As I sat at the altar this past week in worship, I began to recount all the various dreams the LORD has given me throughout my life: the good things I know He is calling me to, the words spoken, the promises I’ve been given, and the dreams that are unfolding before my eyes as reality. As I recounted those dreams, I then began to consider the hurdles that stand in the way: the relationships that need restoration, the “mountains” that need moving, the places where hope seems far off, and the dreams that seems to be filled with deep holes, you know the ones, the “if this is going to work, it has to be You, God”, sort of dreams.

The LORD was having me focus in on dreams. The good, the bad, and the ugly, yet all dreams just in different stages of maturation.

I spoke softly out loud to myself, to the LORD, listing my biggest dreams (and hurdles), inquiring of the LORD and setting my requests at His feet. 

In times past I used to plead and beg for the LORD to hear me and to answer my cry for help. There was a striving to my unfulfilled hopes and dreams. While some prayers do require urgency, God’s promises have an appointed time. They cannot be rushed. In the waiting, we must not grow weary of doing good nor give up hope.

“And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”

Galatians 6:9

“Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised.”

Hebrews 10:35-36

If we were truly honest, we might agree that much of what we pray for is more about our own ideas of how things should work out and on our own timeline more so than anything else. One important lesson I’ve learned from scripture and walking with the LORD is that we do not pray from a place of pleading. Jesus has already given us all things for by His blood we have been adopted into sonship, therefore, all power and all authority is ours in Christ. Peter called believers a holy nation and a royal priesthood, which have been granted through sonship in Jesus. 

Prayer is not a matter of asking more or crying out louder, rather it is a matter of believing the blood of Jesus is enough and trusting God’s timing.

As hard as we may try, we simply cannot rush God’s timing.

The week prior the LORD had been speaking to me one phrase again and again: “I will hasten to it in my time”.

There is our timeline, based on our own understanding, and then there is God’s timeline. They are almost never the same. 

And so I was contending in prayer, not so much for my own personal dreams, but for God’s promises to me.

In that moment at the alter on my knees, suddenly, the LORD showed me a future picture of my life. 

What God showed me, blew me away. 

This future life I saw, was too good to be a real possibility. It was beyond any prayer I had ever prayed and was more than anything I had ever considered or dreamed of. It was beautiful. It certainly was not my own thought, because it had never once crossed my mind. I couldn’t have come up with a dream so grand. 

Tears filled my eyes. Shock and hope flooded my heart. I suddenly felt naked and intimately known for this was a precise and precious picture of everything my heart deeply loves, good things which the LORD loves also, all wrapped up together in one vision, in an instant. 

Let me remind you that the LORD knows the desires of our heart, what makes us who we are, what we love, and the painful longings for the “oil of gladness instead of mourning” buried within our hope deferred. He knit us together in the secret place and knows our unique frame, all He created us to be. 

The LORD began to speak to my heart plainly, “Vanessa, your greatest dreams, are your limitations” 

I hesitated in my thoughts. I didn’t understand what the LORD was trying to tell me. I heard again, “your greatest dreams are your limitations”.

Immediately, the Holy Spirit began to unravel this statement as He spoke to my heart. I understood that the greatest thing I can believe for is actually a ceiling, a cap, a limit…a limitation of my own creation. What we call “dreams” the LORD calls “limitations”. The ceilings of castles are still ceilings. The greatest dream of all time becomes the next limit. 

Then I heard the LORD say, “I am the God of limitless”. 

I sought to listen with my spiritual ears to hear the rest of the phrase that was coming, “the God of limitless…? Possibilities? Resources? Grace?”

But then I heard again, “I am the God of LIMITLESS”. 

Selah for a moment.

He is the God of limitless. 

God stands outside of time and space. He is not governed by the physical barriers of the created word. He is uncreated. He is before creation. He put all that we see, and that which cannot be seen, into order by the utterance of His voice. He is limitless.

He has limitless ability, resources, finances, patience, forgiveness, time, grace, love…and everything else that is good and holy.

I broke down in tears as I began to understand what the LORD was showing me about Himself and the chasm between who He is and my own humanity. I wept and could feel that my Heavenly Father loves me so much that He would take time to talk to me about who He is, show me His goodness, and invite me to take His hand and trust Him for greater things.  

I immediately understood that my dreams are far too small, and I must begin to dream bigger. 

Let me be clear, by worldly standards my dreams are quite huge, but that’s just the thing: from God’s vantage-point my dreams are tiny. We must begin to shift our thinking to consider, “what is God’s perspective?” He is holy, Almighty, Creator, Provider, Healer, Redeemer, ever-present, outside of time and space, and without limitation. 

He is limitless!

“Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me? 

Jeremiah 32:27

I suddenly felt a slight internal panic as I began to take a mental inventory, searching for those “greater dreams”, aside from the ones I already put before the Father, and came up blank. I already gave Him my best dreams! I thought, “those were pretty lofty dreams weren’t they LORD? You want me to go higher?!”

Coming up short to think of anything else, I confessed, “LORD, I don’t have greater dreams than these.”

I continued through tears, “Abba, will You show me the dreams You have for me? Help me to accept Your dreams for me and to not despise them out of fear to hope. Help me to dream with You. I don’t know how to dream more than what I have dreamed. And so I ask you, Abba, show me more…”

Let me encourage you this day whether you struggle to dream or hope at all, or whether you are a big-tiny dreamer like me: “He is the God of Limitless!”

In the days that followed I had to repent. The LORD began to show me that instead of the “God of Limitless” I had made Him the “God of bare minimum”. I was wanting the LORD to simply meet my needs along with my own ceiling goals, but the LORD was asking me, “dream bigger with Me”. 

And here is where it gets interesting and amazing: The LORD can give us hopes and dreams that are infinitely more impressive than are own! It is all for His glory!

I encourage you to see God as the God of limitless EVERYTHING! Repent of where you have put a ceiling on the hopes and dreams in your life. Choose to trust God again for fresh, new dreams that are bigger and even more beautiful than your very best dreamiest dreams. Ask God to give you His dreams and help you to receive them. Tell the LORD, “yes!”, to His dreams for you! Watch with great expectation of what the LORD will do!