The Great Dream
From the Series: The Ghost in the Machine
Speaker: Mark Batterson
Date: May 11, 2008
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Transcript
(Intro)
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like a blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
Good to see ya, welcome. Are you here? What a weekend, double-whammy weekend. Pentecost Sunday and we are celebrating that with a new series called ‘The Ghost in the Machine’ and we are going to talk for a couple of weeks about the Holy Spirit and next weekend we are really going to mix it up and talk about some of the different hats that the Holy Spirit wears. This weekend we are going to zoom in on one dimension of the Holy Spirit and what it means to have the Holy Ghost in us. We are going to have fun with that.
It is also Mother’s Day weekend and applause to our moms. One of my favorite mom-stories is told by Tony Campolo, talks about when he was teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, his wife, during that season of their life was a stay-at-home mom and every once in a while they would go to faculty functions and she would get asked what she did and she would say, “I’m a stay-at-home mom,” and she felt a little patronized by some of the intelligencia as if what she was doing was not as significant as what they were doing, so she decided that she would redefine her role. The next time someone asked her, she explained her job a little differently. She said, “I am socializing two homosapiens in the dominant values of the Judeo-Christian tradition in order that they might be instruments for the transformation of the social order into the teliologically prescribed utopia inherent in the escoton.” [?] [I Googled and tried to find this statement to make sure we had the quote correct and double-check spelling but I couldn’t find it, so you probably want to check it with Mark’s copy] She’d pause a moment and say, “What do you do?”
We are so grateful for our moms and I know that the most important thing that I do is being a dad, so for those of you who are moms, nothing is as significant or as important as that, so Happy Mother’s Day. No matter how many kids you have, no matter how old they are, and even if you are pregnant with your first child, it is cool to be able to celebrate Mother’s Day in that way. I know we’ve got a lot of moms at that place, so I want to pray for you, pray for our moms, then we are going to dive right in and see what the Lord wants to speak into our lives this weekend.
Lord we love You, we thank You. You are so good and so great and we just praise You for the way You are at work in our lives. We just want to take a moment this weekend to say Thank You, to just say a prayer for our mothers and Lord that maybe this weekend would be an opportunity for us to let them know how much we love and appreciate them. God I pray that You would fill our moms with your grace and your love and your joy, and may You strengthen and give great wisdom because we need it. So Lord we offer these things to You and pray now that as we turn our attention to what your Spirit wants to do in our lives, that You would speak into us. May we hear your voice this weekend, in Jesus’ name, Amen.
On July 4, 1776, a group of revolutionaries gathered together at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There they adopted a document that had been drafted by Thomas Jefferson. They literally declared Independence. They had dreamed of a country that recognized that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator was certain unalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To that dream, they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, and a dream was conceived. On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy stood before Congress, the Soviet Union was winning the space race, but Kennedy cast a bold vision, that this nation should commit itself to the goal that before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth, and a dream was conceived. On August 23, 1963, a Baptist preacher by the name of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, America was being ripped apart by racial segregation, but King dared to dream. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” And a dream was conceived. The Founding Fathers’ dream of a new nation, President Kennedy’s dream of landing a man on the moon, and Dr. King’s dreams of racial equality, huge dreams, huge dreams. But if history teaches us anything, it teaches us this – never underestimate one dream or one dreamer, never underestimate their ability to change the course of history.
