The Pain and Beauty of Entering a Dream

 

 

After our week ‘leap of faith’ to follow God to a big city hotel, God continued to hold us there for almost 2 weeks. It was scary. It was uncomfortable. It was beautiful…

 

I felt like Abraham having to take so many faith tests at once. Putting my daughter on the altar to trust God to keep His promise. Following Jesus to where He led us to go, without knowing how we would survive. 

 

Yesterday morning, all the time that we had paid for the room came to an end, and I had been waiting for God to do what He promised to do, and to supply us for the next place, according to His personal promise that He made before this journey. 

 

That promise, of God to be our support, our HOME, and our food, has been the foundation of everything. It has been like the seeds of love that would replace the fears that I had my whole life. 

 

The night before our room coverage ended, God showed me a picture of an ant trap that is often used to eliminate those bugs from a home. There is something within the ant trap that the ants love to eat, so it attracts all the ants to come eat the “poisonous” food, so that they can all be killed at once. 

 

The Lord showed me that He was going to take me through some things that would draw out many fear-based, and negative ways of thinking, so that He could replace it with love instead. 

 

I was starting to get really scared about what we would do in the city with nowhere to go and no money. It took all my energy to focus on God’s promises and not look at how things seemed to be going. 

 

I had been holding out on being able to stay longer, but I was running out of time, so I started to pack the room up, while praying for God to show me what to do. It was about 3 hours before check out, and God showed up with the rescue money to cover us for His promise of food and refuge. 

 

The ‘lack/fear based’ mindset that had been installed in me since childhood immediately wanted to hoard away what God had sent and go somewhere that was super inexpensive, to make the funds last as long as possible. 

 

However, God was telling VERY SPECIFICALLY which hotel to go to, since the one we were at was all booked out. It was crazy to do what God was asking me to do, and I was weeping and crying in BOTH fear and anger. At the same time, I was overwhelmed with gratitude that God sent us the rescue money for refuge and food.

 

I was angry that God was asking me to do something that I didn’t want to do AGAIN, and I was afraid that He was bringing us to die in that place. Yet, God has shown me the bitter and hard way, that we are only protected in this journey, when we do things EXACTLY as He leads. Only obedience brings the fulfillment of promise. 

 

At this point, I didn’t know if God was trying to kill me or if I just wanted to die and have this be over. It hurts to be delivered of fear and the lack mindset, but this one must be confronted by acting according to the promise and not how it currently looks or feels. 

 

It is absolutely imperative to be stretched beyond all comfort. There is no comfort zone when entering a fulfilled promise. It doesn’t matter how many “prophetic counseling” sessions that you have…if you don’t step out and face your fears with complete surrender to God’s promise and total surrender, nothing will change. 

 

We had to walk with our big, heavy bags to the hotel in the 93 degrees heat from the parking garage. When in the city, there are only two types of people loaded down with bags and luggage—the homeless or the travelers. 

 

As I walked with sweat and tears to my death (at least it felt that way) I was facing so many fears of being homeless. I kept having to decided who I would identify with at that moment. Did I feel like I was homeless? Or did I feel like I was a traveler, supported by the Sovereign Lord and held by His all-powerful word? 

 

Completely exhausted, we finally made it to the hotel and there was a staggeringly long line to check in. We were clustered together with so many people, and I had more insecurities come out, like ants pouring in to eat and then die…

 

All the people were dressed in expensive, nice clothing. Then there was us….completely in ragged clothes. Because of the hardship of our journey and having to carry everything that we owned, I only have a couple of outfits, and they are not very nice looking. 

 

So many bad feelings were coming against me. I felt ashamed for using the money that was given to me for refuge on such an expensive place. It was like I was given a choice….to please God, or to please a person that I love. Obey God, or obey people?

 

I was feeling like I was not “good enough” to be in that place with beautiful people dressed in the finest clothes. I felt like Cinderella dressed in rags, while dreaming of the promised castle life. 

 

There were so many things that God was pulling out of me in that confrontation of His promise coming against the “low level” thoughts that I had been unknowingly holding inside. 

 

It hurt beyond words, and at the same time, it was breathtakingly beautiful. God gave us a room that overlooked the water for only 3 nights, with only a promise to hold us up after that. 

 

I don’t know how we will cover what is next, or how we will eat. I just have to trust God to keep His promise, as He always does. Come Monday morning, when this room ends, we will see what God has planned through this path of pain interwoven with beauty. 

