The Dream Weaver
New Hope Community Pastor Bob Briggs October 3, 2004 p.m.
What dream do you have that is beating in your heart which has gone unfulfilled? Perhaps it goes back to your childhood when you first dreamed the dream. Time has passed, the dream has been placed on the back burner, a pleasant thought, but one that you have found unrealized for a number of reasons. I had attended the Dream Giver conference with Bruce Wilkinson, author of the best selling book, Prayer of Jabez, coming to a place in my life where I realize I have unfulfilled dreams, an unfulfilled mega-dream which I have not even scratched the surface because it appears so insurmountable. I don’t think I am alone, most of us in this room have a dream like mine, not the same dream, but a dream which has been blocked time after time and each time we have receded away from the dream but the beat of the dream is still there. Even now, as I have broached on the subject of a dream, that dream, your dream is beating a little stronger, trying to emerge from the deep recesses of your life so it can take a breath of fresh air and bloom again.
Over the next several weeks, I want to talk about the dream, my dream and your dream, and how we can, using the timeless principles of the Bible brought to light through the teach of Bruce Wilkinson, guided by the Holy Spirit, help us to recapture the fire and the passion for our individual dream.
As I was working on the preparation for this series, I met with someone who told me they did not have a dream. Anyone else feel that way? That is not uncommon. When you have tried, and seemingly failed at the advancement of your dream, it is easy to have so suppressed it so as to feel there is no dream. But you have one.
There is a legend of an artist who long sought for a piece of sandalwood, out of which to carve a Madonna. He was about to give up in despair, leaving the vision of his life unrealized, when in a dream he was bidden to carve his Madonna from a block of oak wood, which was destined for the fire. He obeyed, and produced a masterpiece from a log of common fire-wood.
Many of us lose great opportunities in life by waiting to find sandalwood for our carvings, when they really lie hidden in the common logs that we burn. We are going to take time to walk through the valley of our dreams and find that block of oak and begin again the process of carving out our life dream.
God told Jeremiah reading from The Message, Jeremiah 1:3 “Before I shaped you in the womb, I knew all about you. Before you saw the light of day, I had holy plans for you: A prophet to the nations—that’s what I had in mind for you.”
We are no different than Jeremiah. God knew us before we were born. Psalm 139:13-16 sstates For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, 16 your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
God does not take away what He has given. The dream is there, waiting to be rediscovered, waiting for us to reconnect with the calling, the passion, that special dream and so we embark on the journey of a lifetime. So lets talk about your dream, and talk about mine as we enter this day of discovery.
Bruce Wilkinson outlines 7 stages of a dream. We want to take time to explore each of these stages and find which stage our dream has been waiting for us to pick it back up and run with it. Everyone is somewhere in this process. If you have more than one dream, you could be in a multiple of places as you connect the dots and draw the dream together.
The first stage is The Dream. Everyone has one because God has given it to you. Whether you are a Christian or not, before you were born, God placed a God-sized dream in your heart.
Stage two is The Comfort Zone. You will not find your dream here, but you may have decided to live you life in the comfort zone because it is comfortable.
Stage three is The Borderland. This is the place where you have journeyed out of the comfort zone, when you have begun to talk about your dream, telling others where you are going, and for the most part, those others will try to reel you back in because it shakes their personal comfort zone. They will do their best to try and talk you out of the journey. If you stay the course, that will bring you to…
Stage 4—The wasteland. As you have made the trip through the borderland, you eyes were fixed on the dream, the mountain God has planted in your heart for you to accomplish but while you were looking up, you did not see there was this vast valley between you and your dream, a wasteland where so many people have given up because it is bigger than they thought and it will cause them to take a longer time to realize their dream. Those who make it through will often say that if they knew what they know now, they would never have made the journey through the wasteland, but once they have come out, they would never want to go back to where they were before. This is a time of real testing to see just how much you want the dream that is beating within you.
