Delayed Dreams: Making Peace with the Pace of Your Life
Chrystal Hurst teaches women that delayed dreams are about timing, not denial. She offers practices like journaling, vision boards, and breaking big goals into micro-steps, plus the importance of finding a dream buddy and community support to stay patient while you wait.
Chapters
Have you ever felt like you've had to hit pause on your dreams? Now, I know for most of us the answer to that question is going to be yes, and I want to challenge you to tell me in the comments if that is true. If the answer is yes, what dream are you currently— if you are currently pressing pause on? Okay, have you ever had to press pause on your dreams? And be specific, what are you currently pressing pause on? If it's a past and you're like, that was in the past, but I remember when I had to press pause, then tell me it was a past one. But I want to know if it's current, present, or past, what was the dream that you had to press pause on? What do you do? Because this is, this is the key thing that messes us up. What do you do when it seems like everyone else is moving forward except you, and you're the one who's stuck? And should I try to keep showing up in faith? You know, like, is it done? Should I let it go? Is the dream— is time gone by? How do I keep showing up in faith when it seems like my goals are simply at a standstill? If any of these questions are questions that you have ever asked yourself, you know, have I ever had to hit pause? You know, is everybody else— do they have something I don't have? Do I keep pressing forward or do I sit here? If you've ever asked yourself any of those questions, let me just tell you something. You are not alone. I think everybody— in fact, I know everybody has to press pause on their dreams and their life because this is the way life works. We cannot assume that our plan will go as planned because life, life's. And often the word of God tells us that his plans are not our plans. His thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways are not our ways. In fact, Ephesians 3:20 says he actually enjoys doing things that are exceedingly above and beyond anything that we could ask or think. So even our best plans, even our best plans, he wants to do better than that. And then often there are just some things in life we don't see coming. We just don't see them coming. And it causes us to have to derail, get off the track, take another turn than we anticipated taking. Some of those are painful, some of those are delightful, many times they're unexpected. But when you find yourself in the place where you've had to get off of the track of your dreams, I want you to first know that you're not alone, you're not odd, this happens to everybody, okay? But I wanna give you some practical insight today for what do you do when that's you? What do you do when that's you? How do you handle it and how do you move forward? Okay, here's something that you need to understand is true, right? Disappointment can make you question not just your plans, but your purpose. And that's the problem. When your dreams are on pause, it's not just that the dream is on pause, your life is on pause. Am I doing the right thing? Am I in the right place? Is God on my side? Why are things always happening like this for me? Am I doing something wrong? It'll make you question who you are and what you're doing. But I want you to hear me in this. Your delay of a dream that you have does not mean denial. And I don't mean denial of that dream. It doesn't mean denial of your life. Because what if the dream that you have or the timing of that dream that you have is not the dream that God has for you? We've gotta give God permission to dream dreams for us, to have a dream for us that we don't yet have. And a part of spending time in God's word, a part of prayer, a part of learning to walk with God is that you've gotta be able to hear what he's thinking. And usually what God is thinking is different what you're thinking. He's got to have room to write in the margins of your life and interrupt your plans and your dreams. All discouragement doesn't have to mean that you live defeated. There's a scripture, Habakkuk 2:3, and this is what it says: Though it lingers, wait for it. It will certainly come and will not delay. So here's what that means for me. There's so many layers here. Number one, when it says it will not delay, I'm like, yes it will. Do you know how many times in my life things have been delayed or not on my timeline? Timeline. But the question is, whose timeline are we talking about? If it's not delayed, if God is always on time— that's what the old folks say at church— if you are feeling like it's delayed, then maybe your timeline is not the right one. Because if it's lingering, maybe God needs to position you or to grow you up to intersect with what you want, or don't even know you want yet, with the right time, the right opportunity, the right person, the right experience, the right