We’ve been talking about
“Dreaming with God.” Okay, so let’s discuss “Joseph the Dreamer.” Do you
remember the portion of Scripture regarding Joseph’s dreams about the bundles
of wheat, the sun, and the moon all bowing down to him? You may note that Joseph
never gave the interpretation for that dream. Joseph didn’t say, “This means
you all are going to be bowing down to me.” Other people interpreted it that
way. What was their response when he shared the dream with them? Were they
overjoyed, happy, and encouraging his vision? Oh no, the Bible says that they
envied him. They were resentful, angry, and bitter. Then the biblical account
says something fascinating about Jacob, Joseph’s daddy, in Genesis 37:11. His
brothers envied him, but his father kept the matter in mind. Why? Why do you
think Jacob kept the matter in mind? I believe it was because he knew the power
of dreams.
How did he know the power of
dreams? Because he himself was a dreamer, and he had to have been thinking back
to the time when he experienced dreaming big dreams. And now his son, Joseph,
is dreaming grand scale dreams that nobody can understand yet. How can this be?
And so what action do they take? His brothers go on the attack; “We’ll kill the
dream by killing the dreamer.” No, they never plotted to kill him. They just
wanted to imprison him, put him in a pit.
Listen to me, folks, you get
dreaming for God and there will be people around you who want to put you in a
pit. They want you thinking small because they think small. And if they can put
you in a pit; they put your dream in a pit.
Joseph, I believe having been
predestined by God, followed the path that God had laid out for him. It most
certainly was not the path of least resistance. By the way, the path of God is
not always the path of least resistance. So often we look for the path of least
resistance and many times we miss God as a result. Was God’s plan the path of
least resistance for Jacob or Joseph? Oh no, no, no! Some twenty years later
the dream came to pass. How long will it take for your dream to come to pass? I
don’t know, but don’t stop holding onto your dream!
I have dreams I have yet to
fulfill. I can testify that many of them have been fulfilled. I’ve shared with
most of you that for approximately a year before I went to Haiti as a
missionary, I was having dreams. All I could see were the faces of crowds and
crowds of Haitian people. My late wife asked me one morning, “Is God showing
you something”? I said, “Yes, God’s showing me something. He’s showing me that
we’re to go to Haiti.”
This came at probably the most financially
secure time of our lives. We now owned a home; I was working at a power plant
in Crystal River; we had two cars, the dog, and the boat. We had never been so secure,
but we went to Haiti. I was sharing with Vickie that we went on a three-month
commitment. I was simply going to build a building; I wasn’t a preacher. I had
never yet preached a day in my life! I was just going to build a building that
still stands today. Three months led to five years during which we crisscrossed
the country doing miracle crusades. We saw tremendous miracles all over Haiti and into the Dominican
Republic. And then one night, standing on the platform and seeing the vast sea
of faces, I looked out on the people and said, “Oh my, God.” The Lord said, “Do
you remember those dreams back there?” “Yeah, I do.” He said, “This is it. This
is the fulfillment of those dreams I was showing you. You didn’t understand it
then, but you do now.”
I remember being at a missionary’s
conference in Des Moines, Iowa, and I was doing one of the breakout sessions. There
was a great preacher up on the platform preaching, and he said, “I want
everyone to stop what you’re doing right now and take out a pencil or pen and a
piece of paper and write down, as simply as you can, what you believe God has
called you to do.” Write it down and make it plain. I remember writing, “I am
called to the Caribbean nations.” My late wife looked at what I had written and
promptly scratched out Caribbean. “You’re thinking too small,” she said. Huh?
Whoa! She was right; God was right. I’ve been to the nations. And I haven’t
stopped dreaming; I’m still dreaming. Vickie and I, we’re looking at life and
asking ourselves, “Do we still have the ability to dream big dreams?”
Now listen to me, folks. Dreaming
isn’t just about having your dream house. It isn’t only about better homes and bigger
gardens. If your dream doesn’t have something to do with blessing other people,
it’s probably not of God, or at the least, it is too small. You can quote that.
If you’re simply dreaming about the bigger house, I hope you get it, praise
God, and get that part over with! If it’s just to get the car, get it. I hope
you do that. If all of that junk is so important to you, then I’d advise you to
get it out of the way, but it won’t seem near as important to you once you have
it. Get all that behind you. Get all the STUFF behind you so that you can
really start dreaming BIG DREAMS. God’s dream for your life isn’t just the
house you live in or the car that you drive. Oh man! That is so small! God so wants to do something through you
that is going to touch the world!
~ pg
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