Happy Easter everyone..He is risen! Christos Anesti! Alithos Anesti! (Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!)

St. John Chrysostom was born at Antioch in about the year 347 into the family of a military-commander, spent his early years studying under the finest philosophers and rhetoricians and was ordained a deacon in the year 381 by the bishop of Antioch Saint Meletios. In 386, St. John was ordained a priest by the bishop of Antioch, Flavian.

Over time, his fame as a holy preacher grew, and in the year 397 with the demise of Archbishop Nektarios of Constantinople – successor to St. Gregory the Theologian – Saint John Chrysostom was summoned from Antioch to be the new Archbishop of Constantinople (modern Istanbul, Turkey.) Exiled in 404 and after a long illness because of the exile, he was transferred to Pitius in Abkhazia where he received the Holy Eucharist for the last time, and said, “Glory to God for everything!”, falling asleep in the Lord on 14 September 407.

His Easter Sermon, which follows below, is still read among all 400 million Orthodox Christians on the Great and Glorious Day of our Lord’s Resurrection, as it has been for nearly 1600 years.

“If any man be devout and loveth God, Let him enjoy this fair and radiant triumphal feast! If any man be a wise servant, Let him rejoicing enter into the joy of his Lord. If any have laboured long in fasting, Let him how receive his recompense. If any have wrought from the first hour, Let him today receive his just reward.

If any have come at the third hour, Let him with thankfulness keep the feast.

If any have arrived at the sixth hour, Let him have no misgivings; Because he shall in nowise be deprived therefore.

If any have delayed until the ninth hour, Let him draw near, fearing nothing.

And if any have tarried even until the eleventh hour, Let him, also, be not alarmed at his tardiness. For the Lord, who is jealous of his honour, Will accept the last even as the first. He giveth rest unto him who cometh at the eleventh hour, Even as unto him who hath wrought from the first hour. And He showeth mercy upon the last, And careth for the first; And to the one He giveth, And upon the other He bestoweth gifts. And He both accepteth the deeds, And welcometh the intention, And honoureth the acts and praises the offering.

Wherefore, enter ye all into the joy of your Lord; Receive your reward, Both the first, and likewise the second. You rich and poor together, hold high festival! You sober and you heedless, honour the day! Rejoice today, both you who have fasted And you who have disregarded the fast. The table is full-laden; feast ye all sumptuously. The calf is fatted; let no one go hungry away. Enjoy ye all the feast of faith: Receive ye all the riches of loving-kindness.

Let no one bewail his poverty, For the universal Kingdom has been revealed. Let no one weep for his iniquities, For pardon has shown forth from the grave. Let no one fear death, For the Saviour’s death has set us free. He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it. By descending into Hell, He made Hell captive. He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh.

And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry: Hell, said he, was embittered When it encountered Thee in the lower regions. It was embittered, for it was abolished. It was embittered, for it was mocked. It was embittered, for it was slain. It was embittered, for it was overthrown. It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains. It took a body, and met God face to face. It took earth, and encountered Heaven. It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen.

O Death, where is thy sting? O Hell, where is thy victory? Christ is risen, and thou art overthrown! Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen! Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice! Christ is risen, and life reigns! Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave. For Christ, being risen from the dead, Is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep. To Him be glory and dominion Unto ages of ages.

Amen”

When I was in my junior year of high school, Coach Phillips was hired as a middle school principle in a neighboring school district.  He and Bobbie, because they were committed to being involved in the community where they lived, also changed churches even though they only moved about 10 miles away.  Not long after taking the new position, Larry Phillips was diagnosed with leukemia while in his early thirties.  One of the hardest things I had ever done was to watch my middle school head football coach and Sunday School teacher slowly die of leukemia.  Several of us who played football for Coach Phillips would go and visit him when he was in the hospital.  We wanted to go there to show him how much we loved and supported him as well as to encourage him in his time of great personal adversity.

While we were there visiting Coach Phillips an interesting thing would occur.  At some point we would go from being the encouragers to the ones being encouraged.  Coach Phillips and Bobbie always seemed to turn the situation away from themselves and begin to delve into what we were dealing with at the time.  I never came away from those hospital visits ever feeling sad about Coach Phillips but always came away being infused with the joy he had in spite of the leukemia that was slowly taking his life.  Ultimately Coach Phillips died of leukemia but even as he took his last breath, he was joyful because he knew where he was going and who he about to see.  At his funeral, the church was packed with former students and football players from the two rival school districts.  Guys who had once been enemies on the football field now sat together bound by their love and admiration for their former football coach and Sunday School teacher.

Sometimes as believers we tend to think that we are the only ones who have to endure personal adversity and difficulty.  We even at times believe that our problems are incurable and chronic.  As believers we sometimes fail to see the benefits that can come from going through times of personal trials.  Dr. David Jeremiah, in writing on personal adversity, states, “Quite often the Lord uses the adversity in our lives as a lens through which He can be seen!” Chuck Swindoll, in writing on personal adversity states, “When we arrive at such dilemmas in life and are unable to decipher the right direction to go, if we hope to maintain our joy in the process, we must allow the Lord to be our Guide, our Strength, our Wisdom, our all!….. When we do that, He trades us His joy for our anxiety.”

Paul in his letter to the Church at Philippi, encourages the believers to be joyful in spite of whatever difficult situation they may find themselves in.  He is confident in the joy that a relationship with Christ brings to all believers.  In Philippians 1:21, Paul writes “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Paul is saying that everything we go through is beneficial to our relationship with Christ and will ultimately produce joy in our lives.  To me this means that, from God’s perspective, there are benefits that I cannot receive apart from experiencing personal adversity.  When we realize the value of these benefits then we can maintain the level of joy God desires for us to have and share with others.  In Philippians 1:11-30, Paul shares with us some of the benefits we can receive that infuses our life with joy.

Personal adversity is a part of God’s plan to get us where he wants us to be. In verse 12 Paul writes, “And I want you to know, dear brothers and sisters, that everything that has happened to me here has helped to spread the Good News.” (NLT)  The word “spread” is a military term used by Roman engineers referring to removing obstacles while building a road.  The Romans built roads wherever they went in order to allow for faster travel of their armies and expand the Roman Empire.  Some of these obstacles in the roads could take months to remove and at times the obstacles that needed to be removed were part of a mountain.  The removal of these obstacles were dangerous as well as tedious.  But these obstacles had to be removed in order to insure the success of the Empire’s plans.  In our lives we are faced with obstacles that need to be removed so that God can get us where He wants us to be.  There have been several difficult times in my life (loss of a job, betrayal by a friend, trouble with my boys, etc) that when I looked back I could see how they were part of God’s plan to get me to where he needed me to be.  When I realized that it was God’s hand on my life then immediately my joy returned and my ability to endure increased.  An exercise that I have found helpful is to draw a time line of my life and how I got to where I am today.  When I do that then it is easy to see how God has had his hand on my life in those times of personal difficulty.

Personal adversity is also a part of God’s plan to help us see beyond the present and look to the future. In verse 19 of Philippians 1, Paul shares how he views his present situation in light of what his future will be, “because I know how it’s going to turn out. Through your faithful prayers and the generous response of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, everything he wants to do in and through me will be done.” (The Message)  Paul is telling us that our present adversity is temporal and not terminal.  He is encouraging us to look forward to what God has for us and rejoice in the fact that He is walking with us and will walk us out of the adversity.  What we need to take from this verse is that being a chronic complainer only achieves one goal and that is a reduction of our joy.  Instead we need to have the attitude of the 95 year old man who married a 24 year old girl and buys a house with a 30 year mortgage next to an elementary school.  When we look to the future with anticipation then our joy is not deluded by the present difficulty.

