The Power of a God-Given Dream (New Beginnings UMC)

We are talking today about dreams again and I think Martin

Luther King Junior weekend is a good time to talk about dreams

and we will be talking about that specific dream in a few

minutes as well. But the topic today is the power

of a God-given dream. Not all dreams come from God.

Sometimes we, you know, our, our dreams are our own.

And, and by dreams, I mean both kinds.

I mean those, those things that happen to us when we're

sleeping. And it's like, you know,

watching a free movie while you sleep.

And sometimes it's a horror movie and sometimes it's a

comedy, but it's at least free. And those other kinds of dreams,

the dreams that we have as visions of a preferred future of

something that we would like to see happen for ourselves, for

those we love, for the world that's around us, both kinds of

dreams. There's there's an important

difference, a meaningful difference between dreams that

are God-given and dreams that are aren't, that aren't.

And we're going to talk today about the God-given kind of

dreams, starting with Jacob's God-given dream.

Jacob had that dream. John already read that this

morning. There he was in the wilderness,

lying on the ground, head on a stone, had this dream, a

stairway to heaven. I, it didn't occur to me until

much too late. We could have had someone

singing that today, but it's a really long song anyway, so we

wouldn't have, wouldn't have had time.

But there was, there was that dream and, and this dream.

We're not told what Jacob's state of mind was, but I think I

think we can make a reasonable interpretation recognizing that

we don't know for sure, but but I think it's reasonable to say

that there's a good chance Jacob was at a low point.

May be the low point in his life so far.

He was the second of two twins. The elder was Esau.

He was the younger. Culture, tradition, and local

law dictated that the elder inherit everything and then

provide space for the younger in his household.

But God had told Rebecca even before Jacob and Esau were born

that the older would serve the younger, that that God's

covenant will be passed on to the younger, not to the older.

And that was Jacob. Jacob quickly became Rebeccas

favorite child, whether for that reason or other reasons.

Maybe they just understood each other better.

But at a young age, at a fairly young age, Jacob swindled his

older brother out of his birthright.

And then years after that, when their father was old and blind,

Rebecca helped Jacob lie to their to Isaac, his father, and

steal Jacob's that the blessing that Isaac had intended for

Esau. Esau was miffed at this,

understandably so. He was very angry.

He decided that the best course of action was to kill his

brother. And then there's no one to

divide anything with. He gets it all.

Jacob flees for his life. He's fleeing his home.

He's fleeing, as far as we know, the only region he had ever

known to go to a foreign country, a foreign land to meet

people again. As far as we know, he had never

met. They were relatives of his

mother, and he apparently had to leave so quickly.

He didn't couldn't take much with him because here he is in

the wilderness alone, which is dangerous all by itself.

No one to watch his back, no one to keep watch at night while he

sleeps or to share a watch with, and not even a pillow to put his

head on, Lying on the ground with his head on a rock.

And God gives him this dream and it's amazing dream, a ladder

connecting earth and heaven, angels going up and down on the

ladder, a connection between heaven and earth.

And in that dream, God speaks to him and renews the covenant,

makes the same covenant with him that he made with his

grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac before him.

Descendants as numerous as grains of dust on the ground.

Own all the land in every direction as far as your eye can

see, and your descendants will be a blessing to all peoples of

the earth. It's a tremendous covenant, a

tremendous promise, a God-given dream.

I want to give a quick disclaimer before we go further

and talk about the power of a God-given dream.

God communicates like this infrequently.

This is not a normal thing for God.

We see it repeatedly in the Bible.

And so sometimes we see things repeatedly in the Bible,

miracles being done, God communicating with dreams and

visions, these kinds of things. And, and, and tend to think that

that was the norm at least back then, if not now, but it wasn't

even the norm back then. What are the things we have to

realize is the events of the Bible took place over the span

of hundreds, even thousands of years, depending on how you mark

the date of things in the Bible. And and dreams then, as dreams

are now, are not God's standard way of communicating.

So if you've never had a God-given dream, whether the

kind when you're asleep or the kind when you're awake, that

doesn't mean there's something wrong with you.

It doesn't mean something wrong with your faith, doesn't mean

there's something wrong with your faith in God or your

relationship with God. It's just not the way God

normally communicates. God more likely communicates

through the words of scripture, through Bible study, through

hopefully occasionally from a sermon, from a bald headed guy

standing up in front of you. God communicates through people

around us. God communicates through

thoughts that pop into our heads and they're sometimes from God,

feelings in our heart that are sometimes from God.

But but this, this, these big dramatic things, this is not the

norm. And and I like to say that

because I've encountered some folks over the years that feel

like I never get anything special like that or they're

looking for it or longing for it and it's they come or they don't

come. But it's not a mark of being

closer to God or further from God.

