Chase the Lion: If Your Dream Doesn't Scare You, It's Too Small

by Mark Batterson

At the end of our lives, our greatest regrets will be the God-ordained opportunities we left on the table, the God-given passions we didn’t pursue, and the God-sized dreams we didn’t go after because we let fear dictate our decisions.

When everything is said and done, God isn’t going to say, “Well said,” “Well thought,” or “Well planned.” There is one measuring stick: “Well done, good and faithful servant!”

God’s dream for your life is so much bigger, so much better than breaking even. If you focus on not making mistakes, you won’t make a difference. You don’t overcome sin by focusing on not sinning. You need a dream that is bigger and better than the temptations you’re trying to overcome. You need a dream that doesn’t allow you to become spiritually sidetracked, a dream that demands your utmost for His highest.6

The size of your dream may be the most accurate measure of the size of your God. Is He bigger than your biggest problem, your worst failure, your greatest mistake? Is He able to do immeasurably more than all you can ask or imagine?2

We assume that Adam and Eve would have remained in the Garden of Eden forever if they had not eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but that is a misreading of the text. Long before Adam and Eve were banished from the garden, God told them to fill the earth and subdue it. It was a divine invitation to explore, to adventure, to discover, to dream.

In the 1930s a producer at 20th Century Fox wrote a letter to presidents of several prominent Christian colleges, asking them to send him screenwriters. His dream was to produce films with a redemptive subplot. One president wrote back and said he’d sooner send his young people to hell itself than send them to Hollywood.7 What a missed opportunity!

“May the odds be ever in your favor.” That is the motto of the Hunger Games, but that isn’t how it works in the kingdom of God. It’s more like “May the odds be ever against you.” Impossible odds set the stage for God’s greatest miracles! And apparently God loves long shots. Isn’t that why He removed 9,700 soldiers from Gideon’s army? Isn’t that why He let the fiery furnace be heated seven times hotter? Isn’t that why He didn’t show up until Lazarus was four days dead?

After the Israelites pulled off an upset victory over the Philistines, the prophet Samuel built an altar and named it Ebenezer. It means “hitherto hath the LORD helped us.”14 An altar reminds us that the God who did it before can do it again. It’s not just a token of God’s faithfulness. It’s a statement of faith: the God who got us here will get us there, and the God who did this will do that.

Because most of us read Scripture in the comfortable confines of air-conditioned homes or offices, we often miss the geographical subplot. The walk from Jerusalem to Jericho is 15.7 miles with a 3,428-foot change in elevation. In other words, the Good Samaritan had to be in good shape. Mount Sinai is 7,487 feet high, which is quite a trek carrying two stone tablets. And the Sea of Galilee is 8.078 miles wide, which is pretty scary if you’re in the middle of the lake in a storm.

It wasn’t an uncalculated risk that led J. W. Tucker into the Congo during a civil war. He counted the cost with his missionary friend Morris Plotts. Plotts tried to convince his friend not to go. “If you go in,” he prophetically pleaded, “you won’t come out.” To which Tucker responded, “God didn’t tell me I had to come out. He only told me I had to go in.”

I’ve never met anybody who doesn’t want to be successful, but very few people have actually defined success for themselves. So by default they buy into the culture’s definition of success instead of God’s definition. In God’s book success is spelled stewardship. It’s making the most of the time, talent, and treasure God has given you. It’s doing the best you can with what you have where you are.

The Bomokande River flows through the middle of an unreached people group called the Mangbetu tribe. During a time of civil unrest, the Mangbetu king appealed to his government for help. They sent a man known as the Brigadier, a policeman that J. W. Tucker had led to the Lord two months before he was killed. His efforts to share the gospel with the Mangbetu failed until he discovered an ancient tribal tradition: If the blood of any man flows in the Bomokande River, you must listen to his message. The Brigadier gathered the village elders and told them of a man whose blood flowed in the river. Some time ago a man was killed, and his body was thrown into your Bomokande River. The crocodiles in this river ate him up. His blood flowed in your river. But before he died, he left me a message. This message concerns God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who came to this world to save people who were sinners. He died for the sins of the world; He died for my sins. I received this message, and it changed my life.7 Several members of the tribe fell on their knees, surrendering their lives to the lordship of Jesus Christ. Since that day thousands of Mangbetu have come to faith in Christ, and there are dozens of churches in that region because of the man whose blood flowed in the Bomokande River.

Nothing sets us up for God’s provision like sacrificial giving. If you want God to bless you beyond your ability, try giving beyond your means. Now, a material reward isn’t what we’re after. That’s the least reward. We’re after an eternal reward in heaven. But one way or the other, this promise holds true: “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”6

When David took harp lessons as a kid, he never imagined that those lessons would someday position him as a member of King Saul’s court. As he practiced slinging a stone while tending sheep, it never crossed his mind that this skill set would catapult him into the national limelight. Even when David was hiding out in caves as a fugitive, God was deepening his emotional capacity to write psalms that would pull heartstrings thousands of years later. Just because something isn’t part of your life plan doesn’t mean it’s not part of God’s plan.

There is a fine line between “Thy kingdom come” and “my kingdom come.” Ultimately, the goal of a God-given dream is to honor the God who gave it to you in the first place. A God-given dream doesn’t go after an earthly award. It aims at the eternal reward Jesus promised right after He red-flagged hypocrisy: “Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”7

One of the greatest moments in all eternity will be the moment Jesus pronounces your new name, your true name. When it hits your eardrum, fires across your synapses, and registers in your auditory cortex, it’ll be as though your entire life is flashing before your eyes. In that one moment your entire existence will come into perfect focus. That name will unveil your true identity, your true destiny. It will make everything make sense.