Dreaming God-Sized Dreams

Dreaming God-Sized Dreams

2 Kings 13:14-19 14 Now Elisha was suffering from the illness from which he died. Jehoash king of Israel went down to see him and wept over him. "My father! My father!" he cried. "The chariots and horsemen of Israel!" 15 Elisha said, "Get a bow and some arrows," and he did so. 16 "Take the bow in your hands," he said to the king of Israel. When he had taken it, Elisha put his hands on the king’s hands. 17 "Open the east window," he said, and he opened it. "Shoot!" Elisha said, and he shot. "The LORD’s arrow of victory, the arrow of victory over Aram!" Elisha declared. "You will completely destroy the Arameans at Aphek." 18 Then he said, "Take the arrows," and the king took them. Elisha told him, "Strike the ground." He struck it three times and stopped. 19 The man of God was angry with him and said, "You should have struck the ground five or six times; then you would have defeated Aram and completely destroyed it. But now you will defeat it only three times."

Intro: Most of us like to play it safe. Don’t rock the boat too much. Don’t get too excited about anything. That may come from having a laid back personality or maybe you’ve just been socially conditioned to do life that way.

-Now I understand that not every phase of this life is a call to arms or a rally to conquer the world. However, I cannot help but sense that far too often we settle for considerably less than what God has in mind for us. That’s why I want to talk about dreaming BIG today – especially as we face a new year in just a few days.

-Dreaming BIG can be risky business. Why? Because the bigger you dare to dream, the less happy you are with the status quo. The bigger your dream the greater your discontent with just floating through life. Big dreams make you NOT want to row, row, row your boat gently down the stream. Rather, let’s rock, rock, rock this boat and hit some white water rapids! Let’s get some adrenalin pumping and go have an adventure!

-Maybe that doesn’t sound all that great to you. Some of you have had all the adventures you want to have and are happy to take things kind of easy for the rest of the journey. If that is what God has called you to do, then you have my blessing. However, if you’ve taken yourself out of the game on your own, I hope that something will awaken in you today and that you will realize how much more you have to offer when you let God drive. Where there is no vision / revelation / God-sized dreams the people do their own thing. I think you would agree that doing our own thing cannot compare to doing what God calls us to do! It is less fulfilling, less thrilling, will help fewer people, and will ultimately push us away from God. That’s why I feel compelled to speak today on Dreaming God-Sized Dreams. Here’s the main idea of the message:

Prop: When we dare to dream the dreams God has for us, we will be amazed at what He does in and through us.

I. Don’t minimize God’s Dreams by small living

-As we read in 2 Kings 13, King Jehoash responded to the word of the Lord half-heartedly. When Elisha declared victory over their enemies and told Jehoash to strike the ground with the arrows, the king took the arrows and went “Tap, tap, tap.” Elisha was angry with him and said he should have struck the ground several times and he would have totally destroyed his enemies.

-This might seem like a puzzling story to you, but here is one thing I get out of it: Sometimes the word of the Lord is only as effective as our reception of it! Sometimes our response to what the Lord is saying will determine how it plays out. Jehoash did not have a passion to be victorious over the enemy, and it showed in his response to God’s word through Elisha. Now, Jehoash was the king of Israel, and v.11 says he did evil in the sight of the Lord and did not turn away from the sins of the king before him. It is likely that sin kept him from seeing the enemy as the threat it really was, both spiritually and physically. So, I think sin kept him from dreaming God’s dream. It just wasn’t in his heart to respond any differently than he did. The purity was missing. The passion was missing. The power was missing!

-This story tells me that small thinking comes from small living. Small living is doing life without God – doing our own thing rather than God’s thing! Small living is choosing to do evil in the sight of the Lord, refusing to turn away from the things that dishonor God.