With just 5 weeks left until Christmas, I’ve been thinking a lot about next year and what The Itchy Soul 2.0 is going to look like. I have big dreams for 2014, really big dreams.

But it’s at times like this that I start to doubt myself. Maybe it’s not just me?

Maybe you have all these hopes and dreams and aspirations, stuff that you’d really, really love to do. And they eat at you because you didn’t do them yet, but then you let yourself off the hook a little by wondering if maybe it just isn’t God’s timing.

It happened with Give A Brick and our first project to build a community centre in South Wales. For two years we did nothing – total blackout. Was that God and his perfect timing or was it me, being a little bit less proactive than I probably should have been?

Two years later, Redrow were building houses opposite and their site manager helped us save thousands of pounds. Was that God and his perfect timing or was it God, able to take ‘less proactive than I should have been’ me and turn the situation to good?

There’s no way of knowing the answer but that makes it so easy to get into a pickle.

I’ve been in churches that have felt like they’re using the ‘we need to pray about it’ line as an excuse for procrastination but at the same time, knowing that Jesus didn’t do anything without talking to his dad about it first. See? Pickle-tastic!

I have hopes and dreams and aspirations and I’d love those to line up with God’s best so how do we move forward, (prayerfully) taking action and do so within the remit of the big picture, when all we can see is one tiny little piece?

It’s enough to make a girl want to pick up her ball and go home.

But deciding that you’re not playing any more isn’t really an option.

What if God made you exactly as you are, quirks and foibles and all, and those things you call gifts (or maybe those things you do so easily you take them for granted but other people would call them gifts?) what if he put them there?

What if the stuff that drives you, the passion and excitement you have, the desire to make something happen, what if that was God too?

What if your hopes, dreams and aspirations were whispered into your heart, years before they ever entered your conscious thought, by a loving Dad who loves to see you smile?

What if, instead of wasting energy and heartache worrying about whether what you’re doing is part of God’s big picture, you instead delighted in each new day, said “Good morning dad, what shall we do today?” and then stepped forward, moment by moment, confident that he knows and loves you enough that you don’t need to worry?

What might that look like?

And how might your hopes, dreams and aspirations feel as you look forward to 2014 if you knew that all this and so much more, God has in store for you?

Sounds exciting doesn’t it? 😀

Until next time, keep smiling 🙂