place, the right, the right situation. And God is the only person who knows all the things. So often we're disappointed because our timeline is different. Now, I've had seasons where, you know, I feel like I'm just flying through them. Things are going, they're clicking, they're going the way I want them to go, they're being laid out according to my plans, my bullet-pointed list. And then there are seasons where, y'all, I can't even seem to get where I'm supposed to go on time because it took me 5, 5 extra minutes that I planned, maybe sometimes 15, to either get my compression hose on or try to find one without holes in because that was, that was the whole thing this weekend. I had so many holes in my compression hose, and I was like, why am I late? Because I couldn't get my compression hose on. Sometimes that's life. It's the simplest and the smallest things that seem to interrupt, and you're like, I cannot believe that I can't get past this, or I can't move forward in this, or I don't have the energy to get this done, or I still haven't completed this off of my list, or I still haven't grown in this area. It can be the small things, but whether you're in a season where you feel like things are clicking or whether nothing is clicking at all, your timing may not be God's timing. In life, there are fast lanes and there are slow lanes. And guess what? When you get on the freeway, you don't get to determine what the speed limit is. You get on the freeway and you look, is this 55, 65, 75? When you are driving in, in streets in your neighborhood, you don't get to decide. Is— you have to look, is it 25, 35, or 45? Somebody else has set the speed. And the problem for most of us in our life is we feel delayed or we feel denied because we had a speed limit in our mind. God is out here in these streets setting the speed limit for you. That means you have to pay attention. And if you have to move slower towards a dream that you thought you would have arrived at by now, maybe he's trying to keep you safe. Maybe he's trying to keep you, uh, in, in a place where you can enjoy the scenery. Maybe he's trying to keep you in a place where you're not burning up gas or ruining the vehicle you're in. Maybe he knows the speed at which you should move through your life better than you do. Recently I had a flat tire. It was a morning, y'all, where I just wanted to give up my life. I literally did. I had been in a very taxing situation personally. We'd had some, um, some, some important medical things happen, and I had been going doctor to doctor. I mean, stretching out all these extra things in my schedule. I'm taking care of my husband, taking care of my kids, taking care of me. And y'all, my schedule was just out of control. And I literally had gotten up early to try to get everything right so that the day would go well. And I was in my car going to get these braids in my hair. Praise God for the braids, and I don't have to do my hair. And I was thinking, okay, finally a day that's going to be good. No lie, I am one exit from getting off to go to my braider lady. Y'all, flat tire. And it's flat tire not just, you know, where I could easily pull over into a nice easement. No, I'm flat tire where the— where there's an on-ramp from the, the previous exit coming onto the freeway, that little triangle where the right lane matches the oncoming freeway like this, that triangle, I was sitting right there, just a sitting duck. And I'm thinking, okay, this boy can't drive, he's not home. This boy isn't, you know, can't drive, he's in college. This boy's at school. Okay, my husband's at his doctor's appointment. Who's gonna come get me? And I literally was just sitting there completely overwhelmed because flat tire, I got to get to this lady for braids because I got this stuff to do this weekend, my hair needs to be done. Like, my brain in that moment was overwhelmed. This is what happens because something unexpected happens in our life that changes our timeline, we get overwhelmed. And, and I literally had to just pause, take a deep breath, and think, who else can I call? There is another option here. It's not the option I planned, but there is another option. And it all got taken care of, and I kind of had to calm down. This is what happens, y'all. A flat tire, a detour, something unplanned happens in your life, and you get stuck in the whirlwind of that moment. You get stuck in the whirlwind of delay. This is not supposed to happen. I wasn't supposed to be sitting here. I don't know what to do from here. How am I going to get out of this? You got to take a deep breath and go, okay, what's the next step? And then I had to pick up the phone. I called my brother. He was willing to come help me, but I said, you can come help me if I really need it, but just help me to think through it. Do I leave my car here? Do I not? Do I have somebody pick me up? Do I not? How is somebody gonna sit with the car when— he had to help me work through my plan. And sometimes when