Now, we don’t tend to think of Him in these terms, and we don’t tend to talk about Him with this kind of language, but if ever there was a dreamer, his name was Jesus. Now we call him lots of different things, Lord and Savior, Lamb of God and Lion of the tribe of Judah. He is the Prince of Peace and a Priest in the order of Melchizedek. Lots of names, lots of identities to this kaleidoscopic personality named Jesus. But one that I think is largely overlooked and underappreciated is Jesus as dreamer. Listen, in a day and age when the average person never traveled outside a 35 mile radius of their birthplace, Jesus cast a vision, and the scope of this vision is beyond our ability to comprehend given the historical, technological and cultural context in which it was cast, Jesus simply said to his 12 disciples, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to everyone.” And we fail to appreciate this vision in its original context. See we live in a first world country in the 21st century. And we have planes, trains, and automobiles, and we have GPS and Google maps, but in the first century A.D. planet Earth was largely an unexplored, untamed, uncivilized place. 196,800,000 square miles of terra-incognita and Jesus told his 12 disciples, here’s the deal, go everywhere and tell everyone. Jesus was literally telling them to climb the highest mountain, to sail to the remotest island, to learn the most difficult language so that everybody could hear the good news. This is a huge geographic dream. This is a huge linguistic dream. A huge cultural dream, a huge spiritual dream. We are talking about the redemption of humankind. What I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t get any bigger than this. Let me say it again, if ever there was a dreamer, His name is Jesus. And while we generally refer to this as the Great Commission, just for this weekend, could we call it the Great Dream? And here’s where it gets good. The moment you put your faith in Christ, you become part of the greatest dream that was ever dreamt. Wow! Wow! You see, you aren’t just part of the dream becoming reality when you received and accepted that good news, you are part of that dream becoming reality in other people’s lives. I think that one of our greatest needs is being part of something that is bigger than us and more important than us. I would suggest that this is that. You are part of the Great Dream. So let me connect the dots because if you are anything like me, it is so easy to learn how and forget why, it is so easy to go through the motions, it is so easy to become spiritually myopic. What I want you to see is this, when you serve in that ministry, when you write that check, when you go on that missions trip, when you pray that prayer, you are a part of the dream becoming reality.
I want to take it one step further. A few weeks after Jesus was crucified and resurrected, his disciples gathered in the Upper Room in Jerusalem and started praying. 10 days later, there was a sound that sounded like a mighty windstorm and there seemed to be something that looked like tongues of fire that came to rest on them, and they began speaking in other languages. Now when was the last time this happened to you? You know what I’m saying? This is different. This is significant. Some would say weird. But have you discovered that sometimes the way God works in our lives is through strange and mysterious ways. They started to speak in other languages and the significance of that is this – they are celebrating Pentecost. Pentecost is one of the Jewish pilgrimage feasts, which means that Jewish pilgrims from all over the ancient world would make their way to Jerusalem, many of them who had never been there before, many who didn’t even speak the language. And these disciples start speaking the praises of God in the native tongues of these pilgrims who had come. They were like, what in the world is going on? And to make a long story short, that day, 40,000 people put their faith in Christ, are baptized, and maybe just a significant is that 3,000 people are sent back as the first wave of missionaries to this ancient world. Now, it was a confusing day, but one thing is sure, it was an amazing day. I would suggest that the day of Pentecost has far greater significance than July 4, 1776, or May 25, 1961, or August 23, 1963. You see, the day of Pentecost marked the beginning of the spiritual revolution and we are part of that revolution which began 2,000 years ago. So when the dust finally settles, Peter gets up on the day of Pentecost and gives a fascinating explanation of what happened. Everyone is confused but Peter puts it in perspective this way, he quotes the prophet Joel in Acts 2:17-21: In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. I will show wonders in the heaven above and sings on the earth below, blood and fired and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. I love so many things about this promise. I love that it doesn’t depend upon social status. Slave or free, makes no difference. I love the fact that it doesn’t depend upon gender, man or woman, God says in these last days I am going to pour out my Spirit and you will see visions and you will dream dreams. Now let me just back way out, make a 30,000-foot observation. Pentecost is a fascinating thing. Depending on your background, it makes some of you feel very uncomfortable because you are wondering what’s going on here. You are feeling really strange because this is not part of your experience. Others are like, yeah, now you’re preaching to the choir, it’s all about Pentecost. Then there are those of us somewhere in that spectrum. But I want to make a 30,000-foot observation, because in my experience, the obvious eludes. So let me be as obvious as I can. I see a cause here, and the cause is the Spirit of God being poured out and filling these early believers. And I see an effect, and the effect is this – as the Spirit comes and fills them, I see them beginning to see vision and dream dreams. Can I suggest in a very simplistic way that God poured out his Spirit to make us into dreamers, kingdom dreamers. See, when we start following Jesus, we are grafted into the greatest dream ever dreamt and then the Spirit comes and takes up residence in this human temple and what happens is this - the Spirit of God begins to conceive dreams within us, God-ordained dreams, God-sized dreams. And somewhere along the way I wonder if we lost site of that. Somewhere along the way, I wonder if we shifted our focus.
