You Can Live the Dream

CHAPTER ONE

DROWNING WORMS

Choose the Right Perspective

I couldn’t wait to take my five-year-old son, Denver, fishing for the first time. It was so exciting to start a lifelong tradition with him. I went out and bought the fishing poles, snacks, and a container of worms for our time together. There was a spot on a bayou near our house that I thought would give him an easy introduction to fishing on that summer afternoon. All we had to do was sit on the concrete bayou bank, bait our hooks with worms, cast them into the stream, and wait for the fish to strike. We sat for about thirty minutes, eating sunflower seeds, watching our lines for a bite, but there was nothing.

To my surprise, Denver was being fairly patient. Every so often, he would reel his line in, take the dead worm off, and ask me to help him put on a fresh one. Then he would sling his line back into the water and sit back down. After about an hour of this, Denver remained unshaken and content. I, on the other hand, was done. I wasn’t having fun, I was hot, and we hadn’t had a single bite. So we packed up our gear and headed home.

To me, this was a major fail. I was hoping this would ignite a bond over fishing that would last us a lifetime. But we caught nothing. We didn’t even have a nibble. I was worried that Denver would never want to go fishing again, so I broke the silence and asked him, “Hey, D, what did you think? Did you have a good time today?”

He looked at me and said with a beaming smile, “Dad, I loved drownin’ worms with you.”

Drownin’ worms? What? The whole time he thought we were drowning worms?!!!!

It took everything inside me to keep from bursting into laughter. Since we went through about two dozen worms that day, he thought it was a very successful trip. A few days later, I invited him to drown some worms with me in a different spot, but this time he realized that if he could keep the worms alive, he could also catch some big largemouth bass.

That afternoon with Denver taught me a lot about perspective. We were sitting on the same bayou concrete at the same time, seemingly doing the same thing, yet we had two totally different perspectives on our time fishing. From my perspective, we were there to catch fish, and we failed, causing me to chalk it up as a loss. From Denver’s perspective, we were there to hang out together and drown some worms. To him, the day couldn’t have been better.

Perspective is that powerful.

You could say that Denver and I were looking through two different sets of lenses that day. As a result, we had two entirely different attitudes and reactions to what happened. Your personal perspective will always impact how you respond to everything that happens to you.

See beyond the Circumstances

I believe that the key to living the life God has designed us to live and to becoming all He has created us to be is found in the perspective we choose to have. We often can’t choose what happens to us, but we can choose how we see it, how we think about it, and in turn how we respond. We can choose to see ourselves and our circumstances as they are, or we can choose to see them through a unique set of faith lenses. The perspective from which you see your life and your experiences can make all the difference.

The reason this is powerful and life-changing is because nothing has to change in your life for you to experience peace, contentment, and joy. Your external circumstances don’t determine your quality of life. Your perspective of your circumstances does.

A few years ago I was invited to speak at a conference in Southern California. When I arrived at the hotel where I was going to stay for a few nights, we were met by a construction crew as we tried to pull into the entrance. They were doing a lot of roadwork in front of the hotel. Jackhammers were slamming the concrete, cement trucks were lined up and pouring out cement, and project managers were yelling commands through megaphones. It was a loud, chaotic mess.

We were quickly detoured to the side entrance of the hotel to check in. I remember getting off the elevator on the tenth floor, walking into my room, and sliding the balcony door open to a beautiful view of the Pacific Ocean. When I stepped out, I was captivated by the glorious sunset and the calming sounds of rolling waves hitting the sand. Five minutes before, in the same hotel, it was hard to avoid the construction chaos, the diesel exhaust, and the stress of the noise. My address on the map hadn’t changed, yet I was experiencing something completely different.

What changed? My elevation. My perspective changed. I had been elevated above the noise, and I was able to see beyond the chaos to something beautiful. That tells me that you can be experiencing chaos all around you and simultaneously experience peace, contentment, and joy. Your problems don’t have to go away for you to experience peace. You can experience peace when you elevate your perspective.

We all come into seasons in our life that seem to take the wind out of our sails. It gets chaotic, and the pressure seems overwhelming. The addiction seems unbeatable. The financial burden seems too heavy to carry. The doctor’s report just got worse. We feel surrounded and defeated. In those difficult seasons, you have to elevate your perspective, see beyond your current problem, and hope again in God’s promises.

When you feel overwhelmed by what’s coming against you, the apostle Paul says, “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6–7 NLT). You might not know that when Paul wrote those words, he was sitting in a Roman prison cell and his life was in the balance. Peace isn’t the absence of problems; it’s the awareness of God’s promise and presence in your life.

I’m not saying that we should ignore reality. The challenges are real, and we need to face them. Faith doesn’t ignore the facts; it sees beyond them. Faith helps you see beyond your circumstances. Faith is knowing that the God who is for you is greater than the obstacle that is in front of you.

