By Amanda Gordon // Goal-setting // EEW Magazine Online

Crossing the finished line and triumphantly tearing through the ribbon indicating that your goal is accomplished seems impossible at times. But you can do it!

Even though you may be able to identify the specific dreams you are praying to realize, there are inevitably times when you feel like your head is in the clouds and you’re being a tad unrealistic about your potential. But if you let doubt inform your decisions, you’ll give up on the vision before it’s even off the ground.

Your friends here at EEW Magazine Online can’t let you go out like that! We’re sharing 5 power-packed and Bible-based principles to ignite and invigorate the dream-chaser in you.

Principle 1: Believe or crumble. First things first: get your faith walk together. Faith is the most crucial ingredient that holds everything together. Your belief, like an egg in cake batter, is a binding agent. Without it, everything crumbles and falls apart. “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” (Hebrews 11:6)

Principle 2: Make up your mind. Are you doing this or not? Being wishy washy, starting and stopping, having one foot in and the other out the door, straddling the fence – you get the picture – won’t help you achieve your dreams. You must commit if you ever expect to be stable and successful. “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.”  (James 1:8)

Principle 3: Keep going. Some say that doing the same thing over again, expecting a different result, is the definition of insanity. Arguably, this could be the definition of success, too. Every successful person has had moments when they did everything right and didn’t get the right results. You know what they did? Kept going. You also must keep going. “For everyone who keeps on asking receives, and he who keeps on seeking finds, and to him who keeps on knocking, it will be opened.” (Matthew 7:8)

Principle 4: Check your motivation. Why do you want this dream to manifest? Why do you wish to be successful? Do you want to make the world better? Help others? Or live selfishly and lavishly? If your motive is off, all bets are off. God won’t release blessings to you when your head and heart are in the wrong place. Sure, you can twist yourself into a pretzel and bend over backward to make things happen. But if you want the favor of the Lord on your efforts, your heart must be right. “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.” (James 4:3)

Principle 5: Be unique. The dream God gave you may go against conventional norms. His plans for you are different from what you see others around you doing. You cannot be afraid to be unique if you expect to live out the dream that God dreamed for you and avoid unnecessary hardship. Consider 1 Samuel 8, where Israel demanded an earthly king despite God already being their heavenly king and performing crazy-amazing miracles. Their refusal to be unique brought on by a hunger to be “like all the other nations” (v. 20) led to increased hardship and decreased success.

Your dreams are possible. If they weren’t, God would not have given them to you. However, believing in the possibility without walking out the principle will lead you nowhere.

Follow Scripture’s template for dream fulfillment and success, and you just may be surprised that you’ll go higher than you ever hoped or prayed to go.