Day 22

How the Self Dies — Through Surrendered Dreams

Today's Scripture: John 12:24 (NLT)

Some of the deepest dyings in the believer's life are not the dyings of obvious sins but the dyings of cherished dreams. The dreams we built in our young years. The dreams we nurtured for decades. The dreams that became, somewhere along the way, so intertwined with our sense of identity that we could not imagine ourselves without them. The Lord, in His mysterious wisdom, often leads His children to a place where these dreams must be laid down — sometimes for a season, sometimes forever — and the laying down is one of the costliest deaths the soul can be asked to die.

Jesus gave us the picture: the grain of wheat must fall into the ground and die, or it abides alone. Notice the word alone. The unburied seed remains exactly what it always was — a small, dry, isolated kernel, with all its potential locked inside it forever. The buried seed, by dying, releases everything it contained into the soil, and what rises is not the seed but a plant that bears many seeds. The seed is not destroyed in the burial; it is multiplied. But the multiplication is on the far side of a real and total burial. There is no way to skip the death and still receive the harvest.

This is how God deals with the dreams of His children. He does not always destroy them. Sometimes He buries them — for a year, for a decade, for a lifetime — and the burial feels, while it is happening, like destruction. The dream you thought you would build by thirty is still on the shelf at forty. The marriage you thought you would have, the children you thought you would raise, the ministry you thought you would launch, the calling you thought you would fulfill — buried. And the soul that does not understand the principle of John 12:24 will rage against the burial as though God has betrayed His own promises. But the soul that understands learns to say, with Jesus, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me — nevertheless not my will, but Thine."

What dies in the burial of a dream? Not the dream itself, often. What dies is our ownership of it. Our control over its timing, its shape, its means. Our entitlement to it. Our identity-fusion with it. The dream we held with clenched fists must, somewhere along the way, be opened up into the hands of God, and the opening of the hands is what we mean by the death of the dream. The dream that is fully in God's hands and not at all in our own may or may not come to pass in this life, but in either case, it has been redeemed. It has stopped being an idol and become an offering.

Abraham knew this. He waited twenty-five years for the son God had promised him. And then, when the son was at last in his arms — Isaac, the child of the promise, the dream of his old age, the inheritor of the covenant — God said, "Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering" (Genesis 22:2). The dream itself, given by God, was being asked to be laid on the altar by the very God who gave it. Abraham obeyed. He raised the knife. And the moment he did — the moment the dream was fully released — the angel of the Lord stopped his hand, and the ram appeared in the thicket. The dream was returned to him, but it was returned to a different man. Abraham had let it go. And he never held it the same way again.

The Lord may do this with the dreams in your life. He may ask you to lay them on the altar and to raise the knife. He may then return them to you — or He may not. He alone has the right to determine which dreams come to pass and which are buried into a different harvest than the one we envisioned. Our work is not to ensure the outcome. Our work is to bring the dream to the altar.

And this is one of the most painful chapters of the crucified life, because the dreams we lay down are often good. They are not sinful. They are not idolatrous in their nature. They are simply ours, and they have grown into us over decades, and to release them is to release a part of what feels like ourselves. But the truth is that no dream can become fully fruitful while it remains alone, locked in our own grip. The seed has to fall. The hand has to open. And the soul that finally opens the hand discovers that what was locked inside the grain of wheat was never going to come out as long as the grain stayed dry.

If there is a dream that has died in you — or that the Lord seems to be asking you to bury — bring it to Him today. Tell Him honestly what it has meant to you. Tell Him honestly what its loss has cost you. And then, with whatever faith you can muster, lay it on the altar. He is faithful. He is good. And whether the dream is returned in this life or harvested only in the next, the death of the seed is never wasted in the hands of the Lord of the harvest.

Prayer

Father, You see the dreams I have carried for years. Some of them have already died. Some of them are dying now. Some of them I have refused to lay down because I cannot imagine life without them. Today I bring them to You — every one. Not for destruction, but for surrender. Open my hands. Let the seed fall into the ground. Bring forth, by Your grace, the harvest only You know how to grow. Amen.

Today's Challenge

Name one dream you have been holding tightly. Speak it before God today, and then deliberately open your hands as you pray, "Father, this is Yours. Bury it or raise it as You please. I trust You with the harvest."

"The dream you cannot release will abide alone forever; the dream you bury into God's hands will bear a harvest you could not have imagined."