Re-Dreaming With God
This week I've had a few interesting conversations around dreaming and re-dreaming.
Not the kind of "dreaming" we do while asleep.
But the kind we do as a little kid, when we wish.
The kind that drives us in our 20's toward passionate and sometimes impulsive decisions.
And the dreaming that lingers with us in our adult years, as youth has faded...
When we look back on our hearts, our design, our purpose and ask ourselves...
What has my life been about?
Is this what I hoped my life would be?
What if God could do something new? Something fresh? Something exciting, through me now?
Watch last Sunday's sermon "Treasuring the One Thing" from our Series, Seek Ye First.
Dreaming with God is core to our nature as human beings.
Hope is the force behind our dreams.
And hope (and therefore dreaming) is thoroughly biblical in nature.
"Abraham, when hope was dead within him, went on hoping in faith, believing that he would become 'the father of many nations'" Romans 4:18, JB Phillips.
"[Now] we have this hope as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul [it cannot slip and it cannot break down under whoever steps out upon it—a hope] that reaches farther and enters into [the very certainty of the Presence] within the veil" Hebrews 6:19, AMPC.
Dreaming and hoping are not only natural to humanity, but spiritually refining for the Christian.
When we dream, we cast a picture on the theatre of our imagination.
And if we could follow the threads of those dreams, we would find ourselves drawing back into our divine purpose, or perhaps forward into our divine destiny.
"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare[b] and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope" Jeremiah 29:11 ESV.
"For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" Ephesians 2:10 ESV.
"That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints (us!)" Ephesians 1:17-18 ESV.
When we speak out our dreams, even a fragile dream, we catch wind of our purpose.
We begin to ask questions about goodness, faith, truth and purpose that can realign our desires with God's desires.
As we begin to act on a God-fueled-dream, we find fertile ground for maturity in faith.
Have you ever had a dream like this?
What was it like pursuing that dream with God (or without Him)?
What would it be like, with God, to re-dream in this season?
"We rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us" Romans 5:2-4 ESV.
See you Sunday, as we dive deeper into Seek Ye First!
Pastor Dave
PS. if this is speaking to you, check out Elizabeth Barret Browning's poem Human Life's Mystery as she contemplates how "God keeps His holy mysteries/Just on the outside of man’s dream" :)