It's just whether God chooses to communicate that way or not.

One, one of the writers, I think it was Saint Teresa of Avila.

I think it was her that I read this, that, that God and she had

these kinds of dreams and had these kinds of visions and, and

lots of people go, I wish I could have that too.

And she, one of the things she said was is God doesn't

communicate with most people this way.

And usually when he does, it's because it's a remedial thing,

because the person he's communicating with isn't capable

of understanding any other way. And and so so just want to put

that out there as we go along and move on to talk about the

power of a God-given dream. We're going to talk about two

aspects of the power of a God-given dream.

The 1st is that a God-given dream brings purpose with it.

It gives a sense of purpose. It it helps us answer the

question why, Why our life is what it is, or the OR or why

our, our, our, the why of our very existence, the purpose, our

reason for being here. And to to look at that point

more clearly, I do want to read a portion of, of Reverend Martin

Luther King Junior's I Have a Dream Speech and not the whole

thing. It's too long to read the whole

thing here during the sermon, but I want to read, and it's an

extended quotation, Doctor King delivering this speech in

Washington, DC publicly to a huge gathering of people on the

cusp of voting on the 1963 Civil Rights Act.

And and so he's a, he's addressing real people at a real

significant moment in history. And again, starting toward the

end of the speech here, I say to you today, my friends.

So even though we face the difficulties of today and

tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in

the American Dream. I have a dream that one day this

nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are

created equal. I have a dream that one day, on

the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the

sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at

the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even

the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering in the heat of

injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be

transformed into an Oasis of Freedom and Justice.

I have a dream that my 4 little children will one day live in a

nation where they will not be judged by the color of their

skin, but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day down

in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor

having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and

nullification, one day, right there in Alabama, little black

boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little

white boys and white girls and as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day

every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be

made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked

places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall

be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back

to the South with. With this faith, we will be able

to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.

With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling cords

of our nation into a beautiful Symphony of brotherhood.

With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray

together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand

up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to

sing a new with a new meaning. My country tis of thee, sweet

land of liberty of thee. I sing land where my father's

died, land of the pilgrims, pride from every mountainside.

Let freedom ring. And if America is to be a great

nation, this must become true. And when this happens, we allow

freedom to ring. We let it ring from every

village and every hamlet, from every state and every city.

We will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children,

black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and

Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of

the old Negro spiritual. Free at last, free at last.

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.

A powerful dream and a big part of the power of that dream was

this power of purpose. There's a reason why those folks

were gathered. There was a reason why they

were, they were there in Washington, DC.

There was a reason why they've been sitting down on buses and,

and, and, and reason why they've been going into whites only

spaces. There've been reason why people

were beaten, why people were attacked, why people were

willing to do the things that they knew would lead them to be

beaten intact. They had a purpose in mind and

that purpose was this dream that king articulated, this dream of,

of what in other places he called the beloved community, a

dream that's really, that's really a vision of God's Kingdom

come and God's will being done here on earth as it is in

heaven, where discord and divisions and strife are set

aside and people are able to come together as sisters and

brothers, regardless of race, regardless of creed, regardless

of ethnicity, regardless of all of the other things that we're

separating. This was that dream and, and it

helped. It helped those folks gathered

there and everyone who has heard it since and really listened to

it to, to see a part of their purpose in this world that we

exist, that we're here not by accident.

We're not here to just take care of ourselves and our own and

those we love. We are here to provide and

secure Freedom and Justice and hope and peace and life and the

blessings of life to all folks regardless, regardless purpose.

In that Jacob's dream, the dream that God gave Jacob there in the

middle of the wilderness when he had his head on, that stone also

carried with it purpose. Jacob's purpose was not to be a

a liar, not to be a thief, not to be a cheat.

His purpose wasn't just to survive his brother Esau's

wrath. His purpose wasn't even just to

get his brother's birthright and his blessing and his

inheritance. His purpose was to be part of

God's story for the whole world, for the whole world.

It was a covenant, a covenant that God had made with his

grandfather Abraham, with his father Jacob, and now I'm sorry,

with his father Isaac, and now with Jacob himself.

Look around Jacob, you got nothing with, you didn't even

have time to bring a pillow. You got nothing.

But every, all the land you can see in any direction as far as

your eye can see, will one day belong to your descendants.

You've got no children, you've got no wife, you've got no

prospects. You're on the run for your life.

But one day your descendants will outnumber the grains of

dust on the ground. One day all nations of the world

will be blessed through you. Jacob had a purpose in life.