In other words, give your circumstances a glance, and give His promise your stare. When you do this, you will begin to experience His peace. The more attention and focus you give to His promise, the more you will experience His peace. It’s time to stop giving your problem more attention than His promise. It’s time to stop talking about the size of your problem and start talking about the size of your God.

Don’t go around thinking and believing that you will never reach your dreams because of a difficulty you are facing. Don’t let other people convince you that it’s over, that you will never amount to anything, You have to see beyond what’s in front of you and beyond the limitations some people have put on you. Get in agreement with God about who you are and what He says about your life. When you begin to do this, you will begin to experience the abundant life He’s designed for you to live. Or should I say, “Livin’ the dream.”

See beyond the Pain

I’ve found that when I get a change of perspective on a problem and begin to see beyond what’s in front of me, I see that God has a purpose even in what is very painful in the moment. Behind every obstacle is an opportunity. Maybe you are facing something painful right now—a difficult situation with your health, a painful season in your family or at work. I want to encourage you that pain never travels alone; it always brings things along with it. If you shift your perspective, you will begin to see that growth, favor, blessings, and other opportunities are attached to these painful seasons and situations. In fact, there are times when closed doors that are painful can be just as important to your purpose and destiny as open doors.

Football has always been my passion. As I blew my birthday cake candles out as a young boy, my one wish was always to become the leading rusher in the NFL. It was my deepest dream, and my brothers and neighbor kids pushed me and fueled that fire. Growing up, we would play tackle football every weekend at the park around the corner from my house. Most of the boys were older and stronger than me, so I learned at an early age how to juke, spin, and run for my life. On Saturdays, we all showed up with our “uniforms” on, which typically were old tattered college or NFL jerseys of our gridiron heroes. Those formidable Saturdays in the fall were where the dream to play pro football was birthed in me, and I couldn’t be talked out of it.

My dad coached my first years of Pop Warner football, and he was the best coach I ever had. I had played running back since I was a kid running away from my brothers on Saturdays, so carrying the ball came naturally. Middle school football seemed to fly by, and by the time I reached the summer before my senior year of high school, I was getting invitation letters from college football programs. Every day, I checked our mailbox for campus invites, excited to plan my next visit and map out my future. This was before MaxPreps and social media. Recruiting was done predominantly in close proximity to the universities. My dream was to play for Michigan State or Wisconsin. I was locked in, working out every day, and getting ready for my senior year under the Friday night lights, when I would hopefully stamp my future at one of these programs.

After three games, I was leading the district in rushing yards and touchdowns, including five in one game. I was leading the district in rushing yards and touchdowns, including five in one game. I was feeling great, and the college scouts’ interest in me grew by the week. However, the fourth game of the season felt off from the beginning. It was a back-and-forth, hard-fought first half. When I walked into our locker room at halftime, I had two black eyes from my helmet getting ripped off, and I realized I had a broken thumb. Nonetheless, I had over one hundred yards rushing, and we had the lead.

Halftime concluded, and following the kickoff our coach called “28 Outside Zone,” which was my favorite play. I was running at full speed when I got the ball, and when I attempted to make a cut on the wet grass, a defender put his helmet right into the side of my knee and I dropped. Everything from that moment went into slow motion. I knew something was severely wrong with my knee. I had never had a serious injury before, but I could tell this was bad. I couldn’t move my leg.

I don’t remember every detail of that moment, but I remember that my dad ran out on the field, helped me get up, and walked me to the bench. He sat there with me as the trainers examined my knee. I just sat there in tears with my helmet still on, coming to the realization that my football season was probably over.

I soon learned that I had torn the ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) and MCL (medial collateral ligament) in my knee, which required reconstructive surgery. I was devastated. All the hard work. All the countless workouts, practices, and other sacrifices I had made to see my dream a reality… all for nothing. My childhood dream and hopes for the future felt gone.

At seventeen years old, I had a fight of faith on my hands. I spent many nights during my senior year wondering what my future held. There were many nights of questioning God about where He was that night when I was lying on the wet field at Guilford High’s football stadium.

Ever been there? Have you ever had the feeling you get when you invest so much time and effort into something and it doesn’t turn out how you imagined? Your business? Your career? Your health? A relationship? You felt certain that something was right, it’s what you were supposed to do, everything was going great, and then the door slams shut. It doesn’t work out.

It’s easy in moments like those to think it’s the end based on what we see and think and feel. But in those moments we are also given the opportunity to exercise our faith as at no other time. We can choose to believe that God is going to somehow work everything out for our good. It’s easy to have faith when all is well, but what moves Heaven is when you choose to remain in faith in spite of things not working out the way you want.

By the grace of God, though it was very difficult, I chose to see my situation through the lens of faith. During that winter, I began to believe that God was going to somehow work the devastating injury for my good. He was going to bring beauty from ashes. I believed that there must be a way for this to become an opportunity for me to grow.

