As a father, my job is to recognize my children’s dreams and giftings given by God and to nurture and support those passions. About a year ago, I had been praying for my children, tucking them into bed, and speaking to their hearts about their future when God reminded me of my dreams and passion. I wanted to be a preacher and singer, like my daddy, when I was a little boy. I loved to sing and so did my dad but most of all I wanted to preach about Jesus. Years passed and the more I sang, the more attention I received and forgot that I ever wanted to preach. When I was a boy our family was hurting and eventually when I was a teenager my parents divorced so any attention I could receive from singing I craved.
By the age of nine I had joined the Texas Boys Choir and was the youngest boy to tour with them to Australia for 6 weeks. I sang in front of thousands and loved the attention I was grabbing. For the next few years I was singing solos in front of large crowds on a weekly basis. By the time I reached high school, my identity was in singing. I knew I could sing well and I wanted to do that the rest of my life! My mom told me of a singing contest at a restaurant not too far from us and I went expecting to win but instead I saw this beautiful girl with a voice like an angel. I didn’t want to compete against this girl so I asked her to sing with me and three years later we were married. At the time we were married, fourteen years ago, we both had huge dreams of God using us in worship. We led worship for churches and we were always confident that God would one day allow us to travel and worship. We had people prophecy over us all the great things God would do with our worship. Years passed and slowly the enemy began to steal that passion in me and placed condemnation in its place for not doing what God had gifted me with and put in my heart. There was a long season in my life that singing was my identity and when God allowed that gift to be on the shelf, I really struggled with understanding who I was and what I had to offer to God. Sickness in my body snuck in through stress and I even got to a place in my life that I knew I wouldn’t live past the age of 33 because of my health (I will share that maybe in my next blog). I was looking for my identity to be of help to God. I looked in the craziest places, I started a business and thought that was it. I thought being a good father and husband was it. I had looked in every corner to please God because I thought that was who I was and my identity.
One night I was sitting at home with my wife and I was stressed and feeling the pressure mounting up of trying to doing the right thing in life and please her and God and she ministered to me by saying and listing to me all the “absolute worst scenarios that can happen” in our life and finished each one with “I would still love you.” She didn’t know it at the time, but when she spoke that to me it freed something in my heart. I went to my closet to pray and Jesus spoke to me that He feels exactly that way. That His love for me is unconditional and no matter my failures His blood covers every sin, past, present and future. He began to teach me grace in an incredible way that I could now receive without putting my own exception clauses in! He showed me to concentrate on His love and not my own (because my love wavers). God healed me physically and showed me my identity is in Him and I no longer live, so what people think of me is not my primary focus at all! I found out the Holy spirit’s voice convicts me of righteousness in Christ Jesus not reminding me of my sin and failures (the world can do that). And when I hear thoughts in my head of failure, the scripture in Romans 8, “therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” overpowers and drowns out every lie. I love how God knew I needed the word “now” in that scripture!
So after having a greater revelation of grace in my marriage, family and life, I was now telling my children that God could give them dreams and fulfill them. So when I walked out of my kids room and God told me he would fulfill my dreams of becoming a preacher and singer, I knew that I had to take the advice I gave my children. I had reminded them of the story of Joseph, and that God called Joseph a success because God was with him! The point in the story that God calls Joseph a success in the Bible wasn’t at the end of the story but when Joseph was homeless, friendless, a slave, and possibly naked because his robe was stripped from him and being sold like a piece of meat. Now the world (and most churches today) wouldn’t have called him a success at this time, but God did. That night God reminded me He was with me and for me and calls me and my children a success!
brandonpollard 