you're feeling the cacophony of confusion around disappointment, delay, and the expected. You just need to pick up the phone, call a friend, talk it out, work it through. Sometimes working it through looks like you keeping a journal page for yourself. A journal can be like a speedometer for yourself. Writing slows you down. This is a really good example of something that helps me. Sometimes the delay has a name. It's a season. You have to say, you know what, this is my motherhood season. It's not a delay, it's not disappointment. I prayed for these children. This is a season of this. Okay, I really want to get married. The dating pool is jacked. Okay, but I'm— and I'm I'm trying to— I'm tired of being broke. This is my educational season. Sometimes if you'll, if you'll name your season instead of seeing what you don't have, you will see what you do have. So journaling is a key. Calling for help is a key. Naming your season is a key. And then the last thing that I think is you can give your dream— instead of it being delayed, give it a sabbatical. Say, okay, my dream is— it's not here yet, but that's because it's currently on sabbatical. You want to create like a dream holding tank. My mother used to have a list of things, and she would tell me when I was frustrated, when I was raising small children, um, when I was always broke, or when I was single parenting, she would just say, Chrystal, just write it down. Just keep a list. Keep a bucket list, because the seasons of your life will change, and then you just don't want to forget what you wanted. Just keep a list. Some of y'all do that by having a vision board. I'm really excited about the plan for our 2026 planners, because instead of one page for visioning. We're going to have a double spread for visioning for those of us who like to do that. I, I just think it's important for you to have a place to keep your dreams, but in a holding tank. They're not in the trash, they're just set aside, beautifully set aside. Isaiah 55:12 says, you will go out in joy and you will be led in peace. And I want to say, you can have that experience even if the going is slow. So the first thing I want you to understand, that disappointment is not always related to being denied. It's just delayed or slowed down. You are pressing pause. It has nothing to do often with your purpose or who you are, or God doesn't like you, or it'll never happen. It's just the speed limit has shifted, and you've got to do what you can to agree with the current speed that God has you in. The same thing— and I want to talk more about a point I just made— is keep your dream in sight. Keep you got your dream insight, even if you can't move toward it today, don't forget about it. Just like I was telling you that my mother told me to keep a list, she was like, basically, don't forget about it. Keep your hopes and dreams alive. I talk about this in my book She's Still There. In Habakkuk 2:2, the Bible says, write the vision and make it plain on tablets that the person who runs may read it. The idea there is that if you want somebody, including yourself, to know what's in your head, to know what is in your heart, to know what the desires are, you've got to write it down. Because here's what will happen in your life and in the life of the people that are in your sphere. We running, y'all. We out here running. We are out here doing the most, checking the boxes, uh, making sure we take care of our to-dos, trying to keep up with our budgets, keep our house clean, make sure we don't gain 50 pounds. We are out here trying to make sure that our, our numbers are good when we go to the doctor. We're trying to make sure we produce at work. We're trying to make sure we're a good friend. We want to show up for our family members. We want— we don't want to live in a pigsty. We're trying to get 9 hours of sleep. There's a lot going on. And often you're going to find yourself in running seasons. And when you're running, you have to know, you have to remember what the dream is. There are seasons where they're planting seasons. And so you write on sticky notes or in your, in your, in your journal, and you, you write it, um, on a 3x5 card. You keep it in front of you. You take a piece of paper and you fold it up and you put it in a keepsake box. You tell your secret secrets to a friend. You hold them. Carefully and honorably. But you want to write it down because you will— this is the thing— you will forget. I guarantee you. And what'll happen is in a later season of your life, you'll see someone else having it, someone else doing it, someone else experiencing it, and you'll say, you know what, I never actually got back to that. Because in the busyness and the running of life, it'll fall by the wayside. So write it down so you don't forget. Now, I, I am a notebook person, y'all. I've got a stack. Can you bring me the stack over here real quick? I mean, one is, you know, all these notebooks and journals and calendars and all those things, you