He had a place in God's story and what God was doing and God's

purpose then with Jacob, with us, was to bless all people of

all nations on the earth. And that's that's another

variation. King's Speech was another

variation, a harmony on the the the the same refrain of justice

and peace and blessing for all the peoples of the earth.

And that that's the purpose in these God-given dreams to give

us a sense of place. That's the power to give us a

sense of place and a purpose in this world that we're not random

accidents. We're not we're not here due to

the random assembling of atoms and molecules and whatever and

all happened by chance and it's all going to go away in the end.

So nothing matters. So eat, drink and be merry for

tomorrow we die. We have a purpose, we have a

why, we have a reason. And that's part of the power of

a God-given dream. Now, there's also danger in

God-given dreams. And one of the big dangers in a

God-given dream is that we can receive it as an assignment.

And when we receive God-given dreams as an assignment, we can

quickly become overwhelmed with one of two things, overactivity.

I've got to make this happen. I've got to make this happen.

I've got to get it done. If God gave me the dream, he was

must make me want, must want me to make the dream come true.

But that's not why God gives dreams.

Not to make us make it come true, but to know that God will

one day make it come true. To give us purpose.

We're part of this story, but not to give us the assignment of

fulfilling the dream itself. If it's a dream that we can

fulfill, it's probably not a God-given dream.

God's dreams, God-given dreams are much bigger and and human

beings can rarely if ever fulfill them on our own.

But the church has made the, I think this is what frankly, I

think this is what led to Jacob's problems, present

problems that he was experiencing.

Anyway. His mother had received a word

from God when she was pregnant and the babies were fighting

within her. And God says, you know, the

older will serve the younger. And it seems like that Rebecca

and Jacob had spent Jacob's life so far trying to make that

vision, make that dream come true.

And they were manipulating people.

They were manipulating circumstances.

They were grasping, they were grabbing and now Jacob's running

for his life and the church has done this over and over again.

If, if, if maybe the the broadest expression of this

dream, this God-given dream that we have is, is thy Kingdom come,

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

And the church throughout the ages has made the horrific

decision of it's our job to make that happen.

And doggone it, if, if we can't get these heretics to, to repent

on their own, then if we want God's Kingdom to come and God's

will to be done, we're going to have to get him out.

We might even have to kill him and, and, and if we can't get

these, these savages to repent and do our things our way, we're

going to have to get them out or we're going to have to kill

them. And, and we're going to go into

that town. We're going to conquer this land

because, because we're doing things God's way and we want

God's Kingdom to become and they're not doing it God's way.

So we need to go over there and make sure that God's Kingdom

comes over there too. It's the whole earth.

And if we have to kill a few people or a lot of people, then

we'll do it. And the church has done this

over and over again throughout the ages of of using the excuse

of we have to make God's dream a reality in order to do awful

things in God's name. That's one of the dangers of a

God-given dream when we take it as an assignment and decide we

have to make it happen. The other danger when we take it

as an assignment and that we have to make it happen is that

we get immobilized by the size of the project.

It's too big. How can we do it?

We can't do it. And so we do nothing.

There's an old story, I think it comes from the early monastic

tradition, but I can't remember for sure.

But it's a story about a, a, a father who owned a lot of land,

wealthy man who owned a lot of land and, and he purchased new

land on the edge of his current land.

But the new land was covered thick with with briars and thorn

bushes, and his son was coming to his age.

He gave his son the assignment. Son, it's your job to clear the

land. I want you to clear that land so

we can use it. Whether we're going to graze on

it, whether we're going to plant crops on it, it needs to be

clear to the brier's son says I can do it.

And he goes out to do it. And the first day he gets there,

he walks through his father's current land.

He gets to the edge. It's looking down from a hill on

his father's land, on the new land of the purchase, sees this

vast stretch covered with thorns and briars and brambles, acres

and acres and acres and acres and acres.

It's all right. It's a big job.

I better get started. He rolls up his sleeves and he

spends the whole day working, and he's digging and he's

cutting out roots with a hatchet.

He's digging and he's cutting and he's digging.

He's cutting. He's carrying the roots away.

He's getting his hands cut, he's getting scratched, he's getting

scraped, he's getting tired, he's getting sweaty.

He works all day and we gets done and he looks around and

he's cleared a patch about 6 feet by 6 feet.

You're like, that was a lot of work.

He goes home, sleeps very well that night, comes back the next

day and he sees again just how much work he has to do and just

how little he accomplished in an entire day's work.

And he's completely overwhelmed by the size of the project.

It's too much, he says. It's too much.

And he's immobilized and he lies down and it is despair.

He just goes to sleep. He sleeps all day and he goes

home and he doesn't sleep as well that night.

Because he didn't do his work when he goes back the next day

and he does the same thing, and he sleeps.