Let me share one of my personal convictions. I think that the modern church is far too fixated on sin of co-mission. ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that’ and you’re all right. The problem with that is this – you can do nothing wrong and still do nothing right. I just don’t think that God’s dream was for us to just sit in a pew for 90 minutes on the weekend. Is that God’s greatest aspiration for our lives? Is that God’s dream coming to fulfillment? No way! God dreams of what we could be, what we can become, and that’s why I think it’s the sins of omission, what we could’ve, would’ve, should’ve done that breaks the heart of our heavenly Father, because it’s those dreams that the Spirit wants to conceive in our lives that never become reality. That is where the kingdom suffers, that’s where we fail to become who God destined us to be as Christ followers, as Spirit filled people. His dream is to make us into dreamers.
A few years ago, I heard Irwin McMannis say something that got into my spirit, I love this. If you are big enough for your dream, than your dream isn’t big enough for you. That’s good stuff. I love it. What I’m trying to say is God wants to make us dreamers. So how do we get that dream? I want to get pretty practical and I want you to turn in your Bible over to Habakkuk. When was the last time you were in Habakkuk? The best way to get there is to turn over to Matthew and take a left and you’ll get there pretty quick. I’ll give you a moment to get there. I want to tell you this weekend that I don’t have seven habits or ten steps to getting your dream. I don’t have formulas or guarantees, but I do have the Word of God and I think the Word of God is a microcosm, while we are looking at something that is unique and historical, everything is there for a lesson to be learned or an example to be set and as we study these passages, God wants to do in us what He did in them. I believe that, so I think that there is a wonderful example in Habakkuk, and I want to talk about how we can get that dream that God wants to give to us. I think dreams often begin with holy discontent. Habakkuk is one of the minor prophets, lived in Judah right before the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C., it’s a national crisis, things are not going good, there are on a losing streak with four wicked kings, like four bad administrations in a row, things aren’t going good, surrounded by violence and corruption and injustice and it is breaking Habakkuk’s heart. Here’s what I love about this guy. He doesn’t ignore it. He doesn’t repress it, doesn’t validate it, doesn’t medicate it, he exposes himself to it. And he allows what’s happening to create this Holy discontentment within him. This week a few of us on staff made our way out to Winchester, Virginia, out in the country, out there for a gathering of some pastors. So we went to a service on a Monday night, then I put my game of corn-hole in the back of our mini-van because I knew we’d have a little bit of down-time, so that night we got back to the hotel and set it up and started tossing the bean bags. Just two wood boards, little hole, thirty feet apart, awesome game! Addictive! So we were out there for like four hours tossing the bags until about 1:00 a.m., we noticed people looking out the hotel windows, you could see people opening their shades because there were four grown men screaming basically with every toss, so finally we packed it up. I would have been out there all night. Did I mention it is addictive? So we are out in the country, four hours, and how many allergy sufferers do we have here? Was this week the worst week of your entire life? Or was that just me? Because I was dying. I’m out there for four hours, out in the country. At least in the city, we’ve got lots of cement and I’m not allergic to cement, it’s the pollen. So we are out in the country, and I kid you not, there was a cattle auction going on until past midnight! I’m like when do they do these things? Who are these people? So I’m starting to feel the allergy effects, but the game is so much fun. Did I mention corn-hole is addictive? So finally we go back in and hit the hay (is that a pun?) and I didn’t realize the window was cracked open. I woke up the next morning as a different human being. My head was throbbing, my eyes were itching, I had a sore throat, I was sneezing. And then we went to this meeting that morning with all these pastors, and I’m like, you ever been around someone, like don’t tell me you can’t sneeze quieter than that. I was that guy. I was dying. I couldn’t do it any softer than I was. What I’m saying is, I was feeling all the symptoms but it was good, because I’m the kind of guy that I don’t do anything about it. It’s just slightly bad. I came home on a mission, I popped every pill you can imagine to medicate this thing. I would go and hang out in the one room in our house with an air purifier, put it on full blast and just inhale. I was doing everything, and in our mini-van, instead of the air coming in from the outside, I put on that internal cycle. I’m doing everything to avoid the elements, because sometimes it has to get so bad for you to actually do something about something. See, I think this is where dreams start. You have to expose yourself to the reality around you, and I think sometimes we get into our little cloistered church environment, this little subculture ghetto bubble, whatever you want to call it, and we totally lose touch with reality. There are people all around us all the time and so much pain and confusion and injustice, and God has called us to be part of the solution to the problem. So, can I just speak honestly? I’m afraid that we are more a kingdom of complainers than a kingdom of dreamers. And God has called us to do something about it but we need to feel the effect. We need to feel it.