know, I tell myself it's a business expense. But you do realize that even if something is a business expense, you still have to pay for it. Somebody help me, help me right now. But anyway, I'm a sucker for a good journal. My favorite still to this day— in fact, one day if the Lord blesses, the, the Full Circle Planner and the whole Own Your Life situation situation and whatever that will end up becoming if he allows— with 145% tariffs, don't get me started on that— if he allows this to actually grow and become a full-blown product line that is self-supporting and self-sustaining and all that, I would love to have Moleskine-like journals, kind of like Passion Planner-like journals, blank books that are kind of bendy and flexible. And I would love that because I just love a blank page. And one of the favorite things in my life is to just write things down. Now, I use my planner, y'all, and I do a lot of intentional, purposeful writing in there. I think I got one here. Yep, we sold out of them, but they're here. We still got the black quarterly ones if you need some, or the PDFs. Those are great too. But the reality is, is sometimes you just need to free write. Um, there is, uh, The Artist's Way, uh, Cameron— Joy Cameron, I think her name is. Um, but The Artist's Way, for And she talks about morning pages, just getting up in the morning and writing whatever's on your mind. Don't stop writing for 3 minutes, just write. 3 minutes is a long time to write without stopping, but you'd be surprised what comes up and bubbles out, out of your mind, out of your soul, just writing things down. I'm a sucker for a blank book to write down what I want, what I need, or what I'm doing today. So these planners that I've produced are because for years I've been writing it down. I have a box full of 3x5 bead notebooks, smaller Moleskine journals before I graduated to the extra large. Spiral notebooks, all kinds of things where I have just been writing things down. And every now and again, I will go and open up one of those old notebooks. What was I doing? What did I say I want? What did I say was important? And just because I wrote it down, I'm able to reconnect with something I said in a previous season of my life so that I don't forget, so that I don't forget who I am, what I want, and what I'm here to do. Because the seasons can and will strip you. They will, they will. It's like a river in a current. Life gets crazy, and I don't ever want to forget what God put in my heart. You got to treat your dreams like a savings account, okay? You gotta invest in it. Sometimes you invest small. That's investing in the stock market. If you dollar cost average, which is investing a little bit over time all the time, you know, these movements are unnerving, but, but they're not like you put a chunk of money in at one time and then it all went down. A little bit over time is the way to go. And your dreams and your ideas and your desires are like that. You put them away. Sometimes it's just a few cents, sometimes it's just a few sentences, and you protect it from withdrawals. But you do look at it. You do look at your statements. You do look at— you are aware of what is there. Yeah, I still get paper statements. I know that the time is coming when they're gonna make us pay for the paper. I understand that. But I want to tell you, I do that because that is my reminder to look. You've got to have a reminder in your life to look at your dreams. And so maybe that's once a quarter, you have a personal sabbatical, or maybe you set aside time just maybe once a year to look through some old notebooks. Maybe you put on a dream board playlist and you just sit for a second on a weekend and think, what do I want for my life this week? What is important to me this week? Don't forget what you need or what you want. Keeping a micro moves list, like I was telling you, like dollar cost averaging and investing is a little bit over time. Sometimes You don't want to take all your money out at once. You want to withdraw just a little bit. Like, every dream can have a one step. And one— this month I'm gonna do one step. That's what the Full Circle Planner is all about. It's breaking your big dreams and your big goals down into small steps. So like, for example, if one day I want to, uh, write a book, a small step, a deposit, uh, on my dream, or withdrawal on my dream depending on the way you look at it, is that I'm gonna read this month one book about the topic I want to write about. Or you know what, I, I I need a group of women around me. I don't have the women I need around me. I dream one day that I will have a close group of knit friends. Okay, great. Uh, the deposit I'm making this month is that I'm gonna find one mentor. I'm gonna find one mentor. I'm gonna take one person to lunch. I don't know if they're it or not. I'm gonna have a phone call with one person, but I'm, I'm gonna build my group of women, my sister circle, slowly. I, I need to build momentum slowly because if