Dream Again – Get Your Dream Back

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason and Liz Burns in Access Church in Lakeland and Bartow, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

I'm really excited you're at church for more than just a birthday celebration.

Today, I'm kicking off a new series of messages that I'm really excited about.

The series is called Dream Again.

And every few years, God puts it on my heart to speak about your dreams.

And every time I do, something seems to happen.

Every time we talk about dreams, it's like someone gets a supernatural dose of courage and steps into the life that God created them for.

There are businesses in our cities, there are people who have chased after dreams.

There are books that have been written, because through one of these series, God inspired and encouraged someone to have the courage to actually go after their dreams.

So let me challenge you.

I want you to do whatever it takes to be here for the next few weeks, because this is going to be a two-part kind of series.

The next few weeks, we're doing a series called Dream Again.

And then after that, it's kind of like, remember old school cassette tapes?

There was side A and side B.

This we have Dream Again.

And then after this, we have a series called Holy Confidence.

Because if you're going to chase your dreams, it's going to require confidence, and confidence comes from God, and so it's going to be good these next few weeks.

And here's my hope.

If you came to any of our locations today, if you're tuning in at church online, here is my prayer for you.

It's that if there is a dream that is lying dormant in your heart, if there's something in your life that you believed as a kid, but you've just kind of tucked it away because it doesn't make financial sense or you haven't been able to take the first step, my prayer is that as a result of this series, we will collectively chase after the dreams that God's placed in our hearts.

And as a result, that will change the world.

It's going to be fun.

When you think about God, when you think about the Bible, what is the first picture you think of when you think of God?

Chances are, many of us might say, Genesis chapter 1, verse 1, first verse in the whole Bible, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Genesis 1:1

Maybe the first picture you have of God, and maybe you think the first picture in the Bible of God is that God is a creator.

And that would be a really good answer.

But I believe in the subtext of that verse is this simple idea that the first picture of God we have is not just that He's a creator, but that God is a He's a dreamer.

Why?

Because every creation starts with a dream.

Every great movie that's won an Academy Award started with a dream.

Every book that went on to be a New York Times bestseller started as a dream.

Every song that's ever been written started as a dream.

Every sculpture started as a dream.

Every painting started as a dream.

When you drive around town and see every building, every building started as a dream.

Genesis 1:1, God creates the heavens and the earth.

Genesis 1:1

26 verses later, it says that God created humanity and he created them in his own image.

So if God is a dreamer who dreamed up the world and who dreamed up you and all of your beauty and all of the splendor of you and all those little quirks that make you special, the God who dreamed you up created you and me in his image to be dreamers.

Now, if we could just get real for a moment, the problem is many of us have a dream or had a dream, and somewhere along the way, life has a way of kicking the dreams out of us.

We try something and we fail.

We have words spoken over us, and it feels at times like our dreams are a million light years away.

But here's what I want you to understand: God, the dreamer, created you in his image, and he created you to live with dreams, or one of the words the Bible often uses for dreams is the word vision.

And the problem is many of us we don't know what this is, but vision is simply the ability to see clearly.

And if you came to one of our locations today and you had a dream at one point in your life, but you just feel like you've gotten lost along the way, I want you to hear this.

It's that God speaks in dreams and visions.

And God wants to give you his dream for your life, and he wants you to have vision to do something that's going to matter in the world.

Now, this concept is not just this one simple idea.

It's literally found from the beginning of the Bible to the end.

In the book of Proverbs, I love this verse.

This is from the King James Version.

It says, Where there is no vision, the people perish.

Quick pause for just a moment.

Something kind of interesting to me is often when the Bible talks about dreams and when it talks about visions, in the Old Testament it was written in Hebrew.

And one of the things you need to know is the New Testament's written in Greek, and Greek is a much easier to translate a language because you can almost translate it kind of word for word.

Hebrew is a pictorial, which means you have to use a lot more descriptive words.

And what's interesting is very often when we see the word dreams, the translators had to choose between the word dream and the word health.