So let me just give you one thing to do, are you ready? Go on a missions trip. One missions trip would do more for your spiritual growth than 52 sermons. You know why? Because you need to expose yourself to a third-world country where they have real problems, not our fake problems, so you can feel the full effect of what’s happening and become part of this redemptive mission. I love it, a couple of weeks ago, Pastor Joel, who is our campus Pastor at our Ballston location and also oversees our missions. He is a dreamer, he’s got missions in his heart, so building the orphanage in Uganda and raising the $50,000 last year, that was something that was conceived in his spirit and then we embraced it and it happened. So he came to me a few weeks ago and said, “I think we need to take 10 missions trips next year.” I’m like, “Yeah, you keep on dreaming!” in a positive way. Keep on dreaming because we need to be a part of this mission and you need to go, not just to help the people that we are going to help, but because we desperately need to be exposed to things that we are far too immune to here.
I had a professor in graduate school that posed a great question. He said if you want to discover your passion or your dream, answer this question. What makes you cry or pound your fist on the table? What makes you sad? What makes you mad? What affects you at the deepest emotional level? Listen to Habakkuk, these first verses, and tell me if you can’t see the way that what is happening is affecting him emotionally. How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, “Violence!” But you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong? Destruction and violence are before me. But he doesn’t turn his head the other way, he doesn’t complain about it, he becomes part of the solution. Let me share one little story. I love this. A few blocks from our Coffeehouse in Capitol Hill are offices of World Vision. Great organization, more than 100 million people and more than 100 countries receive physical, social, and spiritual support because of what World Vision is doing. It is an amazing organization doing lots of amazing things, but let me tell you how it got started. It got started really with 5 bucks. In his book, Holy Discontent, Bill Hybels shares the genesis of World Vision. In 1950, Bob Pierce, the founder of World Vision, was in Korea and he watched children who had been orphaned by the Korean War standing in food lines and he watched as children dropped dead in food lines because there wasn’t any food at the front of the line. Bob Pierce said, “We are going to get food to the front of the food lines, if it kills, we are going to do it.” On one of his overseas visits, he met a little girl named White Jade [?] who came from a poor Asian family, she had been beaten and disowned because of her decision to follow Christ. He gave everything he had to White Jade, a five-dollar bill, that was it. But he pledged to send her, every month from then on, something to help her. And that small seemingly insignificant, spur of the moment gesture served as the catalyst for what has become World Vision’s child sponsorship program. There is a Bob Pierce here. There are lots of Bob Pierces here, the only question is – are we going to take that Holy discontent and actually do something about it?
