I have a Dream…
Visibly shaken, his eyes wet with tears, he approached cautiously me following my message on “Tomorrow” from Joshua 3:5. His story was all too common. There was a time when God spoke a dream into his spirit to plant churches in Malaysia and as time has gone by, the dream faded in the midst of life, family, busyness, issues, disappointments, failures, etc. His present situation was not bad but the dream that once soaked his heart with passion was not yet realized. The tears in his eyes were evidence that God was at work–restoring the dreams–recapturing his heart for the future.
There were others but today, God reminded his people in the California Camp Meeting that dreams define who we are and without our dreams we are likely to be frustrated with ministry and other issues in our lives. There is a God dream in all of us. Quite frankly, much of the weariness in ministry is about our spending energy on things that are not connected to the dreams God has put into our hearts. We have to recapture our dreams!
The Church of God needs to return to dreaming again. The excuses we make for times changing and economy, etc do not address the fact that God is creative and He calls us to dream and imagine with him about our “tomorrows.” It cannot be that we stop dreaming. We are not corporate leaders. We are not answerable to stockholders who have financial investment in our decisions. We are servants of God and this work is His creation and we serve Him.
Leaving the hall today, a young man who had just graduated from the CAMS program stopped to appreciate the message. As I took his hand, the tears came and we talked about his future. Though he has no experience in ministry and little insight about tomorrow–there was an obvious connection–God has given him a dream. He needs to go for it–and I told him so!
God, help us keep dreaming. Tomorrow beckons and it belongs to the heart that refuses to stop dreaming and imagining what God could possibly be up to in tomorrow.
I want to see…don’t you?