Shattered Dreams Read online

  We can’t stop wanting to be happy. And that urge should prompt no apology. We were created for happiness. Our souls therefore long for whatever we think will provide the greatest possible pleasure. We just aren’t yet aware that an intimate relationship with God is that greatest pleasure.

  Without knowing it, we yearn for an encounter with God that creates an experience far more intimate than any bride and groom have ever enjoyed on their wedding night, an experience with more satisfying depth than the happiest couple in history has celebrated on their fiftieth anniversary. But in our foolishness we look for that experience in all the wrong places. To use biblical language, we dig broken cisterns to satisfy our thirst and walk right by the fresh spring of water that is God.

  FEEL THE EMBRACE

  God wants to bless us. That’s the first idea. Because He can’t resist giving us the highest good, He’s determined to give us an encounter with Himself. It’s the greatest blessing He can think of. It’s the highest dream the self-aware human soul envisions.

  But we’re not self-aware. We’re out of touch with the central longing of our hearts. An encounter with Him is what we want, but we don’t know it. That’s the second idea. Let me develop it a little further.

  We dream lower dreams and think there are none higher. We dream of good marriages, talented kids, enough health and money to enjoy life, rewarding work, and an opportunity to make a difference in the world.

  All good things. Of course we want them. But we think they’re the best things. That’s what God means when He calls us foolish.

  In the old way, when God was remote and inaccessible, it would have been difficult to imagine anything better than the blessings of life, than all those lower dreams that are legitimate goods.

  But in the new way (what theologians call the New Covenant), God is present and available. He is here and now. When Jesus cried, “It is finished,” the unapproachable God of intimidating holiness opened His arms and invited us to feel His embrace.

  The greatest blessing is no longer the blessing of a good life. It never was. It is now the blessing of an encounter with God. It always has been. But now, in the new way, the greatest dream is available.

  But we don’t view things that way. So God goes to work to help us see more clearly. One way He works is to allow our lower dreams to shatter. He lets us hurt and doesn’t make it better. We suffer and He stands by and does nothing to help, at least nothing that we’re aware we want Him to do.

  In fact, what He’s doing while we suffer is leading us into the depths of our being, into the center of our soul where we feel our strongest passions.

  It’s there that we discover our desire for God. We begin to feel a desire to know Him that not only survives all our pain, but actually thrives in it until that desire becomes more intense than our desire for all the good things we still want. Through the pain of shattered lower dreams, we wake up to the realization that we want an encounter with God more than we want the blessings of life. And that begins a revolution in our lives.

  That’s the third idea. Let me express it this way:

  Our shattered dreams are never random. They are always a piece in a larger puzzle, a chapter in a larger story.

  Pain is a tragedy. But it’s never only a tragedy. For the Christian, it’s always a necessary mile on the long journey to joy.

  The suffering caused by shattered dreams must not be thought of as something to relieve if we can or endure if we must. It’s an opportunity to be embraced, a chance to discover our desire for the highest blessing God wants to give us, an encounter with Himself.

  This book is an invitation to taste and see that the Lord is good even when the bottom falls out of your life. Let me repeat those three ideas that this invitation builds on:

  1. God wants to bless you. He gets a kick out of making His children happy. He feels much the same way parents feel on Christmas morning as they anticipate watching their kids unwrap presents amid squeals of delight.

  2. The deepest pleasure we’re capable of experiencing is a direct encounter with God. In God’s new way of dealing with people, He does us the most good by making Himself available to be enjoyed and by seeing to it that we seek an encounter with Him with more energy than we seek anything else.

  But we almost always mistake lesser pleasures for this greatest pleasure and live our lives chasing after them. We’re not in touch with our appetite for God.

  3. So the Holy Spirit awakens that appetite. He uses the pain of shattered dreams to help us discover our desire for God, to help us begin dreaming the highest dream. Shattered dreams are not accidents of fate. They are ordained opportunities for the Spirit first to awaken then to satisfy our highest dream.

  That’s what’s on my mind as I write Shattered Dreams.

  What I say in this book strikes me as a Spirit-arranged and therefore fitting launch of God’s call on the rest of my life. I think you’ll profit more from this book if you understand the call that it begins to answer.

  MY CALL

  God’s Spirit has instructed me to focus my life and ministry around three words: encounter, community, and transformation.

  I sense God’s call to encounter Him in a way that fills my soul with more joy than any other experience and to lead others toward a similar encounter. Because I cannot arrange for that encounter to take place, I find myself pleading more these days for sovereign mercy than for well-used competence.

  I sense God’s call to develop and participate in a community where no one remains unknown, unexplored, undiscovered, or untouched; where we discover our true selves; where we realize that we really are passionate followers of Jesus; where people become spiritual friends. I want to help people across the world enjoy that kind of community. Again, in view of the enormity of the task, I am reduced to prayer more than I am prompted to strategize.