you, if you try to do it all at once, again, that's meat. That's where the disappointment comes in. So another thing that I would love to tell you is get a dream buddy. Like, get a friend, someone who wants to dream too. They don't have to have the same dreams, and maybe y'all just tell each other your dreams. It could be that simple. Or maybe once a year you have a vision boarding session together. That's what the summit is that's coming up for our live event. It's gathering in a room to have women gather together to focus on their dreams. Proverbs 13:12 says that hope deferred can make your heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. You can't have a longing fulfilled if you don't ever give that longing air. You have to even admit that there's something that you want. Sometimes dreaming big looks like taking a very small step, and it's super important for you to keep your dream in sight, even if all you can do is take small steps towards it. One of the best things about the summer is it gives you plenty of time to get ready and to prepare for the fall. What's coming in the fall, you might ask? Oh, let me tell you. The Sister Circle Live, October 17th and 18th. It's an opportunity to gather with me in Dallas and some friends that I'd love to introduce you to. Great teaching, great podcast, great workshops, all designed to help you focus on living intentionally as a woman of faith. It's never too early to prepare for the year to come, so we use October as a way to start to get focused and intentional so that you can make decisions about what you want to do as life continues to move forward. So we're going to talk about what it means to make your mark and what it means to make your mark specifically in the area of your finances, in your abundant mindset, and getting your affairs in order. So super practical, super inspirational, and super fun. October 17th and 18th, the Sister Circle Live. I'd love to see you in the room. Register today. And if you save up a bunch of money in the bank account, who cares if you put it all in on one day or if you made little moves over time? At least you're moving in the right direction. Third thing, okay, the first thing, because I want to recap what I said. Disappointment is often delay, and it's about timeline. The second thing is keep your dream in sight. You want to keep it in front of you, writing it down. The way you write it down isn't important, but just make sure you're saving your dreams slowly over time. Okay, the third thing is you got to give yourself grace in changing seasons. We wear so many hats, y'all. Women are always doing all the things, but Ecclesiastes chapter 3 says there is a time for everything. My mother wrote a book called Seasons of a Woman's Life because she remembered being frustrated, and she would always tell me and other women that she mentored, it's just a season. Like, don't get too down, your life is not passing you by, it's just a season. And I know, y'all, what it's like to have everybody depending on me and for me to feel like, oh my gosh, when will I ever get a break? My kids, my husband, ministry, my parents. You will learn to say in various seasons No to the things that don't fit in the season. You will learn, you can learn how to set boundaries and have margin in your life. You can learn to juggle tasks without being distracted and practicing ADD, whether you're actually ADD or not. You can say no with love because if you're going to give yourself grace, you're going to have to communicate to other people where the grace lines are. Uh, David Allen, in a book that I really love called Getting Things Done, because I'm a productivity geek, that's why I got a productivity course, he said you can do anything but you can't do do everything. So you've got to give yourself grace in the changing seasons of your life to say, what am I not going to do? And sometimes that's because you're working on your dream. Sometimes that's because you're not working on your dream, and you won't be able to work on your dream until you get through the things you have to do. You've got to have a clear vision of what should fit in your life and then draw a line around the season, because grace for your season, it's not a weakness, it's wisdom. Wisdom. Grace for your season is not a weakness, it's wisdom. So here's some practical things that you can do in this season. You can create— just looking at your life, if you look at last week or last month, look at everything you did, and then you can get a piece of paper and put on one side yes and on the other side no. And put, based on your previous activity, what goes on the yes side— I'm going to continue saying yes to these things— and what goes on your no side. If this comes up again, it's a no. It's a no for me. Here's a journaling prompt that you can use if you're trying to assess your life and the season that you're in: What did my 25-year-old self dream about? Okay, am I doing that now? And what will my 55 or 65 or 