I think it starts with a holy discontent, but then you’ve got to do something. Habakkuk 1:5, the Lord says: Look at the nations and be amazed. Watch and be astounded at what I will do, for I am doing something in your day, something you wouldn’t believe even if someone told you about it. Then Habakkuk does something interesting. He takes a step of faith. I believe it is in direct response to this vision from the Lord, because the Lord says watch, and the very next thing that Habakkuk does is climb a watchtower. Habakkuk 2:1: I will climb into my watchtower now and wait to see what the Lord will say to me and how He will answer my complaint. In the ancient world, cities were fortified with wall and on those walls were watchtowers where watchmen would scan the horizon and they would be the first ones to notice a caravan of traders or an attacking army. They would watch, it’s what they did. Habakkuk climbs up into this watchtower and I believe that it was his way of getting away from everyone and everything so he could get some perspective or maybe get a God’s-eye view.
Let me give you a couple of equations.
Number One. No margin equals no dream. Most of us don’t have dreams because we don’t have margin in our lives, so we get caught up in the routine of life. What happens is this, we get real busy with the urgent things, totally forget the important things, and wa-la! How many of you that honestly describes your life? Yeah, all of us have been there. How do we get out of that? You’ve got to climb a watchtower, you’ve got to find a way to get out of the routine.
Here’s another formula, change of pace plus change of place equals change of perspective. I see a pattern repeated in Scripture. Jesus goes out into the wilderness for 40 days, comes back with some serious vision. In fact is says He came back in the power of the Spirit and the fullness of the Spirit. Paul goes out into the Arabian Desert. Peter, James and John climb the Mount of Transfiguration. The disciples spend 10 days in the Upper Room. Peter is praying on the rooftop of Simon the tanner’s house, and Habakkuk climbs the watchtower. What’s interesting is that in every instance there is a retreat in a sense from the routine of life. A change of pace, a change of place, why? It’s a way of saying, God speak a word into my life, give me a vision, give me a dream, do something in my heart. One of the best things you can do, call it a prayer closet, call it whatever you want, call it your watchtower, you need a place where you withdraw and here from the voice of God. Over the years, every place we have lived, I have been intentional about trying to find a place, started in college. I used to go into our chapel during lunch, all the lights would be off, no one in there, and I would go up to the balcony and I would walk back and forth and I would pray, God, give me a vision. And it was there that the Lord birthed so many things in my spirit. Listen, I didn’t know how, when, where, I didn’t have specifics, it’s not like God wrote it down, but He began to do something in my heart and I began to get this sense of destiny, that the Lord was going to do something in me and through me. Then I went to seminary and I found a place there outside, kind of a wooded area where I wouldn’t be distracted by people and I would pace back and forth. You want to know where it is now? I climb up the little ladder through the hatch under the rooftop of Ebenezers Coffeehouse. It’s my watchtower. Listen, I don’t know what it is, but God speaks to me there. The reception there is like at least four cell lines. There is just something about this watchtower idea, you need a place where you can get away. I don’t know, go on a retreat, go on a personal retreat, go on a vision quest, I don’t know, just go somewhere, just go, leave! Not now, in a few minutes.
The process of dreaming begins with praying, and I think that’s what this watchtower is about. Colossians 4:2: Be watchful and prayerful. This idea of being prayerful is being watchful in a spiritual sense. It is how we climb the spiritual watchtower and get a vision from God. So the process of dreaming begins with praying. A few years ago, I read a little book by Catherine Marshall titled Adventures in Prayer and I’ll never forget one thing she wrote, I love this, write this down, ‘Dreaming is praying’ and when I first read that, I thought, no, dreaming is dreaming and praying is praying, but the more I thought about it - the more I pray, the more I dream, and it seems like the more I dream, the more I pray. Maybe these two things are interchangeable. That dreaming is a form of praying, praying is a form of dreaming, and I love what Catherine Marshall says, ‘There is no limit to what this combination of dreams and prayer can achieve.’ A couple of weeks from now, I just decided that we are going to take our staff away and we are going to do a day-dream day. We are going to get out of the routine, get away, and we are going to stop getting things done so that we can actually get something done. I’m just fearful of living my life out of memory and repeating the past. I need fresh vision, I need dreams from God so that I know what I am going after. You just need a change of pace and a change of place.