 

He said that this whole part of the journey is like Elijah pouring water over the sacrifice, to show His power to save our life. He had to push me do this, because it is something I never would have done…and something that I never wanted to do. 

 

I am comfortable in the places tailored to poverty. I like them. I feel like I fit in, and I feel like I am doing “right” by man when I live in a lowly way. But the journey is about God taking me into His promise of an abundance, rich, and beautiful life—-it is my Cinderella promise from Jesus. 

 

Staying in the place that I am comfortable with is not the path that God wanted me on. He wanted to directly confront those blockages that I had in my identity and mindset that were an enemy to His promise. 

 

God has been teaching me how to identify with His promise on all levels. He is showing me to how feel like I look the way that He promised, and how to feel what it is like to be all that He promised. 

 

It hurts. Having roots of fear pulled out, so that love can fill those dry, barren places, is not enjoyable at all. However, if we never walk through the fears, then we never get to truly experience the intentional love of God and His ever-present words coming to the surface as a rescue of love. 

 

Yesturday, when I was standing in that long line in the beautiful hotel, I became aware that my thoughts were manifesting as shame, lack, fear, doubt, insecurities, etc. 

 

I decided to just take a breath and close my eyes. I imagined that I was dressed in beautiful clothes, and that I looked the way that God promised me. I imagined that I already had the financial freedom that God promised me, and instantly….the negative feelings were melted into happiness and joy. 

 

The thing is….we all want God to fulfill those promises, but we need to allow Him to change us at the of our identity first. Otherwise, like an overweight person having surgery to be thin, and then gaining it all back because their mind never changed…it is pointless. 

 

The miracle happens on the inside first and then it is seen outwardly, like a butterfly. When I first started this journey with God more than 7 years ago, I was a mess in the beginning. 

 

I would have only an hour before checkout of a hotel with no money and no car. Instead of rising up with faith and hope in God’s promise, I laid upon the cold, bathroom tiles and wept to the point of nearly puking. 

 

I wanted to die more than anything back then. It was too painful. Yet, I didn’t see then, that God was preparing me to be able to keep the new life of blessings and beauty that He was giving to me. 

 

If God did everything He promised back then, I would have never been able to keep that in my life. I was always negative. I was thinking negative, and feeling negative. I claimed to have faith—but my actions proved that my faith was in my fears more than God’s words. If you want to know what you are putting faith in, or where you abide, do a feeling check. How do you feel? 

 

Do you feel love, joy, and gratitude? Then you are abiding God’s promise. You are abiding in faith. You are abiding in love. You are abiding in faith. But if you feel bad, then you are not abiding in love, you are not abiding in faith, and you are not abiding in God’s promise.

 

So, beautiful friend, trust the process. Obey everything that God tells you to do, because there is a reason for everything. God has a very detailed path planned out, and all you have to do is follow Him and do what He says. 

 

When we got our room assignment yesterday for the new place, I looked up the meaning of the number that we got, and it meant: “to carry the message through”. I have come too far to back out now. 

 

This is the final chapter of our journey, and God has a breathtaking, ending that will be like setting off fireworks in the sky. His love will be seen, that much I can count on. However long the last chapter may be, I am choosing to trust the love story God has written for me. 

 

Before God gave me the promise and said to follow Him to the place of “tangible hopes”, He told me that this was my Cinderella story of His intentional love to save my life and give me the dreams that He placed in my heart. 

 

Giving Him my life, also means surrendering to Him my mind. It means laying down those “lack based” beliefs at His feet and allowing Him to confront every negative belief with His love and abundance. 

 

My life is no longer my own, I have given it to God. That was my vow. I vowed to do what He said, to think the way He told me to think, to go where He tells me to go, and to spend what He tells me to spend. 

 

Because I was not supposed to live. I was not supposed to survive this. But Jesus picked me up from drowning in the curses of death and poverty, to set me into love and blessings. 

 

From rags to riches, from shame to honor, from death to life. It is a story of the vows that Jesus gave to me, bringing a transformation MIRACLE of the greatest love I’ve ever known—or even hoped to know. 

 

I know that the pain of facing these fears to follow Him will be something that I am so thankful for in the end. Since God has saved my life already, so many times, I have vowed to give Him mine. 

 

I love you, thank you for traveling with me into this journey of an unforgettable change. 

 

Dannette ♡

 

 

Audio Version:

https://youtu.be/hmDU6vhyJqQ

 

https://diamondsfromthedust.com/