3. Take action.
Without action, your dreams are just dreams, nothing more nothing less. Nehemiah followed up his prayer with corresponding action. Nehemiah 2 v 4-5 says, "Then the king said to me, “What do you request?” So I prayed to the God of heaven. And I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, I ask that you send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers’ tombs, that I may rebuild it.” The fist step that Nehemiah had to take was to ask the King to release him. He prayed and then acted.
Sadly enough most people do not go beyond prayer. Most dreams never see the light of day. Most dreams never go beyond the papers they are written on. Don't end up with a prayer. Have the courage to act based on your prayer requests.
We can learn a lot from the journey of the Israelites from Egypt to Canaan, the promised land. The Lord said to Israel, 'I am giving you the land as your possession', but they had to fight many battles to take possession of Canaan (Deuteronomy 32 v 49). The Lord gave them the land but they had to send spies and gather intelligence on the land. They had to cross the flooded river Jordan on foot. They had to fight and overthrow many cities and kings. They still had to act in accordance to the promise.
Psalms 90 v 17 says, 'May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us; establish the work of our hands for us— yes, establish the work of our hands.' This tells us that there is something that we need to do with our hands. The Lord grant us favor and blesses the works of our hands. If we are to achieve and accomplish things, we can't sit with folded hands. We need to get busy in pursuit of our dreams.
Let us now look at a few obstacles and reasons for inaction.
A. Excuses
Top of my list will be excuses. An excuse is defined as a reason to justify why something was not done. Though sometimes the reasons are valid, it does not change the fact that no work was done. It is better to try and fail than to fail to try. Excuses of many people can fill volumes of books. They range from, I'm too young, I don't have resources, I'm not connected, etc. I wish I could tell you what the antidote is for excuses. Suffice to say you need to start where you are with what you have.
B. Fear of failure
Many ask themselves, 'what if I fail?' The answer to that is, 'what if I succeed?' I hate to be the one breaking this news to you; failure is inevitable and sometimes necessary on the path of success. Unfortunately the path we travel on is filled with many slippery patches. Surely you have heard the old slogan, 'fortune favors the brave.' Indeed glory awaits those who embark on their respective adventures irrespective of potential failure. Prepare well to succeed, and always learn from the mistakes you make along the way.
C. Procrastination
Procrastination is simply defined as postponing something almost indefinitely. People often say, ' I will do it tomorrow '. The only problem is that tomorrow never comes. I have heard of a story of one business man who had an interesting sales strategy. This man had a big board on his shop which read, ' buy today, and tomorrow you get free.' Guess what, tomorrow never came. Many people have great things they want to achieve . Some want to preach to the nations, some want to register a new degree, start a business , lose weight, start a new hobby, etc. The only problem is that they will start tomorrow, and tomorrow has been eluding them since yesterday. Ask yourself a question, ' if not you who, if not now when?'
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