Coach Larry Philips maintained his joy all the way through his journey through leukemia.  His wife Bobbie told us that when Coach Philips passed away he just simply went to sleep with a smile on his face.  He could do this because he knew who the next face he was going to see when awoke.  “Not flinching or dodging in the slightest before the opposition. Your courage and unity will show them what they’re up against: defeat for them, victory for you – and both because of God.” Philippians 1:28. (The Message)

I walked over to Tim and introduced myself and told him how I had been touched by what he had shared. He thanked me and then we began to chat a little. During our conversation I asked Tim about his background, where he grew up, etc. Tim told me about his growing up in Missouri, how he use to make fun of his mom going to church, and how he came to know the Lord. He also shared with me how he came to be involved with skateboarding and how the Lord had opened the door for him to skateboard professionally. As I talked with Tim further he made a comment that literally shook my spiritual foundation in how I viewed ministry calling. What Tim said that shook me to my core was, “I do not understand what it means to be called to ministry.” He went on to say that from the moment he accepted Christ he saw himself as being in ministry. The very next day, after asking Jesus into his heart, Tim began telling the men he worked with about Jesus. Tim, at the time, was a laborer on a State of Missouri road paving crew and he was sharing Jesus with some of the roughest men you will ever meet. These men immediately saw a difference in Tim’s life and were receptive to what he had to say. So from Tim’s spiritual perspective there is no ministry calling there is just sharing Jesus by using the skills and talents the Lord has blessed each person with.

This was a new radical understanding for me even though I had been saved for almost 30 years, had attended seminary, and had received a “call to ministry”. All my life I had made a distinction between “professional” ministry and “lay” ministry treating each of them as being separate callings from God. It had never occurred to me that there might be just one ministry calling from the Lord. This new concept about ministry calling began to occupy my mind for several days. I began to examine my ministry calling from the Lord by taking a closer look at Romans 8:28, “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” (NLT) I read and reread the verse. I even looked up each word in the original Greek in order to get a complete understanding of what Paul was trying to say about a ministry calling.

What I came to understand about this verse was that there seems to be three precepts concerning God calling people to ministry. The first precept is God is in control of everything, “God causes everything to work together”. I understand this to mean that whatever God has given a person in the way of talent and skills are to be used as a ministry tool. To me this means that nothing in my life is “disjointed” from any other thing that God has placed into my life. What I mean by this is that how God has gifted me and skilled me reveals how He wants to use me. Let me illustrate this point this way. If God has gifted and skilled a person with the ability to communicate difficult concepts in an understandable manner then their calling is to share Jesus through a ministry of communication. One’s vocation then becomes how God intends to funds the ministry which could be through being a preacher, evangelist, school teacher, college professor, motivational speaker, author, writer, theologian, etc. From this prospective the ministry calling is not “Lord what do you want me to do” but instead it is “Lord how do you want me to use the gifts and skills you have given me”.

The second precept of ministry calling is Ministry is motivated by love for God, “those who love God”. The Greek word for love in this verse is the word “agapao” which we understand to mean “selfless” or “sacrificial” love. In Romans 8:28 the object of our “sacrificial” love is the Lord. This caused me to think about what Paul was really saying here because it seemed to create some conflict in my mind. I understand that God has a “sacrificial” love for me which is why he sent His son to die on the cross for my sins. I also understand that God calls me to have a “selfless” love towards other people. But in each of these understandings the love is directed at someone who is capable of sinning and hurting the one who is doing the loving. In this passage God is the object of love and He is not capable of hurting those He loves. So I began to delve deeper into the study of the Greek word “agapao” and what I discovered was the word for love also means “to be well pleased”. In other words, I “do ministry” because I am well pleased with who God is and how He has gifted and skilled me. This motivates me to minister from a position of love for God because I am satisfied by the love of God.

The last precept of ministry calling is All Believers have a ministry, “called according to his purpose for them”. The Greek word for purpose in this verse means “to have a purpose proposed for one’s self” or in other words “having a purpose in life.” But the meaning of this word goes much deeper than knowing what you are to do and where you are to go. The word picture that is being portrayed is that of placing the showbread, (the twelve loaves of bread that were offered to God every Sabbath) on a table in the front portion of the tabernacle. This bread had a very specific purpose and was reserved specifically for the Lord. This means then that not only do all believers have a ministry but it is a specific ministry serving a Holy God. Our ministry is reserved for God’s use and His alone. Everything we do in the ministry must point to the Lord. We have a ministry but it belongs to God.

Armed with this new understanding the two questions I now ask believers are “What is your ministry” and “How does God finance your ministry?”

James L. Kraft, the founder of Kraft Foods, served as a deacon and the superintendent of the Sunday school in his church in Chicago. When Kraft was a young man he said his goal in life was to become rich and famous by making and selling cheese. He began his journey towards his goal by buying a wagon and horse named Paddy. Every day he and Paddy would deliver cheese to the local markets in Chicago. Kraft would get up early in the morning, load his wagon full of cheese, hitch up Paddy, and then deliver the cheese before it had time to melt and spoil. Months went by and it seemed that no matter how hard Kraft worked he just did not seem to be making any money.

One day, after having delivered all his cheese, Kraft stopped his wagon and began to talk to his horse Paddy. He said, “Paddy, there is something wrong. We are not doing it right. I am afraid we have things turned around. Our priorities are not where they ought to be. Maybe we ought to serve God and place him first in our lives.” That night when Kraft got home, he made a covenant with the Lord that he would put God first and work at whatever the Lord directed him to do. Kraft made a decision that his life was about ministry to the Lord and he left the funding of the ministry up to God. Many years later, James Kraft made the statement, “I would rather be a layman in the North Shore Baptist Church than to head the greatest corporation in America. My first job is serving Jesus.” James Kraft like Tim Byrne understood that ministry is a calling for all believers and one’s vocation is how God funds the ministry.

Let me end by asking this, “Are we funding a ministry or are we funding a lifestyle?”

Eleven years after the founding of Thomas Road Baptist Church, God gave Rev. Falwell a dream of educating the students in the Lynchburg area.  So in 1967, Rev. Falwell founded Lynchburg Christian Academy which was a fully accredited Christian day school for grades kindergarten to high school.  In 1971, God expanded Rev. Falwell’s educational dream with the founding of Lynchburg Baptist College with 154 students.  In 1985, with growth in the college, the name was changed to Liberty University.   For 51 years, Dr. Jerry Falwell spent his life growing the vision and dream of Thomas Road Baptist Church and Liberty University.  During that time, he would experience great difficulty as well as great success just like any one who is called by God to fulfill a dream.  But in spite of whatever might come up or whatever distraction would try to grab his attention, Dr. Falwell always stayed focused upon the dream that God had called him to fulfill.  This dream was to build the largest Christian university in the world.

