Dreaming with God, Part 6

We’ve been talking about dreaming with God and how God could inspire us in ways that would indeed make us world changers. Some of you are probably sitting there asking yourself, “What could I possibly do that could change the world?” I DON’T KNOW! What COULD you possibly do??? What is within the realm of possibility? You answer that. Did the little sleeve on a coffee cup change the world? Yes, it actually did! It kept a lot of people from burning their fingers and probably avoided a lot of lawsuits. See, we always spiritualize, and that doesn’t seem very spiritual, does it?

What did Bill Gates or Steve Jobs have when they started? Steve had been adopted and given away by his parents, but he sure had a lot of vision. Did he change the world? Yes, yes, he did. It’s not too late for you. But there are some things you need to avoid. You need to ask yourself, “What does my dream life look like?” Do you know? Have you written a life plan? If you don’t do this stuff, then nobody else can help you. I know what I want to be doing when I’m ninety-six years old. I have it written down and carry it with me most of the time. I pull it out every once in a while to remind myself and to see if I’m tracking.

You know what will get you off track more than anything? It’s other people, so be careful. Many times God reveals His will little by little and in the form of dreams. Initially, we probably will not understand the full implication of a dream or series of dreams. Think of Peter when he got that vision of the sheet coming down in Acts 10 and the house of Cornelius experience. He didn’t comprehend everything immediately. You may not comprehend all of it right away either, and that’s okay. I didn’t fully grasp why God was showing me a sea of black Haitian faces, and in my dreams I was preaching to them, and I wasn’t even a preacher! I couldn’t comprehend that. In my heart I was saying, “God, I’m a carpenter; I’m a builder. I’ll go build a building.”

What hinders our dreams? There are five things that I’ll mention. The first is a lack of knowledge. Quite often it is a lack of knowledge regarding who God is, who you are, who you are in Christ, and who Christ is in you. You have to expand your knowledge, and the way that you do that is through a study of the Word.  

Number two is a particular hindrance common to the American lifestyle: our slavery to comfort. We’ve become a slave to comfort and our present lifestyle. It’s our security.

Thirdly, and these are obviously not in order of importance, is “fear.” That’s one thing that really hinders us from fulfilling our dreams and from thinking big. I’m not saying this boastfully, I just want you to get a taste of what I’m trying to share here, I believe that God wants my wife and I to be people of tremendous influence . . . wealth and influence. I believe that, and I don’t have any problem with it. I also believe that He had to get us to experience a lot of the “things” so that we can honestly say that we’re not attached to the things. They’re not an entanglement. We live in a nice house and drive a nice car. We’ve had money; we now know how to handle it even better so that when we have millions, we will be better stewards of it. Ten or fifteen years ago, we probably wouldn’t have been as good of stewards of it as we are today!

I intend to handle millions for the Kingdom of God. I intend for the sphere of influence for my life to increase over the years, not decrease! Is your sphere of influence increasing or decreasing? If it’s decreasing, then your thinking is shrinking! That happens quite often as we get older, but it certainly doesn’t have to, and many times we call that “simplicity.” No, that’s not always simplicity . . . sometimes it’s stupidity.

Number four is a sick heart. A sick heart will keep you from dreaming big dreams, and it will certainly keep you from fulfilling them. You always need to monitor your heart and ask yourself, “How is my heart?” This is not about this person or that person. This is not about my relationship with anybody in particular or about someone loving me. This is about what’s in MY heart. How does my heart feel towards you and towards other people? Is there anybody with whom I have aught in my heart? I can usually tell straightaway if someone has an offense towards me, even if they don’t think it’s showing; I can get around people and see it and feel it.

We try to cover what’s in our hearts, and we cover it and cover it and cover it, and we wonder why we’re not getting to where we feel God wants us to be. And the answer really is inside of us. It’s NOT everybody else, my friend; there are actually people around you who would help. So how is your heart? We need to stop trying to judge someone else’s!

Many times, and this is number five, we are manipulated by the needs of other people, and we allow this to govern our decisions. It’s like, “You can’t go to the mission field, what about your family back home?” I used to hear stuff like that all the time. “What about this, what about that”? We become manipulated by these things. Jesus said, “You’re always going to have the poor among you,” and what He is really saying here is that there are always going to be needs around you and those who are needy.

There used to be a guy in church who would say, “The need is the call.” No, the need isn’t the call. I would sometimes correct him and say, “There will always be needs all around you, and if you try to fulfill every need, you’ll wear yourself out.” You’re not here to fulfill every need, and you’re not here to be manipulated by needs. You ARE here to determine what is the will of God. There are needs for you to meet, yes. You pour yourself into those things that God has called you to do and then do them with the highest degree of excellence and energy that you can. But it doesn’t mean that you can be everything to everybody, because you can’t. So stop trying. Stop being manipulated. Stop letting that govern your decisions. Stop allowing it to restrict your dreams.

I call upon you in the name of Jesus to dream the impossible dreams. Dream it! Stop being afraid. Stop being discouraged by your own past, apparent failures. Stop it!

Anybody know where Putt Putt golf came from? It came from Don Clayton right here in Fayetteville. I can go to China, and they play Putt Putt golf, man. You can travel to most places in the world, and they’re playing Putt Putt golf. Where’d they get that? They got it from Don Clayton, a good Christian man, in Fayetteville, NC. Can you imagine having a vision for Putt Putt golf? See, some of those ideas you get, they’re not wild to God. He’s like, “Come on, come on, come on, keep dreaming, keep dreaming!” But you have to be willing to see the dream come to pass incrementally. It doesn’t all happen at one time. Before I could preach to the masses in Haiti, God had to get me to Haiti! What did He use to get me there? Building a building. Who would have thought, huh?

I want to pray with you. Father, we thank You, in Jesus’ name, that You’ve given us the opportunity to dream dreams and that when we do so, we dream as God sees: BIG DREAMS! I pray that for everyone reading this right now, BIG DREAMS! Yes, dreams beyond the realm of possibility. So big that only You could bring it to pass. So big that only You could inspire it. I pray for big dreams that will impact the lives of great numbers of other people, whether in the form of inventions, business ideas, or whatever You will, Lord. God, I think of the people who have even came up with Facebook or Google or Yahoo; they just had a dream, and they went for it and it worked! May we not grow so secure in our present lifestyle that we’re insecure in stepping out and doing something bold, fresh, and different. Every one of us needs that. So Lord, give us the dream, give us the strategy, give us the plan, and give us the faith to fulfill it in Jesus’ name.

~ pg

Dreaming with God, Part 5

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