Imagine the teddy bear that became your most prized possession when you were a child. Remember how much you loved it? Remember how you took it everywhere?

So much so that while you're getting ready for bed, you recount the day's events by how dirty and messy it was. There's a bit of mud on it from when you dragged it through the dirt and a couple holes in it from when it snagged on something sharp. But you didn't care because it was yours and you loved it for a reason.

Do you remember how tightly you held onto it everytime your Mom or Dad tried to take it away from you to give it a wash or fix it up a little? Maybe you can even hear yourself scream bloody murder and playing tug-of-war as your parents are equally frustrated with you not listening to them just as you are when they don't let you and your prized possession be.

But if only we had listened to them instead of holding tightly to our messy, gross teddy bear, we would have understood that they weren't trying to take it away forever. They mean only to clean and fix it up from the way we distorted it. Our parents were the ones that gave us the teddy bear in the first place, why would they take away something we love so much in the first place?

Often times, we're a lot like a child when it comes to our dreams.

We hold onto it with our tight, white knuckles no matter how hard it gets. We fight God when he says no, yet become surprised when the world tells us the exact same answer.

We have had these dreams to hold onto for so long that we don't want to see how distorted our dreams have become since we've first had them. So much so that we've forgotten who gave it to us in the first place.

You see, God isn't telling us to let go of our dreams and give up forever on them. It wouldn't make sense for him to have instilled those desires in our hearts in the first place.

We've become so childish in pursuing our dreams that we refuse to help with the determination that we can do it on our own so instead, we end up dragging our dreams through the mud and letting it snag on something sharp.

But when we go to God with our dreams in open hands, we're not giving it up. We're giving it to Him so that he can restore our desires. That way, these aren't just our desires. They are His dreams for us that become ours. He takes them and makes them into God-sized dreams worth embracing again.

"And to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen."

Ephesians 3:20-21, NIV

When we stop being childish and come to him with open hands, we experience our dreams in a way that we would have never imagined.