Number 3. So, a little bit of holy discontent, go on a missions trip if you don’t have any. Climb in that watchtower. Break up the routine, find some time to seek God. Listen, you pray for 10 days and Pentecost might just happen. God might just fill you with the Spirit and give you some fresh vision and fresh dream. Number 3, ok God begins to reveal things to you, you need to write down the revelation. That’s what Habakkuk 2:2 says: Then the Lord said to me, write down my answer in large clear letters on a table so that a runner can read it and tell everyone else. I am so biased on this point. For starters, I’m a writer, so I write instinctively, but listen, I’ve always been a jounaler. Why? Because I was afraid that as the Lord spoke to me and began to reveal things, that I would forget it. Then I ran across this little saying, the shortest pencil is longer than the longest memory. I happen to like that and think it is true. So I started writing things down and it turned into blogging, but all I know is this, it is amazing how often I come back to those things that I’ve written down. I went through the process of writing down life goals, and we talked about it. I had more than 100 life goals written down. Writing things down does a couple of things, let me share a couple of these with you. Number one, it commits you to the dream, and that’s why we don’t like to verbalize it. Because it keeps us accountable to what we feel like God is saying to us, but then when it gets really scary, or improbable, we can’t really back out, and that to me seems to be the point. I remember casting a vision for our second location when we were one church, one location, and I remember saying that God is calling us to be a multi-site church, to go into new places and reach new people, and I remember casting the vision, this was way back in 2003, that in September, we were going to launch our second location in Ballston Common Mall, and there was so much excitement on that Sunday, and then the next day was Monday. And I wrote in my journal, we have to do this now. I remember feeling like, did I just verbalize that? Are we actually going to do this? And I think if I hadn’t verbalized it, I don’t know that I would have had to courage to actually do it. It commits you to it. It forces you to define what you want. It brings definition, and this is so critical. Faith is being sure of what we hope for. I think well-developed faith results in well-defined goals or dreams. I love this, in his book The Success Principles, author Jack Canfield talks about what he calls the 2020 vision. He wants to sell a billion books by the year 2020 and raise 500 million dollars for charity. If only he would dream a little bit bigger than that! Are you kidding me? A billion books by 2020, 500 million dollars. I love so many things about that. I love the fact that it is specific. It gives it a deadline, it’s a big hairy audacious goal to use the Jim Collins phrase and I love the motivation, to give 500 million dollars to charity. Dreams defined are a powerful thing.
Number 3. A dream forces you to depend upon God. That’s why you need to dream, because big dreams force you to get on your knees and live in dependence upon God the way that you were designed to, and nothing else will do it. You need to dream big dreams, not because it is something you need to accomplish, you need to dream God-size dreams because it will keep you on your knees before God in raw dependency upon Him. And that is the story of Ebenezers. Pray like it depends on God, work like it depends on you. We didn’t have enough money, so we prayed like crazy. Before we owned the property, we prayed like crazy. We had to get it rezoned, better pray like crazy. Then we worked with a contractor, had to pray like crazy. You have to pray like crazy to get there and that is the purpose.
Number 4. Create cognitive categories in your reticular activating system. I’m not even going to explain that. Let me close with the final statement. The Lord speaking in vision to Habakkuk says: But these things I plan won’t happen right away. Slowly, steadily, surely the time approaches when the vision will be fulfilled. If it seems slow, do not despair, but these things will surely come to pass, it will not be delayed. (I like the Living Bible here, it says) they will not be overdue by a single day! One thought on this. What I’m saying is, you need to come down from the watchtower, you need to role up your sleeves and then you need to get to work and break a sweat. It is going to be hard, you are going to have to be steady, it could happen slowly, but hang in there, you’ll move in the direction of fulfilling this dream. I like what Jim Rohn says, he makes a distinction between two kinds of pain, jot these down. The pain of discipline and the pain of regret. He said you are going to experience one or the other, no one achieves success without some physical, financial, emotional or spiritual pain, it is impossible. But the pain of discipline bears us the pain of regret. If you avoid the pain of discipline, you will eventually experience some pain of regret. So really it is our choice. It’s gonna be hard, it’s gonna be painful. I had someone recently ask me, this is really sad, but you write one book and all of a sudden you are like an expert on writing books, and I am no expert, but people every once in a while ask me, and someone recently ask me, what would I have to give up to write a book? And the answer was so immediate – sleep! You will have to get up very early in the morning and stay up very late at night and you will sacrifice a ton of sleep, but if God calls you to do it, if that’s what dream is in there, then He will give you the energy and the ability to do it. But it is going to take tremendous sacrifice to see that dream become reality.
