Dream Catchers

DREAM CATCHERS

By Pastor Jim May

Among the Chippewa and other American Indian tribes there is a legend that goes something like this:

A spider was quietly spinning his web in his own space. It was beside the sleeping space of Nokomis, the grandmother.

Each day, Nokomis watched the spider at work, quietly spinning away. One day as she was watching him, her grandson came in, saw the spider, picked up the shoe and attacked the spider with the intent of killing it.

”No, my son”, whispered Nokomis, "don’t hurt him."

"But grandmother, why do you protect the spider?" asked the little boy. The older lady smiled, but did not answer.

When the boy left, the spider went to the old woman and thanked her for saving his life. He said to her, "For many days you have watched me spin and weave my web. You have admired my work. In return for saving my life, I will give you a gift."

He smiled and moved away, spinning as he went. Soon the moon glistened on a magical silvery web moving gently in the window. "See how I spin?" he said. "See and learn, for each web will snare bad dreams. Only good dreams will go through the small hole. This is my gift to you. Use it so that only good dreams will be remembered. The bad dreams will become hopelessly entangled in the web and forgotten, never to come to pass."

This is just one of the legends that fostered the use of the “Dream Catcher” among all of the Indians tribes. Each nation, or tribe, has it’s own version of the legend, but the purpose is always the same, to guard against bad dreams and let the good dreams come through.

I’m sure that most of you have seen them, at least in pictures. This is just one more example of superstition and foolishness that people will so easily accept.

I’m not here to promote such foolishness as the Indian Dream Catcher. We don’t believe in such superstitions. But I am here to tell you that God loves a “Dream Catcher” who will catch the vision and believe in the dream that He births within us. He loves for us to catch hold of a dream and run with it, allowing it to enter into our spirit and our heart and set us on fire to work for him.

God uses dreams and visions to inspire His people to do a work for him. The Bible promotes the idea that there would dreamers in these last days that would accomplish a great work for the Lord. Peter, in his great, anointed message on the Day of Pentecost, referred to this same thing in Acts 2:17. Quoting Joel 2:28, he said, "And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams…"

I would love to see some more dreamers in this church. I’d love to see some of our sons and daughters “prophesying, or teaching their friends and family about Jesus, and even giving forth some prophetic utterances under the anointing of the Holy Ghost.

Wouldn’t it be great for some of our young men to catch a vision for a work for the Lord! There is no limit to what God can do with a man who has a vision!

One man who was a dreamer was Joseph and look where it took him. His dream took him from being a slave in Egypt to the second in command of Pharaoh’s kingdom.

But everyone didn’t like Joseph’s dream and you can be assured that a lot of people, even Christians, won’t like your dreams either because it will make them face up to the fact that their faith is dead and they don’t have a vision for Jesus.

Genesis 37:5, “And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it his brethren: and they hated him yet the more.”

Now all of us dream a little, but for most of us that dream is little more than a “day dream” or a fantasy that we don’t believe could ever come true. We are so conditioned to believe that it’s only a few that really “make it”. Have you ever thought that the reason only a few really “make it” is that it’s only those few who are willing to pay the price to make their dreams come true? Everyone else just gives up too quickly!

Do you believe that Mr. Sam Walton was a “Dream Catcher”? He began as a sales clerk at a Ben Franklin store. But Sam had a dream – a big dream. He approached his boss with his dream and was promptly told to quit dreaming and get back to work. The owners of the Ben Franklin stores thought that they knew how to make the retail discount business work and they weren’t about to listen to this dreamer named Walton. But who won in the end? Most of you don’t even remember the Ben Franklin Stores but everybody knows about Walmart, because Sam wouldn’t give up on his dream to be the best discount store in the world.