75-year-old thank me for doing today? That will help you for what should go in your yes and your no list. Okay, you can schedule your next dream touchpoint. Like, it worked for me. That looks like strategy meetings. We've got one coming up in the next week or so because it's a time to reconnect with the dreams that we said we had for this year and the goals that we had for this year. We don't spend a lot of time doing that, you know, every, every day or every week, but we do have once a quarter where we come and we touch the dreams. You've got to have that. I think a quarterly reset personally is a good thing for you to do. But, but here's what I want you to know: however you come back and you touch your dreams and you remember your dreams and you connect with God about your dreams. 2 Corinthians 12:9 says that when you need grace— because some of the dreams don't fit in the season— or when you need grace to figure out what's a yes and what's a no, uh, the Bible says, my grace is sufficient for you, and that his power is made perfect in weakness. What if some of your nos are because you're not supposed to do it, God's supposed to do it for you? And what if he has no room to do it because you are striving to do it yourself? That's something to think about. I want you to make your yes or no list. I want you to scan back through your phone. What have I spent my time doing? What should be in my yes list or my no list? I want you to schedule time to revisit your dreams because it's up to you to be the steward of the things that God has deposited in your heart. When you give yourself grace for the various seasons but you don't forget your dreams, your grace for this season will also give your dream dreams room to breathe. Okay, now I hope that's been super helpful for you and giving you some practical ways to deal with the disappointment of dreams not happening in the timeline in which you thought they would happen. Again, it's about pace, okay? It's about giving yourself grace, and it is also about you keeping your dream in sight. Don't forget what God has deposited in your heart. So I want you to remember this: God's timing— God's timing perfect. And often his timing doesn't match ours because he is growing us up. He's doing something in us. So just be patient. Don't forget your dreams, but be patient. Just because your dream hasn't come to pass yet, it doesn't mean that God has forgotten. It might mean that he's preparing you for the dream, or he's preparing the dream for you. Seeds grow slowly in order to be sturdy and be well-rooted and be beautiful. When you see the fruit. Lots of things take time, and your dreams are no different. So I want you to take a moment today or this week, whenever you have time, to revisit a dream, to take some time to write it down if you haven't already. This is a great time if you already have your Full Circle Planner to go back and look at the things you said you were going to do at the beginning of the year. If you're a vision boarder, go back and look at what you said you were going to do or what was important to you. Maybe you go like I did and revisit some of your old journals or diaries or to, to remember who you are and what you want and what God put in your heart. Dust those things off. Make sure you write them down, put them on your phone, tape them to your mirror. You may not get to it today, but I don't want you to forget. And what I want you to know for sure from Philippians 1:6 is that the God who started a good work in you, he says he will be faithful to complete it. If the dream is still a desire, that means God put it you, and he wants to do something with it. Your job is to steward it in the meantime. So here's my question: what can you do to steward your dreams? What can you do to steward your dreams based on the fact that you don't always get to control the timeline? What is your responsibility? What dream have you let go of that you need to look at cultivating, writing down, honoring, leaving space for, and just breathing air into it? Even if it's not for today, you want to acknowledge its existence. Because if you're afraid to say it because you're afraid it won't happen, that is fear, and there is no fear in love. You serve a God who loves you, and when he created you, he put everything inside of you, including your dreams. He will either, as you go to him, cultivate that dream in you, or he will change your desires. And tell them, stop stifling your dreams, because he chooses to, and he promises he will— Ecclesiastes chapter 3— make everything beautiful in its time. Okay, I hope that's super helpful. I hope I've stirred some things up about your dreaming. I don't want you to forget to dream. And if it has, my prayer is that you'll drop your dream in the comment and what you're going to do to actually put it back on the table and remember it and steward it well and honor it today. Let me pray for you. Okay, God, you have put so many dreams in the hearts and minds of the women