  I sense God’s call to better understand, practice, and teach the art of spiritual direction, which I conceive to be a Spirit-guided dialogue where deep transformation of the human personality occurs. I want to do whatever I can to see that no one walks alone, that every hungry person who longs to encounter God and enjoy community can find a spiritual director to guide his or her search. Manageable visions are not worthy of an unmanageable God. This one seems worthy of Him.

  As never before, this call on my life has put me in touch with my inadequacy and my dependence on divine enabling. But I also recognize my responsibility to move. Convinced that God has provided us with everything we need to encounter Him, to enjoy community, and to experience personal transformation, I want to see a School of Spiritual Friendship begin that will help people more fully tap the life-giving resources available in small groups. (I use school not in an institutional sense but in reference to a guided, collective movement of learning and exploration.) I want to see communities develop where people are known, explored, discovered, and touched so their true selves as followers of Jesus can be released.

  And I want to see a School of Spiritual Direction established to equip maturing men and women to wisely and graciously enter the interior worlds of other people in order to trace the Spirit’s movement as He works to make them more like Christ. I envision people who have given up hope of ever becoming whole experiencing a level of transformation that exceeds their wildest dreams and changing in ways that provoke observers to exclaim “Praise God!” rather than “Glad you found a good therapist.”

  The first priority—the foundation for community with others and personal transformation—is an encounter with God. The new way makes that possible. It makes a way for us to draw near to God.

  However your life is going—whether you’re in a season of blessing or a season of pain—I invite you to join me on this journey to joy, to live beyond shattered dreams. The road will take us through some dark nights, but you need not wait for morning to rejoice. Morning will come, but you can welcome your suffering now as an opportunity to meet God, to encounter Him with a passion that will free you to get close to a f
ew people in authentic community and to experience genuine transformation in your personal life, especially in the way you love others.

  May we trust God’s Spirit to draw on the resources of Christ to lead us into the arms of the Father, even if shattered dreams have made it seem impossible to ever dream again. That’s what the new way makes possible.

  Let the revolution begin!

  THE PARABLE

  “What’s the world’s greatest lie?” the boy asked.

  “It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives,

  we lose control of what’s happening to us,

  and our lives become controlled by fate.

  That’s the world’s greatest lie.”

  —PAULO COELHO

  The man’s life was pleasant. So too was his worship. The two always go together.

  God was not pleased. So He allowed the man’s life to become unpleasant.

  The man responded at once with shock. “How can this be? How could this happen in my life?”

  Beneath the shock, the man was smug. But he could not see it. He thought it was trust. “This will soon pass. God is faithful. Life will again be pleasant.” His worship remained shallow.

  God was not pleased. So He allowed more unpleasant things to happen in the man’s life.

  The man tried hard to handle his frustrations well, like someone who trusted God. “I will be patient,” he resolved.

  But he didn’t notice that his efforts to be patient grew out of the conviction that a pleasant life was his due. He did not hear his own heart saying, “If I’m patient, God will make things pleasant again. That’s His job.”

  His worship became a way to convince God to restore his pleasant life.

  God was not pleased. So He pulled back His hedge of protection around the man a little farther. The man’s life became miserable.

  The man got angry. God seemed unmoved, indifferent, uncaring. Heaven’s door slammed shut. The man knew he could not pry it open.

  He could think only of better days—not of better days coming, but of better days before, days that no longer were and that showed no signs of returning.

  His highest dreams were a return to those days, to the pleasant life he once knew, when he felt what he had called joy.

  He could not imagine a higher dream than going backward to what once was. But he knew life never moved backward. Adults never become children again. Old people never recover the energy of their most productive years.

  So he lost hope. God had withdrawn His blessing, and there was no indication He would change His mind.

  The man fell into depression. His worship stopped.

  God was not pleased. So He released the forces of hell into the man’s life.

  Temptations that formerly were manageable now became irresistible. The pain of living was so great that the pleasure the temptations afforded, relief really, seemed reasonable and necessary. But after the pleasure came a new kind of pain, a kind of pain that covered his soul with a fog that not even the brightest sun could penetrate.

  The man could see only his pain. He could not see God. He thought he could, but the god he saw was one whose job it was to relieve pain. He could imagine this god, but he could not find him.

  He addressed the only god he knew. He begged for help. Beneath his words of pleading he could almost hear what his heart was saying: “You owe me help. I will never believe I deserved all this to happen. This pain is not my fault. It’s yours.”

  His worship had always taken the form of a demand, but now the demand was so obvious the man could almost recognize it.

  God was not pleased. So He let the struggles continue. And God allowed new troubles to come into the man’s life.

  In the part of the man’s heart that dreamed his greatest dreams, he had been certain he would never have to face these new troubles that were now in his life. For years he had said in his heart (without actually hearing it), “That could never happen to me. If it did, my life would be over. If that happened, I’d have no choice but to conclude that God isn’t good. I would have to dismiss God. And no one, not even God, could fault me.”