On May 15, 2007, Dr. Jerry Falwell was found lying unconscious in his office around 11:30 a.m. by members of his staff.  Staff members immediately began resuscitation efforts on him.  The responding emergency personnel continued the resuscitation in the ambulance while on the way to Lynchburg General Hospital.  At 12:40 p.m., just a little over an hour after he had collapsed, Dr. Jerry Falwell was pronounced dead.  He had gone on to be with his Lord.

At the passing of Dr.Jerry Falwell, some people began to express their feelings about what would now become of Liberty University.  How could an institution, seemingly built around the ideals, personality, and vision of one man continue to thrive and grow?  People unassociated with Liberty University began to wonder out loud whether the vision and dreams of Dr. Falwell had died with him.  There were even those pundits who expressed doubt about the University’s ability to survive financially without the charismatic personality of Dr. Falwell.  A few people even surmised that the University would stagnate and fade into obscurity now that Falwell was gone.  It seemed, from the view point of these individuals, that Dr. Falwell’s dream was over and that the growth of Liberty University was destined to decline.

But, those who really understood the foundation upon which Dr. Falwell’s dream was built knew that the dream would not die with the dreamer.  They knew that his dream was not built upon who he was nor was it built around who he had become.  Dr. Falwell’s dream came from the Lord and it was the Lord upon which it was built.  “By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds.  For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ” 1 Corinthians 3:10-11 (NIV).  Dr. Falwell understood that the dream God had given him was part of the foundation for other dreams and other dreamers, whom God would call in the future, to build upon.  He knew that what the Lord had given him to do was not just for the moment but it was part of God’s eternal plans just like all the other dreams that God gives.  Dr. Falwell once said, “We believe that God is going to help us build the greatest Christian school in the world.” Even the motto of Liberty University, “training Champions for Christ”, reflects that he knew he was part of something bigger than himself.  Dr. Jerry Falwell was clear on the fact that he was merely part of the foundation upon which God wanted to build for the future.

In January of 2010, two and a half years after the death of Dr. Jerry Falwell, Liberty University has become the largest Christian university in the world under the direction of his oldest son Jerry Falwell Jr.  At the end of January 2010 there were 57,371 students enrolled at Liberty University of which over 45,000 are pursuing their education through Liberty’s various online programs.  Liberty University also became debt free upon Dr. Falwell’s death due to a wise decision to take out a multimillion dollar life insurance policy with the university as the beneficiary.  Dr. Falwell knew his dream was not just for a season but that it was part of the foundation that God would use to educate Christian men and women for decades beyond the time when he would pass away.

Josephs’ dream, like Dr. Jerry Falwell’s dream, did not die when he died because it was part of the foundation of subsequent dreams that God would give to other dreamers.  The dream God gave to Joseph was part of His master plan for getting his people back to the Promised Land.  The dream that God gave to Joseph laid the foundation for Moses to lead the children of Israel back to the Promised Land.  This in turn laid the foundation for Ezra to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem and then for Nehemiah to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem.  Joseph’s dream was part of the foundation upon which the Disciples fulfilled their dream of reaching people in, “…Jerusalem, all over Judea and Samaria, even to the ends of the world” Acts 1:8 (The Message).  From the foundational dreams fulfilled by Joseph, Moses, Ezra, Nehemiah, and the Disciples, Paul launched his dream to reach the people of Macedonia, “That night Paul had a vision in which he saw a Macedonian standing and begging him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us” Acts 16:9 (GNT).

Joseph understood that his big dream was not designed to run its course and then end with his death.  In the final days of his life, Joseph told his family and friends, “God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land to the land of which he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob” Genesis 50:24 (NJKV).  These words reveal his perspective on the big dream that God had given him.  It was clear to Joseph that he was laying the foundation for others to build their big dreams from God upon.  Joseph viewed the big dream from God as an ongoing process that even after his death he would still be a part of.  In Genesis 50: 25, Joseph makes the children of Israel swear an oath to “carry up my bones from here” (NKJV).  Joseph was saying, “I want you to promise me to take me with you when you leave Egypt for the Promised Land.”

Big Dreams are part of the foundation upon which other big dreams and other dreamers build upon. Within God’s economy, every dream He reveals is part of the foundation of previously given dreams and will add to the foundation for other dreamers to build upon.  By design, God interconnects all dreams.  Ephesians 5:20-22 says, “Built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.  In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.  And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” (NIV). This passage means that there are no stand alone dreams for all dreams point to the majesty and power of who God is.  Jesus Christ is the cornerstone that anchors the foundation upon which all dreams are built.

With Jesus as the “chief cornerstone” of our dreams, we must never think that our dreams are insignificant or unimportant.  We must avoid the temptation to listen to Satan, who would have us to believe that our dreams really do not matter and that no one really cares about our dreams.  Satan would attempt to tell us that our dreams are just fantasies or delusions of grandeur that we imagine to help us deal with our puny insignificant lives.  The real truth is that there is not any dream that is insignificant to God and all dreams are important to what He wants to accomplish through each dreamer.   A note in The Blackaby Study Bible reflects this truth when it states, “The Spirit of God brings us to Christ, and then unlocks the door to all spiritual realities.  Those who are unwilling to accept Him can do nothing but follow a lie.” What the writers are saying can be applied to dreams which is the Lord will “unlock” or bring the dream to reality while Satan would want us to believe a “lie” by telling us our dream is insignificant or unimportant.  In John 14:12, Jesus tells the disciples that, “The person who trusts me will not only do what I’m doing but even greater things, because I, on my way to the Father, am giving you the same work to do that I’ve been doing. You can count on it” (The Message).  This promise from God tells us that if we trust that our dream is from God then God will do great things in fulfilling the dream.  What the dream accomplishes will be so great that people cannot help but recognized that the dream came from God.

Outside of the annuals of the Christian faith no one knows of Edward Kimball and very few within the Christian community have ever heard of him.  At first glance, there was nothing special about Edward Kimball.  He managed a shoe store in Boston, Massachusetts in the mid 1800’s. and taught a Sunday School class at the Congregational Church of Mount Vernon in Boston.  But Kimball had a simple dream of reaching young men for Christ in the Boston area.  One  of the young men in his class and who also worked for him at the shoe store was Dwight Moody.  It was under the teaching and witnessing of shoe salesman Edward Kimball that Moody came to know the Lord.  From the world’s perspective, at the time, this was no big deal.  It was a seemingly insignificant event with no major impact on the history of the world.  But what may seem small and insignificant to the world is always of great importance to what God wants to do through the dreams of ordinary people.  Dwight L Moody went on to become one of the greatest evangelists the Christian world has ever known.  During Moody’s life, he founded the Moody Church, Moody Publishing and Moody Bible Institute.  But just as important as these institutions are, there is also the lineage of Christian leaders that were impacted by the foundation God built through Moody.  Moody influenced the great British pastor F. B. Meyer who in turn influenced the American evangelist Wilbur Chapman.  It was Wilbur Chapman that influenced Billy Sunday who became a great evangelist in the United States.  It was Billy Sunday who came and preached an evangelistic crusade in Charlotte, North Carolina that resulted in a group of men praying for the city of Charlotte.  For ten years these men regularly met and prayed together, asking God to rise up just one person who would faithfully preach the gospel.  The place where these men would meet to pray was on Frank Graham’s dairy farm and the one whom God raised up to preach the gospel was Frank’s son William.  We know him as Billy Graham, the most influential evangelist of this century who has influenced millions of people around the world to accept Jesus as his or her savior.

