ENGAGING THOUGHT
Whoever came up with the adage, "There's more than one way to skin a cat" must have been a horrible human being...or a dog lover. However, I have to admit that whoever invented this illustration of feline horror is correct: whatever the aim or goal, there are myriad ways to reach it. The same holds true when it comes to pursuing God's DREAM for our lives. Even if we have a crystal-clear understanding of the DREAM (and don't be at all worried if you DO NOT yet) there still remains the questions of strategy and the path of our pursuit.
Maybe this is another spot where the age-old debate of Free Will versus Determinism pops up once again: assuming (as we do) that God does have a DREAM for our lives, does He also lay the exact pathway to fulfillment for us, or does He let us pick and choose the steps we will take to get there? Personally, I believe that God allows us a wide berth of freedom when it comes to deciding how we will pursue and fulfill the DREAM He has for us. I think He leaves a great deal of the strategy up to us. Regardless of which you prefer, the task still falls to us to discover and delineate the path or strategy we will take.
This is where going back to school comes in - at least going back to English Composition (or whatever they called it at your school). It's time to stretch those mental muscles, blow the cobwebs out of the investigative corners of our brains, and do some old-fashioned research. Actually, perhaps not old-fashioned at all. More like high-tech research. One of the boons of the internet age is the ready availability of information just a few clicks away. Throw in a heaping spoonful of Google and you're moments away from a total inundation of information on any and every topic imaginable!
Google is your best-friend when it comes to researching your DREAM. Just type in a few key words related to the DREAM and within milliseconds the gnomes inside your computer will amaze you with more websites than you care to visit (and some you won't ever want to - be sure to set your filter!). You can even be so brazen as to boldly type your DREAM as a How To statement. EXAMPLE: "How to become a rodeo clown." Voila! [NOTE: If, by some chance, this does happen to be God's DREAM for your life, you'll be glad to know that there are 143,000 websites related to becoming a Rodeo Clown.]
Your second-best friend in doing web-based research can be found in Blogs. What's a Blog? You're reading one. There are blogs related to every subject and sub-genre and interest or career out there. Surfing blogs will do a couple things for you: 1) Make you realize how badly grammar and language usage has slipped in our society; 2) Help you realize how many different approaches there are to doing anything (even skinning cats, unfortunately). The real gold in many blogs, though, is the details you can mine from the autobiographical accounts. People love to talk (type) about themselves and will often share the nitty-gritty facets of how they became so successful, or so misunderstood, or so...whatever they have become. In these details you will discover approaches that may inspire or inform you in pursuit of your DREAM.
The key is really this: just because God has a unique DREAM for you and your life doesn't necessarily mean you must reinvent the wheel! Chances are very high that your DREAM is similar to someone else's DREAM and, chances are someone out there in the great-big cyber-world is farther along in their pursuit than you are in yours, and, chances are they have put something on the web. Whether you learn from them, emulate them, or do the exact opposite of them, the time you spend actively researching your options is time you won't waste on dead-ends or false-starts.
Maybe this is another spot where the age-old debate of Free Will versus Determinism pops up once again: assuming (as we do) that God does have a DREAM for our lives, does He also lay the exact pathway to fulfillment for us, or does He let us pick and choose the steps we will take to get there? Personally, I believe that God allows us a wide berth of freedom when it comes to deciding how we will pursue and fulfill the DREAM He has for us. I think He leaves a great deal of the strategy up to us. Regardless of which you prefer, the task still falls to us to discover and delineate the path or strategy we will take.
This is where going back to school comes in - at least going back to English Composition (or whatever they called it at your school). It's time to stretch those mental muscles, blow the cobwebs out of the investigative corners of our brains, and do some old-fashioned research. Actually, perhaps not old-fashioned at all. More like high-tech research. One of the boons of the internet age is the ready availability of information just a few clicks away. Throw in a heaping spoonful of Google and you're moments away from a total inundation of information on any and every topic imaginable!
Google is your best-friend when it comes to researching your DREAM. Just type in a few key words related to the DREAM and within milliseconds the gnomes inside your computer will amaze you with more websites than you care to visit (and some you won't ever want to - be sure to set your filter!). You can even be so brazen as to boldly type your DREAM as a How To statement. EXAMPLE: "How to become a rodeo clown." Voila! [NOTE: If, by some chance, this does happen to be God's DREAM for your life, you'll be glad to know that there are 143,000 websites related to becoming a Rodeo Clown.]
Your second-best friend in doing web-based research can be found in Blogs. What's a Blog? You're reading one. There are blogs related to every subject and sub-genre and interest or career out there. Surfing blogs will do a couple things for you: 1) Make you realize how badly grammar and language usage has slipped in our society; 2) Help you realize how many different approaches there are to doing anything (even skinning cats, unfortunately). The real gold in many blogs, though, is the details you can mine from the autobiographical accounts. People love to talk (type) about themselves and will often share the nitty-gritty facets of how they became so successful, or so misunderstood, or so...whatever they have become. In these details you will discover approaches that may inspire or inform you in pursuit of your DREAM.
The key is really this: just because God has a unique DREAM for you and your life doesn't necessarily mean you must reinvent the wheel! Chances are very high that your DREAM is similar to someone else's DREAM and, chances are someone out there in the great-big cyber-world is farther along in their pursuit than you are in yours, and, chances are they have put something on the web. Whether you learn from them, emulate them, or do the exact opposite of them, the time you spend actively researching your options is time you won't waste on dead-ends or false-starts.
ACTION STEP
Spend at least 20 minutes wandering the internet and looking at anything related to your DREAM. Pay special attention to sites which contain anything such as "How We Got Here" or "Our History" - those can be a treasure-trove of information that may inspire you to approach your strategy differently than you had thought. Follow the various links that others put on their sites.
Be sure to write down or save a Bookmark on the sites that catch your interest. At this stage I would suggest doing more "surfing" and less in-depth-analysis of any particular website or blog.
CAUTION This is a balancing-act of self-control: on the one hand, following the seemingly "random" rabbit-trails on the internet can lead you to discover options that you never knew existed; on the other hand, however, you can get stuck looking at cute kittens or patriotic messages for the next nine hours!
Be sure to write down or save a Bookmark on the sites that catch your interest. At this stage I would suggest doing more "surfing" and less in-depth-analysis of any particular website or blog.
CAUTION This is a balancing-act of self-control: on the one hand, following the seemingly "random" rabbit-trails on the internet can lead you to discover options that you never knew existed; on the other hand, however, you can get stuck looking at cute kittens or patriotic messages for the next nine hours!
Tomorrow we'll inject a little bit of sanity into this crazy DREAM process (but only a little bit).
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