Stage 5 is Sanctuary. This optional, it is a place where the dream is put on hold while God works a new thing in your life. The temptation is to avoid Sanctuary because the mountain is so close and your dream is within your grasp of attaining. Sanctuary will help grow your dream into the God-shape it was designed to look like. As you walk through sanctuary, the dream will change and become God’s dream and you, the vessel that carries to for Him.
Stage 6 is The Valley of Giants. You might have thought things would get easier, but conflict is always around. Through sanctuary you will understand how to deal with the giants who are trying to kill your dream and when you do, it leads into the last stage…
Stage 7, The Land of Promise.
Right now, you are somewhere in one these dream stages, and it may not necessarily be in the stage you might think.
Tonight I want to focus in the remaining minutes on the first stage, The Dream. Think for a moment about what it was in times past when there was this dream that beat within to accomplish a certain task in your life. It might have been in childhood, there was something that your mind focused on, something that you just knew you could accomplish, not a childish thought but a monumental thought about what you would do as you grew. Can you visualize it? Is it still there calling out to you as a direction you could go?
Our goal for this series is to help you get from your dream, your God given vision to the victory, the land of Promise God has designed for you. To do this, you have to keep the dream before your eyes. Let me ask, what would happen if you could identify your dream and let the dream out from the closet of your mind?
When the Apostle Paul was 60, he wrote the Epistle to the Philippians. In chapter 3, verses 12, 13 he wrote, 12Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead.
At 60, Paul said I press on. He had purpose in mind and sought to maximize what God could and would do through his life if he would remain faithful to the cause and dream he had been given.
The biggest enemy to your dream is two words, I can’t. And the second two words people use to kill dreams is “no money” The dream you have is bigger than you are, isn’t that right? Think with me for a moment. Why do you think your dream is bigger than you and the abilities you have right now? Because it’s not your dream. It’s God’s dream for you and in order for you to accomplish that dream, you are going to need the dream giver, God, to empower you to climb the heights of that dream. Any climbers in the house?
You might think your dream to be unrealistic, and some dreams are but don’t let the thought of it being unrealistic stop you from pursuing to hear from God concerning your dream. Napoleon saw Italy, but not the Alps. He had an objective and knew where he was going. Washington saw the Hessians at Trenton. A man of smaller stature would have seen the Delaware choked with ice.
The majority see the obstacles; the few see the objectives; history records the successes of the former while oblivion is the reward of the latter.
To attain your dream, you must progressively be moving forward not backward. At times in the process of moving into the reality of your dream you might want to send God an e-mail to question Him as to what is happening in your dream but as you progressively formulate and go down the steps of your dream, God will continually clarify the points of the dream along the way.
Your dream is governed by how you were formed and your dream was designed to meet a need bigger than you are. I was talking to someone this week who said they have a dream to help crack babies but right now they are stalled in their dream process, they did not think they could and when that obstacles is overcome, they do not think they have the time. But they can, if they really want to. Some people say age is a hindrance. You are never too old for your dream, remember, Paul wrote Philippians when he was 60 and he talked about having not yet attained what he was created for.
God has given you a dream. It’s your dream. It is not dependent on what others are going to do so your dream will fall in place, it is dependent on what you are willing to do to accomplish the dream and in the process bless others because you made the journey. You have waited long enough, it is now time to launch out in pursuit of the dream. I am going to talk later in the series on how to survive while your dream birth’s forth, don’t quit your day job yet, but get ready to experience the blessing of living out your God dream. You need to make a commitment tonight that you are going to pursue the dream, that you are going to hang in there until the dream is fulfilled and when things are hard, when the resources seem to have dried up, when the people who supported you in the beginning have wavered and some left, that you will hold on because God has a hold of you and His dream will be fulfilled. Your dream is going to happen because you persist to follow where God is directing.
As we close, I want to pray for those who want prayer to pursue your dream. I want to invite you to the altar as we begin a fresh journey.
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