I want to close with this. There is going to be a temptation to feel like, I’m not a dreamer. Don’t give me that, ok? Because that is no longer an excuse. You are part of the greatest dream ever dreamed. And I’m not talking about occupational dreams or travel goals, I’m talking about, what is it that God is calling you within this thing called the kingdom of God to do for his purposes. And everybody has a dream, everybody has a role, and as the Spirit of God fills you, it unleashes the dreamer within us. So we all need to be moving in this direction. I think this is the process we go through to get there. I want you to be encouraged because this isn’t about, I’m not even going saying, I’ve been on the mountaintop and here’s the dream. The reason why we’re doing the day-dream day in a couple of weeks is because I need more clarity. Lord, I need to hear from you. I need to climb the mountain, I need to go out into the wilderness, I need to be in the Upper Room, I need to climb up the watchtower, again, so that I can come back down with great clarity and intentionality and conviction that I am doing what God has called me to do. That’s all I’m asking, just climb the watchtower, that’s all I’m saying. You don’t have to have your dream right here right now, but if you are sensitive to it, it will come.
Habakkuk 3:2, get this promise in your spirit, Lord I have heard of your fame, I stand in awe of your deeds, O Lord, renew them in our day. So here’s the great challenge, we think about what happened a couple thousand years ago, it is exciting! They did amazing things. But I’m me and this is now, and there seems to be this huge divide, but listen, these are ordinary people with the Spirit of God coming upon them and doing incredible things for the kingdom. And we are no different. This week I got an email, I want to share it with you, from a businessman, owns a couple of Chic-fil-A restaurants not far from here. He went on a mission trip to Niger. Niger is one of the poorest countries in Africa. He came back from that trip with a holy discontent, and he had an idea, it seems like a crazy idea to me, but he decided to organize a dodgeball tournament. Can that actually be an idea from the Lord? Turned into one of the largest dodgeball tournaments in the country, has spawned some other tournaments that are happening in other places as well as some other events, and here is the beauty of it, they are doing it to raise money for Niger. The last event they held brought in $193,000. One trip, a little bit of discontent, one idea, but act on it. Do something with it, you never know what God can do. Here’s where it is beautiful. The reason they emailed me is because they are taking hundreds of people, this organization, over to Niger every year, and every single one of them reads In a Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day. The book inspired some of these guys so it’s part of the DNA of these teams going, but here’s what I love, this guy read one of my dreams. I remember feeling foolish writing it in the book, you know that one of my dreams is to experience Acts 2:41 once in my life. Once in my life I want to see 3,000 people baptized in the same place at the same time. I want to see something that has an Acts-like nature to it. I have no idea how or when, it seems crazy to me, it seemed less crazy to this guy, because they went out based on that and bought the largest stadium in the city where they are going next year, seats 3,800 people, and they are believing that 3,000 people will be baptized in that stadium. Will it happen? I don’t know. Even if it is 2,999, that’s pretty good. So I say, God make us dreamers, let your Spirit fill us in a way that we see visions and dream dreams. In the last days, God says: I will pour out my Spirit on all people, your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams and as they say, the rest is His-story.
Let’s pray. Lord thank You. God fill us with the conviction, fill us with a heart to go after the things of God. Lord, one singular prayer, I pray that You would make us lots of things, but one thing for sure, make us dreamers. God may your Spirit, may the Ghost fill this machine in a way that we become more than flesh and blood, that your Spirit would conceive things in us, work in us and through us in amazing ways. We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Ministry Transcription
Margaret Salyers
606-706-5006
margaretsalyers@gmail.com
