A few years back, there was a popular song with the kids called “Determinate”. from a group called Lemonade Mouth It’s about not being a wallflower, watching others on the dance floor of life living out their dreams. The song exhorts you! You need to determinate, make the world your dance floor. Try until you can’t and then you demand more. Determinate.
How many of you have ever had a dream? Dreams and aspirations . . . we all have them or had them. Kids come with a built in sense of destiny and nothing is out of reach . . .- I’m gonna be president, a fireman, policeman an astronaut. Notice how its all high and nobel, when was the last time you met a kid who said I want to be a bank robber when I grow up . . . that’s my dream.
My dream . . . as a kid, I wanted to be the first woman supreme court justice. Don’t laugh! Sure, I was a bit overly ambitious and Sandra Day O’Connor beat me to the punch. But seriously, I’ve always had this innate passion for justice. I was always a conservative even in the 60’s when I was growing up in the counter culture generation, something just didn’t ring right. Like it all sounded like truth, and seemed right, and looked good, good like bait on a hook. The only problem with bait on a hook is when you bite it, you become someone else’s meal.
I wanted to right wrongs by being a prosecutor, so I could rescue the innocent from the bad guys. Somewhere I lost that dream. Until one day, I found out Jesus is the only one who can really right wrongs and restore lives. .So full circle back to the dream, back to the passion in a different wrapper, I ended up in a pastoral role instead. Now, I can help people pick up broken lives or preferably, build them right from the beginning so that they never broke. Either way, my sense of justice is fullfilled because now I’m fighting the original bad boy, Satan.
But for many of us, somehow these high and nobel dreams have drifted into a permanent dream state instead of becoming living realities in our lives. God did not create us just to dream . . . but to live. He did not create us to be wallflowers, He created us to be dancers. God did not create us to be spectators, He created us to be world changers. So, in this series, we’re going to focus on how to get our dreams from concept to reality.
A dream by definition is a strong desire to do something high or great.
The opposite of a dream or aspiration is aimlessness. Or as Proverbs puts it
“Where there is no vision, the people perish:” Proverbs 29:11
Without a dream, we have no direction, we become aimless. Without aim or purpose. You know the old saying, if you aim a nothing, you’ll hit it every time. But God says . . .
Jeremiah 29:11-13
“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.”
My goal is to encourage and challenge you to pursue the dreams God has given you with all your heart. And if your dreams are all but dead to stir those embers into a fire. Because your dreams do not just impact you, everyone in your sphere of influence.
It’s said that encouragement is the oxygen of the soul. I want to give you oxygen.
Over the next few weeks, we are going to a whirl wind study the life of Joseph, a man who lived nearly 4,000 years ago, but whose story is as relevant as if it happened yesterday.
What was your childhood dream? Has it become a reality? Did it get put on the back burner? Did it get replace with something even better? I’d love to hear from you.
scourtneylawson 