All the dreams that God has given from Joseph to Ezra to Nehemiah to Paul to Moody to Meyer to Chapman to Sunday to Graham to Falwell and then to you and I are all linked together.  Some dreams may seem to have a bigger impact than others but the spiritual fact is all dreams and all dreamers are equally important in what God wants to accomplish in the world.

As believers we sometimes find ourselves marooned on our journey towards our big dream. Through a series of unanticipated events or just the grind of the daily routine, we come to feel like we are on hold and do not appear to be moving forward towards what the Lord has for us. These “on hold times” seem to stretch from days into weeks then into months and sometimes even into years without any significant noticeable movement. It is during these “marooned” times that we need to continue to show up each day. Though we may not see it or feel it, since the day the Lord gave us the dream, He has not once ever stopped working on fulfilling the dream. This means that every day we need to “breath” in the presence of God into our lives so that we will know what the Lord wants us to do for that day. We ultimately need to come to the point in our lives where, no matter what we are faced with or how long the journey may take, we will declare “My mouth is filled with your praise, declaring your splendor all day long” Psalm 71:8 (NIV). We need to show up each day so we can see “what the tide has brought in” from the Lord.

Joseph was a prodigal believer in that he showed up each and every day carrying out what the Lord had laid out before him to do that day. For thirteen years, Joseph showed up every day and carried out what the Lord had for him to do. From the age of seventeen to the age of thirty, He worked at whatever task or assignment that day held for him. There is no indication; beginning in Genesis chapter 37 to the end of the book, that Joseph ever took a day off from what the Lord had for him. No matter how difficult, boring, long, or tedious the day may have been, at no time do we see Joseph giving up on the dream the Lord had given to him. Even when it seemed that he had been forgotten and would labor forever in the prison, we still see Joseph showing up doing his job. Joseph had securely established in his life the contentment that the Apostle Paul reflects upon in Philippians 4:11-13, “Actually, I don’t have a sense of needing anything personally. I’ve learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I’m just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I’ve found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty. Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am.” (The Message)

Big Dreams require that we show up every day ready for whatever the Lord has for us that day. There are many ways we can show up ready each day for what the Lord has in store for us. We can show up with a joyful attitude by starting each day praising God for what He has already done and for how far He has already brought us in the journey. We can show up each day by taking time during the day to thank the Lord for what He has shown us about who He is and what He can do. We can show up each day by continuing the preparation process that began the day the big dream was given. There are things we need to know and people we need to meet that prepare us for the time when the big dream arrives. We can also show up each day by calling to mind the promises found in His word such as the promise found in Philippians 4:19 “and my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.” (NIV)

Another way we show up every day is when our disposition is one of expectancy. B y this I mean we are to live each day expecting the Lord to speak or act. When we live a life of expectancy then we will approach life in a way where we take each day one day at a time and avoid the temptation to look at tomorrow too closely. While we wait on the Lord to fulfill the dream we are tempted to look at tomorrow too closely and our minds become overwhelmed with all that needs to take place for the dream to occur. When we begin to dwell on all the massive undertaking that is required for our dream to become a reality our inclination is to shut down mentally. When this happens the sheer size of the dream causes us to become discouraged. This in turn causes us to lose the expectancy that once kept us going. We are then prone to put life on hold and, when we do that, we run the risk of losing sight of the dream altogether.

One of the ways we put life on hold is by focusing upon what seems to be falling down or coming apart all around us. The everyday trials and troubles have a way of growing bigger than they really are when things do not seem to move fast enough. This causes us to go into survival mode where we shut down everything that might cost money or take time away from making things happen. We, in some sense, cease to function spiritually, mentally and emotionally.

There was a time where I found myself dropping into survival mode and putting life on hold while waiting on the Lord to open up a job where I lived. At the time, I was working a job that required me to be away from home three to four weeks at a time and only being home three or four days in between. During this time, I missed all but one soccer game of my oldest son’s junior year and missed all of the cross country meets of my younger son’s seventh grade. I missed out on holding my wife’s hand and sitting and talking with her on the couch. It was like a big gapping black hole had erupted in my life and everything had been sucked in. Every day all I could think about was what I was missing and just getting each day over with so the weeks would go by faster. I had dropped into survival mode and had completely put life on hold mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. My putting life on hold had so gotten to the point that, while I was away from home working, I would literally just sleep, work, eat and sleep. Praise the Lord that He got a hold of me and pulled me out of this dangerous tail spin and got me back on track with where he wanted me to go. One way we can avoid putting life on hold is by taking hold of the words of Paul, as our own, where he says, “So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace.” 2 Corinthians 4:16 (The Message)

It is my belief, though, that the best way we can show up every day is by renewing our attitude of dependence upon the Lord and dropping any attitude of self-sufficiency and pride. The attitude of self-sufficiency and pride says, “well the Lord is not moving fast enough for me so I’ll make things happen on my own”. When we take the “self-sufficiency” route on the big dream journey we will always run into a major obstacle. The particular obstacle that we will run into is an extension or a slowing down of the journey. We are faced with this obstacle because the Lord has to take time away from moving the dream forward to take the time to get us back on track. What I mean by Him getting us “back on track” is this. One of the major aspects of the journey towards the big dream is what we learn along the way about whom God is and what He wants to build within us. When we decide to “lay our own tracks” we are saying that our way of accomplishing a dream is better than any way God could do it. This in effect means we are telling God to step aside and let us drive the train. The reality of this action is that we begin to take the place of God which in practice is idolatry. In this instance, we place our self-sufficiency and pride before God and anything that comes before God is an idol.

In addition to committing idolatry, we are saying that we know everything there is to know about God and in fact we probably can teach Him a thing or two about who He is. We are saying that there is nothing new that we need to learn about God that we have not already read in the Bible or we have heard Chuck Swindol, Greg Laurie, Chip Ingram or David Jeremiah teach. We are also declaring that there is nothing about our self or our lives that needs changing or improving. We are the total package complete in every way capable of understanding all mysteries and are knowledgeable of how to handle every situation we might face. In other words we have become like God in that we know everything or to use a theological term we are omniscient. This is quite a declaration of independence that even all the 56 signers of our nation’s Declaration of Independence would not dare proclaim. In fact they declared that they held “a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence”.

The self-sufficiency and pride approach will eventually lead us back to where we first started which is being frustrated. We were frustrated that God was not moving fast enough and after we wonder around a bit we end up becoming frustrated because we cannot seem to make things happen. Our approach instead needs to be one where we show up every day with an attitude of dependence that says “Lord show me what I need to know about you today and what you want to change in my life so I can move forward in my journey towards the dream you have given me.”

We avoid the temptation to declare self-sufficiency when we take the time to memorize scripture like “Quiet down before God, be prayerful before him. Don’t bother with those who climb the ladder, who elbow their way to the top.” Psalm 37:7 (The Message). It is through the word of God that we gain the strength to show up each day ready for what He has for us and it keeps us moving along the path towards the fulfillment of the big dream.

