18:21 is a powerful Scripture. It warns us that “What you say can preserve life or destroy it; so you must accept the consequences of your words.” We don’t think enough about the words we speak out loud. In fact, we are quite careless with our words. For example, if you are saying things like, “I’ll never going to be able to buy a house,” then you have just spoken destruction over your financial prosperity. Remember, we serve a big God, and nothing is too hard for Him.

I encourage you to speak life over your dreams, even if you don’t feel like it. As Christians we are supernatural beings that live in a natural world. What this means is that we must operate as citizens of Heaven here on earth. Start to say words out loud that are positive and life giving. Say things like “I’m so excited to see my dream of publishing a book come to fruition soon!” Walk in radical faith, trusting and believing in a loving powerful God.

Please note, this doesn’t mean what we speak out loud will always happen. It will, however, encourage your faith and resist unbelief. God works with our faith. The Bible says a lot about faith (click here to read Scriptures on faith)

5. Praise and Worship God at all times

There is something very powerful that happens when we praise God in the midst of our struggles. When you are feeling heavy-hearted and lacking joy and peace, first of all recognize it as an attack from the evil one, and then put on worship music and start praising Jesus out loud. Tell Him how much you love Him and how grateful you are for Him. You will see how the Holy Spirit will overtake you and lift you up.

Praise and worship is strong ammunition to use against Satan. Using the glorious name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, is a mighty weapon too. Sometimes when I am in a really bad place and can’t seem to stir up my faith, I just whisper the name of Jesus. With each whisper I find strength arise within me.

There is power in the name of Jesus.

6. Call a friend

God has told us to “Share each other’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2). He created us for relationship. He never wants us to feel alone. Talking to a friend is extremely uplifting. It’s important to have an “iron sharpening iron” friend in your life. Someone that can lift you up when you are feeling down, struggling with unbelief, losing the vision for your life. Some call these “accountability partners,” or “blood-stained allies.”

7. Have childlike faith to believe

Great things happen in our hearts when we have childlike faith. Children live their lives enthusiastically. They believe without seeing. And why do they live like this? It’s because they trust their parents. As adults we become scarred by life and the heartbreak and trauma it brings. It becomes harder to trust others and sadly, even to trust God. Having faith like a child becomes challenging. However, your Heavenly Father wants you to live a life completely surrendered to Him. He desire that you trust Him like a child, because you are His child. Take Him for His word, believing that He will give good gifts to those who ask Him (Matthew 7:11).

God has planted dreams in you before you were even born. The enemy is going to use doubt and unbelief to rob you of your destiny. When the enemy strikes, may one or all of these 7 tips help you resist the devil so that he will flee from you. Fight for what is rightfully yours. Fight for the vision God has for your life. Hold on to your dreams and stand strong against unbelief.

“And the Lord answered me:

“Write the vision;
    make it plain on tablets,
    so he may run who reads it.
³ For still the vision awaits its appointed time;
    it hastens to the end—it will not lie.
If it seems slow, wait for it;
    it will surely come; it will not delay.” ~ Habakkuk 2:2-3