Also by this author: Everybody, Always for Kids
Published by Thomas Nelson on June 23, 2020
Genres: Non-Fiction, Christian Life
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Bob Goff, the New York Times bestselling author of Love Does and Everybody, Always, is on a mission to help people recapture the version of their lives they dreamed about before fear started calling the shots. He wants them to dream big.
In his revelatory yet utterly practical new book, Bob takes you on a life-proven journey to rediscover your dreams and turn them into reality. Based on his enormously popular Dream Big workshop, Bob draws on a lifetime of living and dreaming large to help you reach your larger-than-life dreams. In Dream Big he shows how to learn to define clearly your dreams for yourself, identify the obstacles holding you back, come up with a specific plan for reaching goals, and develop the tools that will help you act on the plan. Dream Big is the only book you need to uncover the wild and exciting dream for your life you’ve hidden from yourself--and help you take the steps necessary to achieve it.
A week after I signed up to be on the Dream Big launch team, my wife and I quit our jobs and moved across the country to pursue an adventure. Her job would allow her to take short-term contracts—three to six months—in various cities and we were going to travel the country for a couple of years. It’s been our big dream for a couple of years and had been interrupted by the surprise adoption of our daughter.
Less money.
Less stability.
More uncertainty.
More adventure.
We are just trusting in God that he’s led us on the right path. And while we’re still sure that he has, it’s been a rocky start. More than once, just a few weeks in, we were already moving on to Plans B & C—plans that didn’t exist until Plan A started to falter. It seemed like our big dream had gone bust.
It was into that uncertainty that I carved out a couple of hours with a Dream Big digital copy and a physical notebook and immersed myself in the infectious joy and overwhelming (in a good way!) positively of Bob Goff. It may have saved us.
When I reemerged a couple of hours later, it was with a few pages of somewhat-legible scrawl and a renewed sense of purpose and vision. My absurd expectations are exactly that—but also what I need to expect. We aren’t wrong for exploring the opportunities of Plans B & C; sometimes God has to take you on a detour to get you on the correct path. Setbacks are to be expected. They help you learn and grow. Don’t be afraid to quit. Let it go. Don’t be afraid to start. Take it up. I could summarize it all in this quote:
What I’ve discovered is that comfortable people don’t need Jesus and don’t chase their ambitions—desperate people do. If we’re going to get after our ambitions, God doesn’t want us living right in the middle of comfortable anymore. He wants us living on the edge of yikes.
Reading Dream Big is an exhilarating, humbling, terrifying, encouraging experience. Bob Goff is…well, I don’t think there’s really anyone else like him. In so many people, his persona would come across as put-on or fake, but Bob exudes a genuineness and seriousness that compels you to live life the way he does. Right on the edge of yikes.
And you know what, I think I can handle the edge of yikes if I know I’ve got people like Bob right there with me. So be careful. Dream Big will drag you right into launch mode. This is the fire that’s going to cause all those bubbling hopes and dreams to boil over. And it’ll be messy. And it’ll be frustrating. And it’ll be the best thing you’ve ever done.
Out of Dream Big, I made three commitments:
One: I’ve written a novella called The Magic, The Music, and the Dance. I’m going to publish it on Kindle in the month of July. I had announced that I was going to publish it some time back, but I’d started to back off on it, thinking it wasn’t good enough. Nope. I’m doing it. Final edits and formatting this next weekend and then preparing it for a July release.
Two: Write 1,000 words a day. This is something that Bob Goff explicitly mentions in Dream Big. Every book he’s written has been the result of 1,000 words a day. I can do that. I have so many half-started projects to finish.
Three: I’m launching a church. Not your typical church, and not intended to be a replacement for physical gatherings, but a virtual church experience. I’m a pastor currently without a congregation and I’ve spoken to so many who don’t currently feel safe at church—whether it’s due to the COVID-19 pandemic or from local churches that have left them with spiritual wounds. The church is people, after all, and some of my best friendships and most life-altering conversations have been experienced through the Internet. It’s called Church of the Wanderers, meant for all those who see themselves untethered from a national or denominational identity. It’s going to be an experience.
That’s what Dream Big did to me. Bob Goff dug up some of my old dreams, brushed them off, and told me to finish them. He encouraged me in disciplines I knew I should have been following, but hadn’t. And he launched me into a dream that I didn’t know I had but that God has fully-formed in my prayer time this past week. Dream Big is dangerous. Read it at your own risk.