My brothers and I looked forward to our Dad loading up the fishing poles in the back seat of the car with the tips of the poles sticking out the back window.   Daddy, David, Doug and I would pile into the car and head out to a roadside store where we would get our provisions of cold bottled Pop Colas, peanuts, peanut butter crackers, and moon pies.  We would also fill up our minnow bucket with crickets which we used for bait.  I often wondered why we called it a minnow bucket when we keep crickets in it.  Well we would then head down the road to Luck’s Farm while we ate our peanut butter crackers or moon pies and drank our Pop Cola with peanuts in it.  We were in hog heaven!  Once we got to Luck’s Farm we would spread out along the edge of the pond, put our crickets on our hooks, throw our lines into the water and wait for a big bass or a nice size perch to latch on.  Now this is where it got tough for me.  I have always had a hard time waiting on anything and this held true for fishing.  I would toss my line into the water, wait an hour (which was really 20 seconds) and reel my line back in to see if I had caught anything. I would forget that if I had caught a fish then my bobber would go under the water.  But anyway I would reel my line in so many times that the friction from the water would eventually rub the cricket off the hook.  There were probably times where in my impatience I snatched the cricket right out of a fish’s mouth just as it was about to take the bait.  Waiting is a tough thing for a kid and as I have grown older I have come to the conclusion that it does not get any easier as an adult.

Waiting is major part of life which I know is no big surprise to those who read these words.  By now, most all of us have figured out that we will spend a significant portion of our lives in the waiting room of life.  As I have thought about all the things a person has to wait on I realize that those things we wait on can be divided into three basic categories: things, other people, and ourselves.  The “things” that we wait on are all inanimate objects that seemingly have a significant amount of importance in our daily lives.  Some of these “things” that we are forced to waiting upon are the dishwasher as we wait for the dishes to get clean so we can put them away.  The dryer as we wait for the clothes we need to wear to dry.  Then there is waiting for the car to warm up on a cold day or the traffic light to change so we are not late to work.  And let us not forget the minutes that seem like hours as we wait for the internet to come up so we can log on to Facebook to see whose status had changed or check on our animals in Farmville.  It is amazing the amount of time we spend waiting on “things”.

Then there are those “other people” that cause us to have to wait.  As employees we have to wait on our boss or bosses to make a decision before we can do our job.  As parents, we wait on our kids to get out of bed in the morning or we wait on them to finish soccer, football, dance, or piano practice.  As wives you wait on your husband to speak more than two words and as husbands we wait on our wife to stop speaking her 40,000 words.  As customers we wait in line at the grocery store, fast food drive through, Walmart or Target, the gas station, the bank, etc.

Lastly there is “ourselves” which is a category of waiting that we do not really think much about when it comes to waiting.  For some people the waiting on “self” is not a long process where as others it is an extended and excruciating process.  There are various ways we wait on ourselves.  When we are young we wait to become older so we can do things like get a driver’s license, go on a date, stay at home alone, or stay out late.  When we become an adult we wait on whom to marry, when to buy a house, a job, the economy to get better, etc.  As we move into the twilight years of our lives we enter a whole new realm of waiting.  We wait on our legs to inch forward, our brains to catch up with conversations, our eyes to focus on the words, and our ears to hear what is being said.

It is no secret that we spend a large portion of our life “waiting” on things, people and ourselves.  Sometimes we have to wait for a short period of time like a few minutes or hours.  Other times we have to wait several days, weeks, or months.  Then there are those times when we have to wait several years or decades for something to happen.  These longer waiting periods are the ones that test our faith as Prodigal Believers.  It is in these extended periods of waiting where Big Dreams live and work.  It is in these extended seasons of waiting that we also tend to wear down and lose heart while waiting for the big dream to be fulfilled.  As we wait we have a tendency to lose sight of the fact that the foundation of waiting is built upon hope and trust.  We forget that the reason we wait is because we have “hope” in the Lord to make the big dream to take place.  We “trust” in the Lord that what we are on the right path moving towards the big dream that He has given us.  Without hope and trust there is nothing to wait for and there is no big dream to pursue.  Waiting on God to fulfill a dream is hard and exhausting but we must continue to persevere and move forward.

When we look at the life of Joseph we see that the dream he was waiting on consumed thirteen years of his life.   Joseph started his big dream journey at the age of seventeen and it was not fulfilled until he was thirty years of age.  He spent half his teenage years and of his twenty’s waiting upon God to make his dream a reality.  Joseph persevered through hard and exhausting times with no indication of ever giving up and calling it quits on his big dream.  In fact, what the scriptures show us is that Joseph continued to wait on God to fulfill the dream and bring it to reality.  Later in Joseph’s life we see the evident of Joseph’s patient persistence.  In Genesis 50:19-21, Joseph reveals his attitude about waiting on God when he says, “Joseph replied, “Don’t be afraid. Do I act for God?  Don’t you see, you planned evil against me but God used those same plans for my good, as you see all around you right now – life for many people.  Easy now, you have nothing to fear; I’ll take care of you and your children.” He reassured them, speaking with them heart-to-heart.” (The Message)   Joseph is confessing that God is in charge of all aspects of the dream from beginning to the end.  This includes all the waiting we do while God moves the dream along.

Waiting is a part of the Big Dream process as we wait on the Lord to fulfill the dream. According to Webster’s New World Dictionary the word “wait” is defined as “to remain until something happens, to be ready” and the word “waiting” as “the act of one that waits”.  To me this means that waiting is not a spectator sport.  Waiting requires my active participation and attention.  For me, to wait means that I believe that a particular action, event, or circumstance is going to occur.  My presupposition is that my waiting is built upon the foundation of hope and trust in the Lord that He will do what He has told me He will do.

In July of 1990 I spent 21 days in Western and Eastern Europe with one of my professors from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and seven other seminary students.  We traveled to Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and the Republic of Slovakia), and Poland.  While we were in Germany we had the opportunity to meet Wilhelm Pahls who is a Germany Evangelist.  Pahls is considered by many to be the “Billy Graham” of Germany.  His ministry has stretched all over Europe and into Russia where he has held thousands of evangelistic meetings.  At the time we meet Pahls his ministry had given out over 262,000 books about Jesus, 48,780 booklets on Christianity, and thousands of spiritual growth packets.  Even today at 73 years of age Wilhelm Pahls is actively engaged in carrying out the Big Dream God has given him.  But, in the words of Paul Harvey, “and now for the rest of the story”.

Wilhelm Pahls grew up in a small village in Germany where there lived only one Christian.  This Christian was a lady who for over thirty years would daily share her faith in Christ with every person she met.  She would pass out Christian tracts to people to read as well as spending hours praying for the salvation of the people in her village.  Her “Big Dream” was for God to save at least one person in her lifetime.  As Pahls grew older, he moved to a nearby village where he worked as a car mechanic and an office worker in an automobile plant.  At the age of 20, he accepted Christ after reading a Christian book titled “This is for You!” Excitedly, Pahls returned to the village where he grew up to tell his family of his decision but was met with disgust by his family over his decision.  He then sought out the lady who was the only Christian in the village and who had prayed for thirty years for just one convert.  Pahls wanted to let her know of his decision for Christ and that God had answered her prayer.  When Pahls arrived at her home he found that she had died two days after he had been saved.  This lady never knew that God had fulfilled her dream of one convert.  But what a convert it was.  Through this lady’s faithful prayers and trust in God to fulfill dreams, hundreds of thousands of people have come and continue to come to a personal saving relationship with Jesus.