who are in this room this morning and the women who will watch watch this video later when it's released. We are women, women who don't want to operate with walls, women who want to operate with wonder, women who want to see you work like in major ways, women who want to have testimonies to say, let me tell you what God did. But I didn't know how he was going to do it. I didn't know how he was going to help me build the business or how he was going to help me scale. I didn't know how he was going to help me get that promotion. I didn't know where the man was. I didn't know how to get the book done. I didn't know, um, you know, how to find a church home. I didn't know how to make that album. I didn't know how to steward these children. I didn't know how to, to get organized. I didn't know. I didn't know how to move my life forward, how to enjoy my life. I didn't know how to take the vacation or have that sister circle that I so dream about. I didn't know, but yet you showed me. Let us be a group of women who are stewarding the seasons of our life so that we have a testimony to share. And when we're delayed, help us not to be disappointed, Lord. When your timing is not our timing, because your ways are not our ways, help us to to be faithful in stewarding the dream that you've given us. Help us to be faithful in the season that we're in, but help us not to forget what you've put in our hearts. Help us to remember that you've put us here for such a time as this. And even if it's hard and the road seems like it's going up, it's uphill, that until the dream is taken away, that we should still take care of it. We'll give you all the praise and the glory in Jesus' name. Amen. So I have been, um, reading through, uh, my chronological Bible, and I'm on the story of David, and David, uh, is in the season where he's running for his life and Saul is trying to kill him. And you know, he had years of being told he was supposed to be the king and not being the king, and not just not being the king but being chased down, like chased down. We can look back in hindsight and say, look at what was happening. God was building his character. He had a few times he could have killed Saul. He didn't do it. He was, he was garnering an army of loyal people. Look how he built up his army over time. This is how we got many of the Psalms. Like, David was writing Psalms. We can look at it and go, wow, that time was productive. But do you think it felt productive to David when he was going through that? No, it was scary, and it was painful, and it was dark, and it was lonely, and it was miserable. And he says in the Psalms so many times, like, where are you, God? You sure? You sure I'm supposed to be king? Because I'm out here fighting for my life. That's what dreams are like. God will put something in your mind or in your heart that you just— he's given you a vision of something that's to come. It doesn't mean it's coming tomorrow. And your job is, while you wait, to stay faithful. While you wait, to stay focused. While you wait, to stay committed to his word, to his way, to obedience, to righteousness. It is your job to say, even if you're delayed, made, yet will I trust you. Even if the vision appears to be denied, yet will I serve you. That's your job. The problem is too many of us say, well, if it ain't coming tomorrow, this taking too long. What am I doing all of this for if God is actually not going to bring this to pass in my life? This is why you'll sleep with the wrong person. This is why you'll take the wrong job. This is why you'll eat the wrong thing, because you'll say it doesn't matter. And what Satan wants to do is in the middle, in the middle between the delivery of the vision of the dream and the delivery of the actualization of the dream. He wants you to get weary in between. And that's why the Bible says, do not grow weary in doing good, because in due season you will gain the reward if you don't faint, if you don't quit, if you don't give up. So if you are on the verge of giving up on your dream, because listen, I've been there, I might be there right now, I want you to remember that God takes his time to develop strong fruit. God takes his time to develop strong fruit. And if that is ministering to you today, because it might be ministering to me, I just want to encourage you to keep going. I just want to encourage you to keep going. You got to learn how to speak over your delay. You got to learn how to say, mm-mm, I'm not stuck. I'm just still. This delay is not denial. It's just a divine pause. You got to learn how to say, I am allowed to be faithful in slow seasons. You got to learn how to talk to yourself so that you won't give up too soon. So I hope that's been helpful, y'all, and I hope that wherever you are in your life, as God leads you, if he has not allowed that vision or that dream to die, that you will cultivate it until it's time to release it, or until it's time to actualize it. And in the meantime, don't faint. Don't faint.