And that goes on day after day after day until the days become

week after week after week until it becomes months.

And then the day that he'd been dreading for so long came, and

his father said to him, hey, I want to go check out the new

land, see your progress, see how things are going.

His son walks with him out there, and he's afraid the whole

way. And he's sweating, and he won't

make conversation. He won't look at his dad.

And they get up on that hill that he first looked over the

land that first morning, and all of that land still covered with

briars and thorn bushes. And they walked down to that

spot that he cleared. His father says, well, what

happened? Son tells his dad it was too

much. It was too much.

I worked really hard that first day and this is all I got

cleared. And I realized it's just too

much. And I just couldn't do anything

after that. And I came out and I'd sleep and

I'm sorry. And his father said, Son, don't

you understand that if you had just cleared enough every day to

sleep on, you would be finished by now?

And that's how these God-given dreams work.

If we see it as an assignment to get it all done ourselves, it

it, it's overwhelming and it will immobilize us and paralyze

us and we will end up being passive or we will end up being

frantically and abusively trying to make it happen.

And neither of those is right. All we really need to do is the

work that's in front of us today just enough so that we can lie

down at night and have a good night's sleep.

You see in all of this to remember that to avoid the

power, second power of a God-given dream is hope.

Part of the power of a God-given dream is purpose.

Another part of that power is hope and to avoid those dangers,

this is what we need to remember, that the dreams God

gives us are not assignments, they're promises.

This is what I am going to do through you.

God says to Jacob, this is what I'm going to do.

This is what I'm going to do in this world.

My Kingdom will come. My will will be done.

One day Jesus will return. He will establish his Kingdom on

earth. The Kingdom of heaven will come

to earth, and earth will become like the Kingdom of heaven.

One day that will happen. That's the hope that we have

that God will bring this about. And our role is not to make it

happen. And our role is not to stand by

and be passive. Our role, our purpose, our

assignment is just to do the little things on a day-to-day

basis. And those occasional big things

that come up and need to be done, we do those day in and day

out, doing that work of loving our neighbor as we love

ourselves, of loving God with all that we have.

The work of serving, the work of caring.

That's the daily take up your cross and follow me kind of

stuff, which is what Jesus taught us to do.

Because Jesus is our purpose and our hope.

He's our purpose to serve him, to follow him.

He's our hope because he's the one that's going to make all of

this happen one day anyway. And if we do the things he told

us to do, Love people, embrace them, care about them, welcome

them, receive them, regardless of the colour of their skin or

their gender or their background or their nationality or their

ethnicity or the language they speak or the politics they have

or the religion that they practice.

Welcome them, love them, receive them.

Be to them like I was to the people of this world when I was

here. Do that day in and day out and

one day I'll come and and I will make it all into what I promised

it would be. That's our part.

Because here Jesus said to this when he was first calling his

disciples and one of them he called, you know, Nathaniel was

brought by, by I can't think it was Peter.

I can't. I don't remember.

No, no. Which one was it?

I can't remember. My brain went blank.

Brought, brought Nathaniel and Nathaniel said, I was saying it

was being introduced to Jesus and Jesus like I saw you, you

were sitting under a fig tree earlier.

Jesus hadn't seen him with his eyes.

There was no one around and Nathaniel saw this is a miracle.

You knew who I was. You knew where I was, where I

was before I came here. You must be the Messiah, you

must be the Son of God. And Jesus said, look buddy, you

ain't seen nothing yet. One day you'll see heaven open

up and the angels of God ascending and descending on the

Son of man. And there's that same dream.

That's Jacob's dream. But now instead of the ladder

connecting heaven and earth, Jesus is connecting heaven and

earth. Jesus is the ladder, Jesus is

the bridge, Jesus is the gate between those two realms.

Jesus is the one that will bring the Kingdom of heaven to come on

the earth and the one that will bring the earth into the Kingdom

of heaven. And one day we'll get to see

that we're part of that same purpose.

We have that same hope, and our task along the way is just to do

those little things because even small acts of justice, mercy,

and love reveal the truth and goodness of Christ's Kingdom in

a broken world. And yes, there will be times

where big dramatic steps are necessary and happen like that

gathering in DC when Doctor King delivered that speech.

But most of the time and most of our lives are spent doing those

little things, those small things on a day-to-day basis

where we reach out and we embrace and we love and we care

and we receive just like Jesus did when he was here.

And that's the power of a God-given dream.

That's that's the power to live our lives daily with hope and

with purpose. Not because we had a big

dramatic vision of our own, not because we had a big exciting

dream of our own, not because we're going to make the dream

come true on our own, but because God has made us a

promise and he invites us to live like we really believe that

promise is going to come true in Jesus name, Amen.

Amen.