I do not know what dream you are waiting on God to fulfill.  Nor do I know how difficult or precarious your situation is as you are waiting on God to come through.  What I do know is this, we can trust in the Lord to complete the dream He has given each of us.  He will also give us the strength and energy to withstand the waiting period as He moves us towards the fulfillment of the dream.  “He energizes those who get tired, gives fresh strength to dropouts.   For even young people tire and drop out, young folk in their prime stumble and fall.  But those who wait upon God get fresh strength. They spread their wings and soar like eagles, They run and don’t get tired, they walk and don’t lag behind.” Isaiah 40:29-31 (The Message)

As an additional parting thought, and at the risk of over spiritualizing or mystifying, I want to point out an interesting observation I have made.  When you study Hebrew numerology you discover that the number seven represents God.  The number seven, to the Hebrews, also represents completion or wholeness.  The word “waiting” is a seven letter word.  Is it not interesting that what we are “waiting” upon is for God to complete or bring to wholeness the Big Dream. This is just a thought to ponder while we are waiting on God to fulfill our Big Dreams.

The vast majority of the people whom I have crossed paths with over the years are people the world has never know and will never know. They are just ordinary people who go about their lives doing the things they are called to do and along the way helping anyone they can. These are folks whose great deeds and service to humanity go unnoticed by the world but play an enormous role in God’s great plan for our lives. One of these every day people was Clyde Howard.

Clyde was part of the fabric that made up the little community of Saginaw, Texas. He was one of those individuals who was the first one on the bus whenever it came to helping people with a need. One of the ways that Clyde would reach out to people occurred a few days before Thanksgiving every year. Each Thanksgiving, Clyde would load up his car with frozen turkeys and take them to people whose thanksgiving meal was going to be slim. I am not sure how Clyde was able to know of people’s need but it seemed like he was able to get turkeys to everyone in Saginaw, Texas who was not able to have one. Whenever anyone would ask him who paid for the turkeys, Clyde would simply answer “It’s been taken care of”.

Over the years, Clyde would faithfully deliver frozen turkeys to those in need regardless of the weather conditions. It did not matter if it was raining, sleeting, snowing or if everything was covered in ice, nothing would stop Clyde from getting those turkeys to people. Even when Clyde became feeble and he could not drive, he enlisted people to drive him around town delivering turkeys. In time Clyde went to be with Lord. But the passing of Clyde did not mean the end of the turkeys being delivered at Thanksgiving because Clyde had enlisted someone to carry on when he was gone. That someone was my father, Jim Willis, who even now as I write these words is helping with a food ministry at his church.

In some sense Clyde was reflecting the journey that Joseph found himself on as he was traveling towards the Big Dream that God had laid out for him. In Genesis chapter 39 thru chapter 41, we find Joseph’s life intersecting with the lives of a wide variety of people from all walks of life. We first see him involved in the life of a high ranking official in Pharaoh’s police department. In this position, he served as Potiphar‘s personal assistant and household manager. Joseph’s service to Potiphar was so exemplary that he was given all authority over all of Potiphar’s personal affairs.

Through a chain of unfortunate events, Joseph’s service to Potiphar ended and he came under the service of the Warden of the state prison. In this phase of Joseph’s big dream journey his service was not only to the Warden but he served all the inmates housed in the prison. Once again Joseph’s big dream journey not only placed him in the position of service to another but his service had been expanded to a number of additional people.

We finally see Joseph’s service to people culminating in service to Pharaoh where his service found him being promoted to second-in-command to the leader of the most powerful nation on earth. As second-in-command to the most powerful leader of the known world, Joseph’s service to people had been greatly enlarged. He was now responsible for the well being of the people of the entire nation of Egypt. Joseph’s path was filled with service to all kinds of people from all walks of life throughout his big dream journey.

Big Dreams involve serving those we come in contact with as we journey towards the big dream. Serving others is a major facet in our journey towards the fulfillment of our big dream. In reality all big dreams are not about what we are to become or the success we want to accomplish. Big Dreams are all about what God wants to accomplish through each of us as we give ourselves in service to Him. In fact, when we are serving others we are actually serving the Lord Himself. In Ephesians 6:7, Paul writes, “Work with enthusiasm, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people.”(New Living Translation) There are a wide variety of ways that we serve others as we move along the path towards the big dream. I want to plate what I feel is the major way that we serve those we come in contact with as we make our big dream journey.

I believe that the major way we serve others along our journey towards our Big Dream is through the influence we have in the lives of others. A note in The Blackaby Study Bible echoing this truth states, “The key to success is not skill, luck, or wealth, but God’s presence. God’s presence will determine how your life is used to influence those around you.” I love to cook and as I think about what has influenced my passion for cooking, beyond Food Network, my grandmother, whom we called Nanny Saunders, comes to mind. For whatever reason, I was totally in awe watching her when she was cooking. My eyes could not seem to take in all I was seeing as she mixed and stirred ingredients together. To me it was like magic the way she seemed to “whip up” a meal or a dessert out of thin air. In her generation of cooking, there was no just add water “complete meal out of a box” or any “pop it in the microwave for 30 seconds” cooking done in her kitchen. Everything that she cooked, baked, fried, or mixed was from scratch using fresh local vegetables or fish that had been swimming in a pond just a few hours prior to being fried up and served for Saturday supper. Oh, how I wished I had been astute enough or forward thinking to write down the recipes which she prepared from memory.

I say all this to make the point that the way I cook has a tremendous amount do with the influence my grandmother had upon me. But as great as her cooking was, cooking was not the only influence my Nanny Saunders made upon my life. As I reflect upon my spiritual heritage, I must confess how much influence her walk with the Lord has contributed to my desire to serve others. My grandmother never traveled into the deep jungles of Africa fighting malaria in order to share Christ. Nor did she walk the streets of any major city offering sandwiches and coffee to homeless people living on the streets. She simply and quietly spent her service to the Lord at First Baptist Church of Hope, Arkansas lovingly laboring in the nursery serving the needs of little children. I do not know how many decades she spent soothing crying toddlers or wiping the messy behinds of little ones who had an “accident”. Neither do I know the totality of the influence she had on the parents and children she served. All I know is she did her “job” without complaining or pursuing the accolades of thanks from parents. Nanny Saunders quite joyfully spent her life recklessly influencing others by serving the constant needs of the hundreds of little children that passed through that nursery room. Even as her time here on earth was coming to an end literally days before she went to be with the Lord, she was still influencing people by serving the needs of little children and their parents.

As Prodigal Believers we need to recognize that we have the capacity to have influence in both a positive and negative manner over the people that the Lord allows us to serve in our journey towards the big dream. One person has said that “Influence may be the highest level of human skill“. We need to make sure that while we traveling on the big dream road that we are making a positive and Godly influence upon those who view our lives. This is important because we never really know when or where we will be called to serve others through the influence of our lives.

Sometimes the encounter with another person may be a brief moment in time while standing in line to get handmade fudge or sitting in the stands watching a football game. Other times it may be sweating over a hot smoker cooking pork BBQ to raising money for cancer research or simply enjoying a glass of sweet ice tea while sitting in a camp chair watching the sun go down at the Lake.

Other encounters may take place where we unwarily project our influence from a distance before people we do not know who are watching us as we play out our lives in public. Swiss philosopher Henri-Frederic Amiel, reflecting upon the scope of one’s influence said, “Every life is a profession of faith, and exercises an inevitable and silent influence”. There have been rare occasions in my life, when someone has come up to me, whom I have never meet before, and commented on how they were impressed by how I handled a certain situation. Talk about a humbling and frightening experience. It is in these moments of “silent influence” that I am glad that the Lord had a hold on me and showing me how to correctly handle the situation. It also reminds me that the service of influence is not completely restricted to those whom I may be directly interacting with at the time.

