Dreams Can Come True Series

Vanna White, the glamorous star who shows the letters on Wheel of

Fortune, was a leader in her church youth group in North Myrtle Beach,

North Carolina. Her pastor wrote about how he asked her, when she was a

senior, what she was going to do after graduation. She responded that her

dream was to become a model, and so she was going to modeling school in

Atlanta.

This is how the pastor reacted: "Vanna, no!" I said. "Don't do that!

Those schools will do nothing but take your money. Nobody ever gets a job at

one of those places. You have brains! Ability! You could be more than a

model!"

She thanked me politely and said, "But I have this dream of going to

Hollywood and becoming an actress."

"From North Myrtle Beach?" I asked. "Vanna, that only happens in

movies. This is crazy!"

He goes on to say he is not surprised that her autobiography does not

mention his ministerial influence. He points out that Vanna makes more in

one week than he makes in a whole year of giving good advice to aspiring

teenagers. His point in telling this story is to call attention to the fact that it is

not wise to try and interfere with other people's dreams.

A dream can be an escape from reality, but it can also be an alternative to a

present inadequate reality. A dream can provide an ideal toward which we

strive and thereby change reality for the better. In his book, Finding The Goal

Posts, Lawrence Howe tells of such a dream in the life of Cecil Rhodes. He

was 22 years old when he conceived the idea of an international scholarship

fund. A plan that would bring the keenest minds from around the world to

study together, and grow in their appreciation of the culture and learning of

other lands. Such a project would, of course, take millions of dollars, but with

no money and a dream, Cecil Rhodes made out his will bequeathing millions of

dollars to this noble cause. Then he signed his name to his dream and went

out into the world to back it up.

He struggled against adversity; sometimes succeeding; sometimes failing,

but before long he came into possession of the great Kimberly Diamond Mines

in South Africa, and he became world famous for his fabulous wealth. He was

comparatively young yet when her fell prey to tuberculosis and he knew the

end was near. He called for his will to have it read. He did not need to add

anything to it except a paragraph of instructions to his lawyers advising them

how to make his wealth available to fulfill his dream. He did not even need to

sign it, for he had done that years before. As Howe said, "He literally signed

his name beneath his ideals. He built great castles in the air, and then went

out by hard work to put foundations beneath them..." Here was a dreamer

who built his castle from the top down.

His dream was not an escape from the real, but an ideal he sought to make

a part of the real. This kind of dream ought to be standard equipment in the

mind of every Christian, young and old alike. As Christians we are bound to

be realistic, but we are not bound by reality, for our ideals are always to be far

superior to the reality of what is, and they are to drive us on to change the real

till it conforms to the ideal.

In an article titled "Dreams: Pathway to Potential," Kent Hutcheson

writes:

A person who has dreams is filled with expectation,

and no obstacle seems insurmountable. He had a

positive attitude, is excited and is never bored.

This means that dreams are practically the same thing as faith. Listen to

Heb.11:1, "What is faith? It is the confident assurance that something we want

is going to happen. It is the certainty that what we hope for is waiting for

us...." Faith and dreams are one. It is a weak faith indeed that has no dreams

of being more of what God wants you to be in the days ahead. Someone printed

on a piece of stationary, "The poorest of all men is not the man

without a cent but the man without a dream."

In the Congressional Library over one of the entrances leading to the

archives are these words: "They build to low who build beneath the stars."

Thank God we have ideal that soars far beyond the furthest star into the very

presence of God where Jesus sits at His right hand. There is our ideal, and

our dream, if it is divine, is to be conformed to His image. This morning I

want you to consider with me a dreamer in the Old Testament whose life