We are just about through our series on the Dream Giver. I want you to know I am working on a life development series which will help you put together the principles of the dream giver as life application. We last spoke of the wasteland and the sanctuary.
After you come out of your life of sanctuary where you have laid the dream down, allowing time for God to develop it into a God dream, you advance out into the land of the giants. It doesn’t matter who you are, there will also be giants who will challenge the dream God has given you. They might be alive, they might be from the past, the nagging words spoke at an earlier time that has discouraged you from moving forward, either way they present obstacles you need to overcome.
These giants make their appearance only after you have launched your dream and so many times, they are the cause for the dream, there is something God wants to do through you to eliminate the giants of life so people can gain a clear passage.
The advantage of encountering giants is they bring the greatest opportunity to bring glory to God and the bigger the giant, the greater the potential for God to receive glory.
In Numbers 13:27, 28 it reads, They gave Moses this account: “We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is the fruit. But the people who live there are powerful and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there.
They said they saw the descendants of giants, the Anakians. It is when we are on the way to what we are called to do we find the giants. They did not report they found giants on their way back to the wilderness.
We may fear giants when we should really fear the absence of giants in our lives trying to prevent us from the promised land of God.
Real life tells us when giants appear there is also the potential for risk and danger. I am not calling for an all out jettisoning of wisdom. Giants can cause harm, they can hurt people, they can even kill people so we need a spiritual and physical awareness of how we overcome the giants of our lives.
Understand, the giants are there to prepare us for the future God has planned for us. Much like the moth in the cocoon, giants strengthen our wings so we can fly, and the absence of giants will cause our dream to die. Giants are stepping stones for the future giants you will face. I gave a message years ago about a man in a blizzard with a lion. 2 Samuel 23:20-21 tells us Benaiah son of Jehoiada was a valiant fighter from Kabzeel, who performed great exploits. He struck down two of Moab’s best men. He also went down into a pit on a snowy day and killed a lion. 21 And he struck down a huge Egyptian. Although the Egyptian had a spear in his hand, Benaiah went against him with a club. He snatched the spear from the Egyptian’s hand and killed him with his own spear The two Moab fighters set him up to kill a lion on a snowy day and the lion lead him to killing the Egyptian giant. The giants we face today become the stepping stones for the larger giants we will face in the future. From Moab’s to Egyptian giants and what falls in-between.
Ultimately, the giants give us the opportunity to share the glory of God with other people. The ability to slay the giants of a dream do not come from our abilities but God’s enabling power to guide us through. David killed the giant Goliath not in his own strength but through the guiding power of the Holy Spirit who landed the stone in the right spot on the forehead to topple the Philistine giant.
Let’s face it. Your God given dream has giants scattered across your way trying to prevent you from attaining your God given purpose and you need to have a break through if you are going to travel farther down the road to victory. What are those giants? How would you prioritize the need to remove them from the scene? To often we major on the minor things of life because they are easier to accomplish. Why move a mole hill when you need to move a mountain? I would suggest you look at the giants that are preventing you from getting into the land of promise and prioritize their importance so you can have a target of what you need to work through. Then decide if the giants are passive, aggressive or reactive, you need to determine and understand what lies before you. David did not go out and slay Goliath without knowing something of the giant. He knew what he had and He knew what God had to bring him through.
Some giants that stand in your path can just be ignored, they have a loud bark but no teeth with which to bite. Ignore them. If God has placed a dream in your heart, who is greater. The Bible says Greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world. Start acting boldly when you encounter the giants who stand in your way. There are so many options you can take with a giant.
Life and literature are filled with the “Cinderella legend, ”stories about rejected people who were eventually “discovered” and elevated to places of honor and authority. Horatio Algerwrote over 100 boys’ novels that focused on the “rags-to-riches” theme, and he became one of the most influential American writers of the last half of the nineteenth century. Whether it’s Abraham Lincoln going “from log cabin to White House” or Joseph from the prison to the throne of Egypt, the story of the successful “underdog” is one that will always be popular. We like to see losers become winners.
People say you can’t, giants stand in your path, and if you are fulfilling a God given dream, you too will be a rags to riches story.
We are so afraid we will make a mistake. Lincoln said “The man who is incapable of making a mistake is incapable of anything.” The road paved through the land of giants may bring us to error, but not to err is not to do. We must and will find a way through the giants. It may take some negotiation, we might need some assistance or partnership with giants, we might need to confront or acquire the giants in order to move forward. We need to seek God’s wisdom, not fear mistakes, but use them as stepping stones to move forward, and bring glory to God in what we do.
What helps the most is to remember what God did in the past. We read in the Old Testament how they build altars of remembrance, left a pile of stones which spoke to a victory. They knew one day they would need to remember the past so they could move forward in the presence. What is it you have seen God do in the past with the giants you have faced that brought victory. Remember. What God has done in the past He can do again today and again tomorrow and the tomorrows to come. It is an issue of remembering and trusting. It is going to take risk to break through the land of the giants. An 1860 San Francisco newspaper printed this ad for the Pony Express: “WANTED: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over 18. Must be expert riders willing to risk daily. Orphans preferred.”
What if they no one took the risk? What kind of setback would we be experiencing today as a result. Risk. Are you willing to be a risk taker for the kingdom of God?
You must be willing to take some risks and occasionally make some mistakes. You must be able to take criticism, be misunderstood, and even be slandered, without giving up. As Harry Truman said, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”
Teddy Roosevelt said “When nearly three centuries ago the first settlers came to the country which has now become this great Republic, they fronted not only hardships and privation, but terrible risk to their lives. In those grim years the custom grew of setting apart one day in each year for a special service of thanksgiving to the Almighty for preserving the people through the changing seasons. The custom has now become national and hallowed by immemorial usage. We live in easier and more plentiful times than our forefathers, the men who with rugged strength faced the rugged days.”
Senator Phil Gramm said speaking of our founding fathers, “The problems they faced were overwhelming as compared to ours. But they had two things, it seems to me that we don’t have enough of today. They had faith and they had will. They had faith that God did not raise America as a beacon of hope for the world, only to let us fail. And they had the will to act, the will to risk everything in order to build a country that would be a model for the world. I believe this creed is as true today as it was then.”
Our past is filled with the remembrance of people who dared not sit on the sideline with their dream but stood, in the face of opposition, in the face of giants, and pressed on. The Scriptures are filled with account after account of men and women who stood, who took risks and pressed on so we could have their example, learn from it, and courageously, empowered by God, take risks ourselves to fulfill the dream God has given to us.
1 Samuel 16:6 says, It may be that God will work for us. It may be. And when we connect with God and God connects the dream within us, we will then move forward, taking risks to overcome even greater giants as we make our way to the land of promise.
This week, take time to pray about those giants in your life and work out a plan, inspired by God through prayer, to overcome. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “I have a dream.” But he never left the dream in the dream mode, he went about slaying the giants of his dream until civil rights began to emerge. Although he was slain by a giant to his dream, because of the work he did, the dream lives on because it was a God given dream. Had he not taken risks, he would probably be alive today, and the God given dream for civil rights would have not materialized and larger giants would have grown up making the task more difficult.
Your dream will not happen until you make a decision to pursue it with the hand of God grasped firmly in your hand and the focus of your life, the focus of God for you.
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