The bottom line is Big Dreams always involve serving those we come in contact with as we journey towards the dream the Lord has laid out for us.

We all want to go “boldly where no one has gone before” until the journey makes a right turn onto “Tough Times Avenue” or takes a stroll down “Hard Knocks Lane”. When that happens then our sense of adventure and excitement sinks as rapidly as passing out from a Vulcan nerve pinch. Pursuing ones dream can be a rather romantic plan where we envision every twist and turn in the journey is pleasant and full of good times. Reality is that the journey towards fulfilling a dream is littered with difficulties, setbacks, disappointments and trouble.

Many times I have heard people at different stages in their lives make two particular statements concerning the journey to complete one’s dream. In expressing remorse about the journey people have said, “Boy, this is not how I had planned for things to go in my life.” Or when expressing relief at the end of the journey people have said, “If I had of known all that was going to happen I would have never started it in the first place.” The commonality of both of these statements is that neither one takes into consideration that the journey will be tough. The mistaken belief is that the dream God has given a person will be totally blessed with “roses and sunshine.” The reality is that tough times and hard knocks are a part of God’s plan for the completion of the “Big Dream”.

In Genesis 37-41, Joseph found himself traveling down “Tough Times Avenue” with occasional strolls on “Hard Knocks Lane”. Several times Joseph found himself in unplanned situations and headed in an unorthodox direction from what he thought his “Big Dream” plan would take. Nowhere in his “Big Dream” planning guide was there an action point that said, “irritate my brothers so they will shred my awesome cool jacket, throw me in a dried up well hole for a day, sell me to a bunch of traveling gypsies going who knows where, and then tell my dad I was killed and completely eaten by a wild animal.” Nor did the “Big Dream” planning guide outline a permanent out of town trip to Egypt, describe being chased around a bed by the boss’s wife, getting thrown in jail for no reason, serve as the prison’s resident dream interpreter, or spend two years waiting for his supposed “friend” to remember his promise to help get him released from jail.

Nope! None of this, I dare say, was even a “this might happen” foot note in Joseph’s “Big Dream” plan guide on how to successfully execute and accomplish a dream. In fact, my feeling is that Joseph’s plan for bringing about the reality of his big dream more than likely involved a much more pleasant approach. He may have thought he would start off at some midlevel management position in his father’s sheep wrangling business. Joseph could have envisioned himself spending his days driving a company camel around making a windshield check of the various sheep operations while engaging in some small talk with the “help” to let them know that “management” cared. At the end of his “strenuous” day, Joseph would have a delicious dinner with his parents and his brothers. This is where he would take the time to remind them of his dream of taking over the family business and telling them how much they all would enjoy working for him.

Well there’s reality as we plan it and then there is reality as God makes it happens. When God gives Big Dreams we can count on not being able to figure out what events will unfold to bring about the reality of the dream. Paraphrased, Henry Blackaby puts it this way, “If we can figure out how to accomplish the plan then it probably is not from God.” In The Book of Isaiah, the Prophet Isaiah defines how God works to accomplish the big dream in the lives of those who serve Him. God speaking to Isaiah says, “My thoughts are completely different from yours,” says the LORD. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.”(NLT)  So what is the planning principle involving the journey towards the completion of the “Big Dream”?

We can plan on the Big Dreams always taking us in a direction we had not planned or anticipated going. The Apostle Paul speaks to this principle in 1 Corinthians 2:9-11 where he says, “That’s why we have this Scripture text: No one’s ever seen or heard anything like this, Never so much as imagined anything quite like it – What God has arranged for those who love him. But you’ve seen and heard it because God by his Spirit has brought it all out into the open before you. Whoever knows what you’re thinking and planning except you yourself? The same with God – except that he only knows what he’s thinking.”(The Message)  If we are not able to imagine the Big Dream apart from God giving the dream why would we think we could plan the path the journey will take. There is no way we could orchestrate all the twists and turns, influence the right people, develop sufficient funding, move governments, or make all the right choices that will result in the accomplishment of the dream. This is what makes it a God sized dream because only God is able to orchestrate the impossible. Remember it is God who gives the Big Dreams that He wants to carry out though the lives of those who serve Him. God not only is the creator and originator of the big dream but He is also the director and producer of the big dream.

Our role in the journey is to constantly get updates from the Lord about where he wants us to go and what he wants us to do. Sometimes He allow us an opportunity to see what is about to happen and other times we are thrust into a situation. The less time we spend on saying “why did this have to happen to me” the quicker we will be able to understand what this “bump in the road” is about. We need to instead be asking God, “ok what do I need to learn from this” or “what are you wanting to show me about who you are” or even “what do you want to correct in me that is deficient or needs building up in order to accomplish the dream?” To phrase it another way, we need to stop acting like children asking, “Are we there yet” or “I’m tired can we stop now”. Instead we need to exercise some spiritual maturity and ask “Lord, what are you inviting me to do now.”

The real truth about the Big Dream journey is that we will always be making adjustments along the way in order to conform to what God wants to do through us. Henry Blackaby says it this way in his book Experiencing God, “You must make major adjustments in your life to join God in what He is doing”. The Big dream is not just about getting from point A to point B. The journey the big dream takes is a major aspect of the dream, and maybe more so, as is the final outcome.

So even though we may get blindsided on the road to the Big Dream, we need to remember that difficulty is always part of the total Big Dream package. When hard times may catch us by surprise we need to stop and ask God what role this hard time plays in the Big Dream. This is important because we will never be able to anticipate all the detours that our Big Dream journey may take. But, we do need to accept the fact that they will occur. We need to avoid letting our spiritual guard down and becoming comfortable with where we are on the journey. As God’s “Big Dream Accomplishers” we always need to stay in contact with the Dream Giver. Asking questions about the dream, confirming the direction we are headed, and recognizing the difficulties for what they are is a part of the dream. And most importantly we need remember the Lord’s words in Revelation 22:13 “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”(NLT)  God is always actively engaged in the front, middle, and end of the Big Dream.

Ever since Rudy was a small boy he listened to Notre Dame football games on the radio and watched them on the TV with his father and brothers.  At nights in his room he would plug in the record player and play a recording of a locker room pep talk given by the famous Notre Dame football coach Knut Rockne.  He would play the pep talk record over and over to the point that he could recite the coach’s pep talk quoting it verbatim.  Notre Dame was his school and his “big, hairy, audacious dream” was to one day wear the glistening gold foot ball helmet of Notre Dame and run down the tunnel of the football stadium on to the field.

Sadly, though, the only one who believed in Rudy’s big dream was Rudy.  At a mere 5’ 6” and weighing only 165 pounds no one believed he could ever play for a NCAA Division I school much less a national ranked school such as Notre Dame.  Coupled with his lack of size and weight were his less than stellar grades.  Rudy struggled with school and making high grades throughout his high school career.  His grades were such that he could not even qualify academically to attend Notre Dame just as a student.  Later his reading and learning issue was determined to be due to having dyslexia.  In every aspect of his life; people were telling him what he could not do.  They even told him that he was crazy to think he could ever play football for Notre Dame.  Both family and friends scoffed at him whenever he talked about his dream.  Rudy was made to believe that all he could ever do was work in the steel mill like his family had always done.  Except for one friend, who died a tragic death, no one supported him in his quest to play football at his beloved Notre Dame.  Rudy was surrounded by people who were trying to dismiss or discourage his big dream.

