What happens to our dreams when we stop asking what we want from life?

The “bucket list”—whether in your head or actually written down—still has open items on it. Things that are hard or even impossible to fit into certain life situations. Situations that you once felt were good and should stay just as they are. But should they really stay that way, if it means the bucket list stays undone? And if they have not turned out the way they could have? I think this is a question many people ask themselves at some point in life, when God is not yet a conscious part of it. The world tells us: Follow your own goals. Follow your dreams. Live before it is too late.

But how far is that healthy—and when does it become wrong? Before Jesus came into my life, I could never have imagined answering this question. After all, that is up to each person to decide, right? Well, no. It isn’t. At least not without limits. Because “follow your dreams” is only good advice as long as we do not assume one thing: that just because we want something, it is automatically good for us and for the people around us. As soon as a dream leads us into sin, it cannot be a dream that brings us to a place where we are truly safe and well in the long run. That is hard to hear. It means questioning our own dreams and measuring them by a standard that lies outside of our own control. And then simply crossing some of them off our bucket list. To do that, you first have to understand what sin actually is, and why God calls certain things sin. And for that, you have to get to know Jesus. For a long time, there were things on my own bucket list that would automatically lead to sin—and in some cases, they actually did. I was not even aware of it. Even if it did not seem sensible, I thought it was right and important for my life. After all, the thought was in my head, wasn’t it? But these exact “dreams,” or “experiences you have to have before it’s too late,” are not worth being driven by. It is worth so much more to let God drive them out of you.

For example, God might give you the gift of a person by your side—someone you have already gone through good times and bad with. Yet, on your own bucket list, there might still be an experience that clearly does not fit with this gift. And suddenly, in our heads, the gift becomes the problem. Not the wish that puts the gift in danger. The gift. Because the gift's ribbon is gone by now anyway. And because of it, we cannot have that other experience. At first, we might not even believe that some of these exact experiences are sin anyway. "After all, we live in the year 2026 now." Yes. Only God is the same—whether the year is 1020 or 2026. So why do we prefer to doubt what God shows us as good, rather than doubting ourselves? Doubting people who perhaps simply did not know any better, and who can now hardly believe that something could still be true even if it goes against our modern society?

And then something quite uncomfortable begins. The old was and is not (yet) right. The new would perhaps be even more wrong. And suddenly you stand there and notice how everything inside you is being rebuilt. Points drop off the bucket list. Your own plans dissolve. Relationships are shaken up. Things are "lost," and familiar ways no longer work the way you always somehow got by with before. And in their place, at first, comes: emptiness. A state that can feel incredibly wrong. Almost forbidden. A state that makes you feel guilty—guilty that you have failed. And you want to fix this emptiness right away. Make a new plan. Set new goals. Build a new identity. Write a new bucket list. But somehow... it no longer works the way it once did.

And I believe this is exactly where an important choice between two options lies, a choice you have to make at some point in your life. A choice to keep filling and shaping it yourself, or to take up your cross and, for once, stop filling it yourself. Not to decide right away who you should become, what you should experience, and where your life should lead. Instead, to let yourself be shaped. To get to know God. To learn to trust him. To understand more and more what his plan for us is—and what he wants to change and move inside us.

Until we become more and more like him. Until things we really wanted to experience in the past suddenly lose their appeal, and we can see them from a completely different perspective. From one that feels truly right. Not only because God warns us out of love and to protect us, but because we begin to understand why we do not need them anymore, and why this very protection is so good and important.

I believe freedom is not at all about being able to check off every item on our bucket list one day.

A much greater freedom is when we no longer want to check off every single one.

And during this rebuilding, you realize more and more how good his plans are for us.

Thank you, God.