When I was about 13 years old, my mom gave me her cell phone for a day. I was so excited and ready to show it off. I got to school, exchanged numbers with my fellow peers, and within an 8 hour school day I ran up the bill.
When I got home, my mom didn’t yell or scream, she politely took the phone back and said “this was a test”. It took me 3 years to get and keep a phone. Not only was my mom disciplining me, she also didn’t have the money to risk my irresponsibility. I wasn’t ready. I had to mature and become financially independent to get and keep a phone.
God is the same way. While we are depending on the approval of others, God wants us to be spiritually independent and mature to get and keep the promises he has for us. God will give us a dream prematurely just so that he can expose and bring attention to things within us that has to go.
That need for approval, desire for attention, and spirit of comparison can’t exist where God is taking you. By these things being exposed God can uproot them completely or use them as leashes as to why you must stay attached to him and not stray from his word.
He wants us to remember: “God is the one who makes all this possible. He has given us his Spirit to make us certain he will do it.”2 Corinthians 5:5 CEVDC