Something else really crazy happened as well. Years later, it’s still hard for me to explain. But late in that football season, as I watched from the sideline with crutches, God began to shift my heart’s desire from football to ministry. Becoming a pastor wasn’t something I had ever really thought about. I didn’t spend much time in church when I was growing up, and I didn’t know much about what a pastor did. But something began to stir in me throughout that winter as I rehabbed my knee. I started to become passionate about the idea of helping people experience the goodness of God and becoming everything God created them to be.

Eventually my knee healed, and college football was still an option on the table. But I chose to turn down those opportunities even though those closest to me thought I was crazy. I knew in my heart that God had purposed me to pursue the ministry and study to become a pastor. I didn’t know what it was all going to mean, but I knew I needed to take the step toward it. Now I find myself pastoring and leading in Lakewood Church in Houston, one of the largest churches in America, doing something I never thought would be possible.

Looking back, as hard as that time was in my life, I can thank God for that closed door. In the moment, I didn’t see it, and I didn’t understand it, but I knew that He was up to something. I don’t believe He caused the injury, but He gave me the grace to get through it, and He used it to get me to my destiny. He used it to shift my mind and heart beyond what I saw. It was as if God had hit Pause on what I wanted to do and redirected me to what I was made to do. He knew ultimately where I would be the happiest and most fulfilled.

There was purpose in the pain; it just took me some time to see it and to believe it. It was a blessing in disguise. God will never allow a door to close without already having a bigger and better door ready to open for you. Sometimes you just need to have the right perspective to see it.

See beyond the Opposition

In 2 Kings 6, the house of the prophet Elisha and his servant had been surrounded by a great enemy army in the night. When the servant rose early in the morning and went outside, there were troops, horses, and chariots everywhere. “Oh, sir, what will we do now?” the young man cried to Elisha.

“Don’t be afraid,” Elisha answered, “for there are more on our side than on theirs.” Then he prayed, “O Lord, open his eyes and let him see.”

Let’s pump the brakes for a second here. Obviously, the servant’s eyes were wide open. He could clearly point out the fact that they were about to be destroyed. So what Elisha is really praying here is: “Lord, help him see this from a different perspective. Help him to see beyond the facts, beyond what he sees in the natural.” Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and when he looked this time, he saw that the hillside around the house was filled with horses and chariots of fire.

The servant had seen half of the reality. In the natural, they were overwhelmingly outnumbered, up against a wall. But when Elisha prayed for him, his vision was elevated, and he saw the angelic forces of Heaven positioned to fight for them. He got a new perspective, and that new perspective completely changed his posture and attitude. As with the servant, God wants you to know that there are more for you than there are against you.

You may be up against a wall at work or in your finances. It’s real. You may be facing a broken relationship that seems beyond restoration or facing an obstacle that’s overwhelming and you can’t see a way out. I know how hard it is to see beyond it in the natural. I’m asking you to open your eyes of faith as the prophet Elisha did and to see beyond your current obstacle and see that God is on your side and He’s fighting for you.

After you get informed of a problem and face the reality in front of you, there comes a point when you have to choose a new perspective by exercising your faith and trust in God. This means that you say, “Lord, I’m up against this giant, but I believe You are in control. I didn’t expect this negative doctor’s report, but I believe that You are working all things for my good. People are gossiping and spreading lies about me at work, but I declare that no weapon formed against me will prosper. I don’t know how I’m going to pay next month’s rent, but I believe You will meet all my needs according to Your riches in glory. I’ve made a mistake that I’m not proud of, but I declare that I am a victor and not a victim, and therefore my story ends in victory.”

The obstacle may or may not change immediately, but your elevation can. Your perspective of your situation can change. The obstacle may not move, but your hope and trust in God’s promises can lift your faith and cause you to see beyond your circumstances and have hope that Jesus will bring you out and over what is in front of you.

The Scripture says, “With our eyes fixed on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2 NCB). The assumption is that we all have things that call for our stare, our fixed attention, and permanent focus. The giants, the obstacles, and the challenges we face are real and deserve acknowledgment and a glance, but if you want to overcome them and experience true peace and joy, you have to look beyond the giant in front of you and fix your focus on Jesus.

Following Jesus doesn’t necessarily change the circumstances of your life, but following Jesus gives you a new perspective of your circumstances. More important, following Jesus gives you a new perspective of yourself and your destiny.

That means that the mistake you made doesn’t disqualify you. That means that the divorce or the illness or the job loss is not the end of your story. Those things could mean your story is over if you are the author of your story, but you’re not. God is. So shift your perspective today. Stop staring at your failures, your past, your hurts, and the giants in front of you, and turn your attention and focus to God, who is the author and finisher of your story.

It’s time to shift your perspective and start livin’ the dream.