Following Your Dreams

Today was the last day for seniors at Anoka High School. The rest of us have another week or so. To send them off, a video was played showing a bunch of pictures of different seniors, followed by a short little pep talk-esque thing at the end. The point of it was basically to follow your dreams--yet another cliche phrase in the same vein as 'follow your heart'. As I considered the frequency with which people hear this said, I tried to think about it from a biblical worldview, and my conclusion was probably different than those of most people repeating this phrase.
Jesus did more than save us out of something, ie. hell. He certainly did this, but salvation is much more than that. It's a complete transformation of the heart, from God-hating sin to God-loving holiness. Jesus saved us from sin and hell, into a live centered on pleasing Him. That being said, the way we treat our dreams/future plans should change with the rest of it. We must no longer prize our dreams and what we want to do with our future; we must instead fall at the feet of Jesus and ask Him to determine what we will do. We can't just lay our dreams before Him and demand His approval; We must surrender our futures to Him and do what He pleases. The cool thing is, sometimes God's plan is exactly what your dreams are. When that happens, we thank God for His goodness. Sometimes, however, it doesn't work out that way. Maybe you always wanted to be a nuclear physicist (that's a difficult word to spell), and you have real talent and a scholarship to do so, but then God calls you to be a mission to some third world country where there's no clean water and you sleep in a hut made out of animal crap. You know what you do then? Thank God for His goodness. Now I'm not saying this is easy; by no means. But it's what all of us need to do: put whatever God wants before what we want, regardless of the physical hazards. And I believe that if you are doing what God has called you to do, then you will be filled with joy, even if you're not doing what you'd always dreamed.