In Genesis 37, Joseph is faced with the same situation that Rudy was faced with.  Nobody believed in Joseph’s dream of greatness.  In fact, everyone thought that it was the arrogant boasting of a young punk who thought he was hot because his father gave him the coolest jacket that had ever been made.  His brothers were so enraged at his “big, hairy, audacious dream” that they said, “Do you think you are going to be a king and rule over us?”  When he shared a second dream that restated the first dream, his brothers hated him even more.  They refused to believe that one day they would bow down before him.  Even Joseph’s father, who loved him more than any of his other sons, called him out about his dream.

Joseph’s brothers became so incensed by his big dream that they moved beyond their attempts at dismissing and discouraging Joseph and his big dream.  His brothers began to plot how they could get rid of Joseph thus bringing an end to this outrageous dreamer.  Like Rudy, Joseph was faced with detractors trying to move Joseph to give up the big dream that God had given him.

Big Dreams will always attract certain people who will try to dismiss or discourage the dream.

For whatever reason there are certain people who feel it is their calling to throw cold water on other people’s dreams.  It is like it is open season on any dream that is not theirs or draws attention to their lack of big dreams.  They will pursue the “Big Dreamer” with all the negative, poisonous, discouraging remarks they can make.  A commentary in The Blackaby Study Bible states, “Whenever God gives you a dream; there will be those who seek to rob you of it.”  As Prodigal Believers, we need to be on the watch for those who seek to dismiss or discourage the “Big Dream” that God has given.

Big Dreams always seem to be scary to everyone except the one whom God has given the dream to.  Certain “scared” people then seem compelled, and for some, called to eliminate the dream or the dreamer.  Dream robbers are persistent and faithful in their attempts to use all avenues of discouragement to dismiss the Dreamer’s big dream.  They may even try to deploy logic to unseat the logistics of the dream.  They attempt this by trying to showing how and why the big dream could never become a reality.  They will offer data to support the failure rate of others who have tried to accomplish similar dream before.  They present every situation both tangible and intangible that could possible cause the big dream to fail.  But Big Dreamers need to remember that the one who gives the dream operates in a realm that defies logic and overcome obstacles.

Dream robbers may try another approach which is to use influence to disrupt the dreamer.  They will either use their own relationship with the big dreamer and/or they will calling upon someone whom the dreamer respects and trust to disrupt or dismiss the dream.  Big Dreamers need to remember that the One giving them the big dream is the “influencer” of all influence.   God can either move influencers to assist in the big dream or He can move them away.

There are also those dream robbers who see themselves as being more spiritually mature than the big dreamer.  These “spiritual giants” will try to undercut the big dream using scripture to “prove” that God has made a mistake in the big dream He has given the dreamer.  They will take scripture out of context, isolate a verse, and/ or proof text scripture.  These dream robbers do this in an attempt to prove that they have a deeper understanding of scripture as well as a more “direct line” to God than what the dreamer has.  This a situation where dreamers need to make sure that they are spending time alone with God talking with Him about the dream and asking Him to confirm the dream with scripture.   The Big Dreamer needs to continually check in with God not only to know what the next step is in fulfilling the dream but to receive encouragement from God concerning the big dream.

There will always be certain people who will try to dismiss or discourage the dreamer from fulfilling the big dream God has given to them.  In those times remember that the One who gives the big dream always makes sure that it comes to reality.

At nights when I was in bed, I would dream of flying B-58’s, B-52’s, F-4’s, KC-135’s and C-130’s.  I would always be the one piloting the most critical and secret missions the Air Force carried out.  And in the end I would defeat the enemy and land my plane while it was on fire or running on one engine.   There was always some drama to my return to the base.

At some point in time this dream faded.  A part of it was due to getting glasses and realizing that my vision disqualified me as an Air Force pilot.  I also believe though a large part of the dream becoming lost was due to “growing up” and shelving my child like enthusiasm.  I say all this to make a point about our ineffectiveness in reaching people for Christ.  We are ineffective in reaching people for Christ because we have stopped dreaming like a child.

Children do not dream about what they can do physically.  They dream about having super human strength and worlds with endless possibilities.  Most of us have lost that ability to dream like a child.  Our dreams tend to operate within the realm of what we are capable of carrying out ourselves.  As believers when we do dream our dreams seem to be restricted to what money we have, what we can conceive of and can carry out on our own, and what people we currently have around us.

Real dreams operate within the realm of what is outside our ability to achieve with our own strength, skill, and intelligence.  We dream about what we cannot do physically and what is beyond our situation to achieve.  This way of dreaming is what God teaches us in the Bible.  The dreams that we see in the Bible, in the words of Chip Ingram in his book Good to Great in God’s Eyes, are dreams that “only God could do and that could not be defined as the product of human energy or effort”.   Jim Collins, the author of the popular business book, Built to Last, calls this type of dreaming “big, hairy, audacious goals.”  Henry Blackaby, in his book, Experiencing God, describes this way of dreaming in this manner, “when the lost world see things being done in the church that can only be explained in terms of God then they will be drawn to it.”

As Believers we need to start “Dreaming Big Dreams” that are of biblical proportion.  We need to start dreaming the same kind of dreams that Joseph dreamed in Genesis 37.  The first time we encounter Joseph in the Bible he is sharing his “Big Dream” with his brothers who were less than thrilled with what he had to share.  Joseph dreamed that one day not only would his brothers bow down to him but “the sun, moon and stars” would also bow down.  His dream so inspired his brothers that they choose to get ride of “the Dreamer” by selling him into slavery (the next blog in this series on “Big Dreams”).  What Joseph’s brothers failed to realize was that Joseph’s big dream had originated from God and was not the fantasy of a little brother who wanted to be a “big shot.”

All great dreams come from God and are given to bring attention to God. Joseph’s big dream was about how God was going to save Joseph’s family, begin the nation of Israel, and ultimately set the stage for all of us to participate in a covenant relationship with God.  Though Joseph’s dream involved him becoming second in command to Pharaoh, the “big dream” was not about the promotion of Joseph.  God does not give us big dreams in order to benefit ourselves or increase our presence in this world.  God’s purpose for giving us big dreams is about showing how He can do extraordinary things with ordinary people whose only desire is to serve Him.  The reason most of us believers and ultimately most of our churches are less than successful in reaching people with the Gospel is that we dream only about what will be good for ourselves or our church.  And when we do try to dream big dreams we dream about only what we can do ourselves.  We need to stop dreaming about what will make us or our church great and begin to ask God what “Big, Hairy, Audacious Dream” does He want to give me?  What God sized dream does He want to carry out through my life?  What is it that God is wanting to invite us to participate in that is so big we would not even invite ourselves to if we were the ones coming up with the “Big Dream.”

I am currently asking God to give me a “Big, Hairy, Audacious Dream”  as well as the courage to participate.  I really want the remaining years of my life to be lived out fulfilling God’s great dream.  I want to spend the rest of my life moving from great dream to great dream.  I want to come to the end of life and people say, “You know Randy didn’t do much but look at what God was able to do through Randy.”