Ever felt like that little hamster on the wheel, going around and around and around and going – nowhere? You might have. At any given point in time, how many people are trying to:

• Compete with 100 other people for that one job opening?
• Win a once-in-a-lifetime part in that play, musical, TV show or movie?
• Fight for that academic scholarship against hundreds of other students?
• Write that #1 Billboard hit song – along with 5000 other songwriters?
• Grab the market share against your competitors for – whatever you’re selling?
• Captivate that literary agent that 600 other writers are trying to get to first?
• Battle for that one spot on the team against the best of the best?
• Earn that job promotion that a dozen other people also want?
• Build that platform – just to get noticed?
• Grow that church or ministry – because that’s what’s expected?

Sometimes chasing our dreams can run the emotional gamut from frustrating to disheartening to depressing – even to hopeless. We work and work and work, only to find that our best seems not to be good enough. We’re in constant competition, hustling, burning the candle at both ends, enduring the grind – day after day, month after month, even year after year. Then comes the day that we simply have to admit it: we just can’t cut it. So what then?

Surrender.

When we reach the point where we despair of ever “making it” (because that’s what our culture tells us we have to do), then perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate what it is we’re trying to do. Maybe we’re putting too much pressure on ourselves. Maybe we weren’t “meant to be” the next Bill Gates or Miss America or Stephen King or Paul Ryan or even Paul the Apostle. So then the question remains: If we don’t hit the pinnacle of whatever it is we do, does that mean we’ve “missed it” – “it” being our destiny? Just what were we meant to be anyway?

Faithful.

Over two thousand years ago, a young Jewish girl, a true “nobody”, was visited by the angel Gabrielle who gave her the choice of being the mother of the Messiah – or not. (It’s always about the choice.) Now, I’m certain that Mary counted the cost before she consented to become pregnant as a single woman – that never worked out well for unmarried Jewish girls. Unlike today, an unmarried pregnant woman in that culture was a huge scandal so it wasn’t difficult for Mary to imagine the disgrace and the consequences: at best, she would be shunned by everyone she knew, ridiculed by everyone she didn’t know, her betrothal to Joseph would be history, and she could look forward to life as an “old maid”. Worst case scenario: she would be stoned to death. Mary faced a capitol punishment for what was considered a very grievous crime in her day. Pretty sure that wasn’t her dream. Yet Mary’s response?

 

“’I am the Lord’s servant. May it be unto me as you have said’” (Luke 1:38).

 

If we can truly say those words, if we can accept whatever the scope of the destiny that the Lord has for us, then we’ll find peace in the midst of whatever happens with our dreams – or doesn’t happen. We’ll find perspective in the midst of the overwhelming odds of “making it”. We can let go of the competition, secure in the knowledge that, as long as we do our best, God will open the doors that need to be opened and light up the paths that we need to be on. We can get off the hamster wheel and stop pounding on closed doors. If we listen, we’ll hear the voice of the Lord give us one step at a time, one assignment at a time in their due seasons and, ultimately then, we’ll find that we have fulfilled the destiny assigned to us. It won’t be Stephen King’s destiny or Miss America’s or Bill Gates’, not even Paul the Apostle’s; those are their destinies, decreed from the beginning of time by the One who assigns destiny to each of us before we’re born.

Does this mean that we don’t work hard or that we give up because we’re not “the star” in our field? No. It means that we submit our desires and dreams and talents to the Lord and then watch what He does. If we’ll truly do that, then we’ll find that His dreams for us are far more fulfilling than our own visions could ever have been. Why? Because His destiny for us is filled with eternal purpose – purposes that, as Mary discovered, are way beyond anything we could ever come close to imagining.

And to be part of that eternal plan – isn’t that the truest dream come true?