How to Partner with God for Your Future

Do you believe that God wants to give you your heart’s desire and fulfill all of your plans?

If you’ve grown up in a culture skeptical of the heart, or with a view that God is more of a distant deity than a present Father, perhaps your answer is a cautious “no.”

Similarly, if you are standing on the other side of plans that haven’t been fulfilled, if you’ve ever had a dream die, or if things have happened to you that are decidedly not your plans or desires, perhaps it can be hard to even imagine that this is what God could want for us.

Yet, David blesses those who are listening to his psalm:

David blesses three specific things: his listeners’ 1) heart’s desires, 2) plans, and 3) petitions!

Today, I’d love to invite us to reflect on how God might be inviting us to dream with him, and how he might be inviting us to partner with him to see those dreams come to pass.

As I’ve written about in many other posts, following Jesus really means that we follow him.

The Christian life is not about deciding what we should do, but rather about discerning where God is at work and following him there.

Might it be possible that God has given us desires, plans, and petitions as a road map to help us follow him into his preferred future for us?

Let’s reflect on each of these:

1. Desires

Ephesians is clear that God has prepared good works for all of us ahead of time (Eph 2:10), and that the Holy Spirit is both our deposit of heaven and our invitation to partner with God to bring heaven to earth (see Paul’s flow of thought in Ephesians 1).

Put simply, we all have a piece of heaven on the inside of us, a way that God wants to partner with us to see his kingdom come and his will be done, and I believe that one of the best ways to figure out what this is is by listening to our dreams and desires.

I don’t mean that we discern God’s will through every whim and every daydream, but I do believe that if we listen long enough to the desires that God has put within us, within the counsel of mentors and community, we can actually discover God’s fingerprint and how he uniquely wired us to participate in seeing heaven come to earth.

This isn’t meant to remove our agency and uniqueness, quite the contrary — we have a unique part to play in this story!

I’m hoping that anyone following these emails for long enough is not skeptical that God could speak through our dreams and desires. I am wondering, however, how many of us have had our dreams crushed or our desires quenched by the challenges and monotony of life.

I was recently reading a book by John Eldredge who argued that people in their 20s and 30s are in particular danger of losing touch with the dreams God put within them because of fear, despair, and entitlement (believing the dream is owed to us, that we don’t have to do anything to see it come to pass). These three enemies conspire to kill the desire within us. Eldredge’s encouragement to us: “Do not give way to despair; do not lose heart” (Killing Lions, p. 18).

Have you lost heart? Have you forgotten your dreams? Have you buried your desires underneath a pile of monotony, fear, despair, or frustration that the journey was harder than you thought?

Just like Jesus asks the disciples in John 1:38, I ask you today: “What are you looking for?”

What do you really desire?

2. Plans

I’m convinced that the will of God is found somewhere between our dreams and our limits.

In other words, God’s invitation to us isn’t to be impractical romantics, always dreaming, never doing.

But neither is his invitation to be so consumed by reality that we forget that there’s a story that we live in where heaven is going to cover the earth, where God’s glory covers every nation like waters cover the sea, and every wrong thing is going to be made right — and living in this story requires courage, risk, and bold dreaming.

But it also requires planning.

The operating system of the world would say: decide what you want to do and make a plan to get there (or, for those less inclined to planning, perhaps “follow your heart and do what feels right next”).

I’m arguing for something quite different: discern how God is at work in your dreams and desires, and partner with him by taking the next step full of faith.

Once we have sight of the dream that God has put on the inside of us, what’s the next step that we need to take towards it? What’s the conversation we need to have? What’s the appointment we need to make? What’s the hard thing we need to do?

Is there any step on the horizon that is filling you with fear that God might want to exchange with faith today?

3. Petitions

I love that David assumes his listeners are actively petitioning and praying for their desires and plans.

As I’ve talked to people over the years about their callings and vocations, usually people have a natural strength at either dreaming or planning. Some people are really good at naming their desires and dreaming with God, others are really good at making action steps to go after the direction they want to go.

Rarely is anyone naturally good at petitioning and praying for their dreams and plans (myself included).

We might conclude (even accidentally) that doing for God is more important than being with God so we neglect prayer.

We might assume that the act of dreaming and planning is sufficient, and we subscribe to an anemic theology of prayer which says that dreaming and planning can substitute for the act of intercession.

In doing this, we neglect the best part of partnering with God for our future — actually partnering with him in the place of prayer!

In neglecting prayer as we pursue our futures, we miss learning how to strategically intercede for breakthrough. We miss learning how to seek God’s wisdom when we encounter unexpected obstacles, and we miss learning how to do spiritual warfare when we discern those obstacles are from the enemy.

Most tragically, we miss the joy of the Great Commission — “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20, NRSVUE).

Friends, we have a Father who wants to affirm us and love us every step of our journey following him.

We have a friend in Jesus who wants to enjoy life with us in all of our highs and lows, who wants to do it with us.

We have a Counselor in the Holy Spirit who wants to counsel us, give us wisdom, and empower us to break through obstacles as they come.

Where do you need to lean in today: your dreaming, your planning, or your petitioning?

If I can ever support you in your journey of coming alive and living in love with Jesus, please don’t hesitate to hit “reply” on this email and let me know.

-Ryan

P.S. It is one of the greatest joys of my life to help people come alive and live in love with Jesus, especially by waking up to the continual conversation we get to enjoy with God. Our team is working on creating some beautiful prayer resources this year, starting with a daily prayer journal designed to help you grow in your ability to hear God’s voice. Please consider becoming a founding partner with us to receive every resource we create in 2025 completely free!