  But still the man could not hear his heart speak. What he could hear was a seductive voice that made the worst temptation he had ever faced—to lose hope in God—seem noble, bravely defiant, the only way left for the man to find himself.

  The battle waxed hot. But a flicker of hope remained. The man held on to his faith. Even as he did, he could not hear his heart saying, “I have every right to give up on my faith. But I’m choosing the truly noble way. I still believe in You. I still believe You’re there and that my highest hopes for joy—whatever hopes are left—lie with you. Does that impress you? If not, my God, what does?”

  His worship was more desperate than ever. But it was still proud.

  God was not pleased. So He allowed the man’s trials to continue and his pain to remain unabated. God kept His distance from the man. He provided no comfort, no tangible reason to hope. It was difficult for God not to make everything better in the man’s life. It was even more difficult for Him not to appear directly to the man and assure him of His presence.

  But He didn’t. God had a greater dream for the man than a return to a pleasant life. He wanted the man to find true joy. He longed to restore the man’s hope for what mattered most. But still the man did not know what that was.

  The fog around the man’s soul thickened until he could feel it, like walls closing in. All that was left was mystery; there was fear certainly, even terror, but more acute was the sense of mystery, the mystery of a bad life and a good God.

  Where was He? When the man became most aware of his need for God, God disappeared. It made no sense. Was God there or not? If He was, did He care? Or didn’t He?

  The man could not give up on God. He remembered Jacob. So he began to fight. But he fought in the dark, a darkness so deep that he could no longer see his dreams of a pleasant life.

  In deep darkness, you cannot see. But you can hear. He could hear for the first time what his heart was saying.

  “Bless me!” he cried. From his deepest soul, he could hear words reflecting a resolve that would not let go of God.

  “Bless me! Not because I am good, but because You are good. Bless me! Not because I deserve Your blessing, but because it is Your nature to bless. You really can’t help Yourself. I appeal not to who I am. You owe me nothing. I appeal only to who You are.”

  He still saw his pain. But now he saw God. And the cry for blessing was no longer a demand for a pleasant life. It was a cry for whatever God wanted to do, for whoever He was. The man felt something different. It was the beginning of humility. But the very fact of what it was kept him from seeing what it was.

  The man had forgotten himself and discovered his desire for God. He did not find God right away, but he had hope, hope that he might experience what his soul most deeply longed for.

  Then he saw it. Fresh water bubbled up from a spring in the desert of his soul, and he saw it. It was a new dream. He could see its contours take shape. It was a dream of actually knowing God and representing Him in an unpleasant world. The dream took on a specific focus; he saw how he could know God and represent God to others in a way that was his way and not someone else’s. It felt like coming home.

  He realized immediately that his power to speak on behalf of God to others in the midst of their unpleasant lives depended on his speaking from the midst of his own unpleasantness. He had never before felt grateful for his troubles.

  His suffering became to him a doorway into God’s heart. He shared God’s pain in His great project of redemption. Suffering together for a single cause made him feel closer to God.

  A new thought occurred to him. “I will join with whatever forces are opposed to the root of this unpleasantness. I will ally with goodness against evil. I will not wait to see more clearly; what my hand finds to do, I will do. But I will stay close to the spring. My soul is thirsty. A pleasant life is not water for my soul; whatever
comes from God—whoever God is—this is the only true water. And it is enough.”

  The man worshiped God, and God was pleased. So God kept the water bubbling up out of the spring in the man’s soul. When the man didn’t drink every morning from that spring or return every evening to drink again, his thirst became intolerable.

  Some things in his life got better. Some things stayed the same. Some things got worse.

  But the man was dreaming new dreams, greater dreams than a pleasant life. And he found the courage to pursue them. He was now a man with hope, and his hope brought joy.

  God was very pleased. So was the man.

  CHAPTER ONE

  MY PROBLEM WITH GOD

  I am one of the fortunate few. I have real friends. I can quickly name a half-dozen people with whom I would say I have a really good relationship. To be certain I’m not kidding myself, I just wrote six names on the outside of the manila folder where I’m filing the early scribblings for this book.

  Now, between sips of my single-shot latte at Angel’s Coffee Shop, I’m looking at the names I wrote. One impression strikes me at once with near gale force. The friends who made the list are all friends who do something for me. It’s not what I do for them that got them on the list; it’s what they do for me.

  My first impulse is to feel selfish.

  I can think of several people, a considerable number actually, who would speak warmly of what I do or have done for them. But they’re not on the list. It’s true that the six people whose names I wrote down would each say that I mean a great deal to them, but that’s not why their names are on the list. I thought of them because they mean a great deal to me.

  Jesus told us that it is more blessed to give than to receive. If I really believed that, maybe the names on my list would be different. Apparently, the people I’m most happy to be in relationship with are folks who give something to me, not the ones who offer me the chance to give.