There's something like you you will live a healthy, fulfilled life when you're living a dream kind of life.

In the book of Acts, it's interesting.

He reaches back to the Old Testament, Joel chapter 2, and he quotes him.

Joel 2 · chapter mention

He says, In the last days, God says, I will pour out my spirit on all people.

I want you to see this.

The result of God's spirit being inside of you is that your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, and your old men, come on, I'm talking to all the old boys up in here, me included, your old men will dream dreams.

And it's funny because so often what happens in life is we hit a season in our life and we haven't seen the picture of what the picture in our heart looks like.

And so we throw in the towel, we give up, we settle for a paycheck, and we stop dreaming.

But I just want to say, God wants to pour his spirit out on you.

And you young people in the room, God wants to give you visions.

You older people in the room, I'm sorry, you more seasoned and mature people in the room, God wants, he wants to give you new dreams again.

Now, why does this matter?

The same verse we read a moment ago from the King James Version, Eugene Peterson, he gives a paraphrase of it, and I love how he says it.

He says, if if people can't see what God is doing, they stumble all over themselves.

But when they attend to what he reveals, they are the most blessed.

This is God's goal for you, that you have a dream, a vision for your life, so that you can take hold of all that God has for you.

To get us started today, um, I hate hate to admit this to you.

I am a sucker for infomercials.

Anybody else, like when I see something on TV, I'm like, I need that.

Like, I don't feel complete without, I need that product in my life.

I have probably purchased at least 20 items from the TV show Shark Tank because I'm convinced that it's gonna make my life better.

I'm just I just am.

I'm a sucker.

And some time ago, my wife and I went to lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings.

Now, I love Buffalo Wild Wings.

I do.

The problem is I don't have ADHD until I'm sitting in Buffalo Wild Wings with food in front of me and a million TVs around me.

Anybody know what I'm talking about?

And so I go with my wife, and all the TVs are sports, and I'm like, come on, Burns, pull it together.

Look at your wife in the eyes, just stare at her.

And I'm trying, I'm trying so hard.

And there's sports, Stephen A.

Smith, and you got Sports Center and all these sports, and I am locked in on my wife's beautiful brown eyes.

I'm locked in.

And all of a sudden, over her shoulder, I saw an infomercial.

And I didn't mean to, but I started like to just I kind of started to drift.

I was like, like, I was looking at her, but I was like looking over her shoulder.

And at one point, she kind of snapped me out of it.

She goes, Hey, Jason, Jason, what are you doing?

What are you doing?

And I snapped tube.

I had gotten pulled into an infomercial for something I needed.

It was called the Aero Knife.

Have you seen this before?

And there was no sound to the TV, but on the captions it said things like, uh, can your knife do this?

Is it aerodynamic?

And I'm like, my knives are not aerodynamic.

They're like, do your knives have holes in them?

And I'm like, we bought the dumb knives, we don't have holes in our knives, Liz.

And then, like, now at this point, I'm fully invested in it.

They take a grape, they're like, the aernife slices through the grape.

And I was like, no big deal, my knives can do that, even without holes in it.

And then they take a tomato and I'm like, no problem.

And I was like, that's easy.

Then they took a pineapple, and I'm like, ooh, this will be interesting, and sliced through it like a hot knife through butter.

And at this point, I'm like on their website putting it in my shopping cart, okay?

And then, and then um, I was like, Liz, I'm sorry, I know you were talking about something important.

Please turn around and watch this.

They pulled out a block of cheese, hard cheese, like normally at my house, a block of cheese with our non-hole knives would take six months of CrossFit to even begin to work your way through it.

And she they pull out a block of cheese and it slices through it.

And Liz goes, What are you doing?

You are gonna buy this.

I'm like, it's already in my cart.

We need this, we need it.

And then just with some maturity and having bought a lot of things that were dumb, I made the decision to Google arrow knife reviews.

And the reviews were terrible.

The reviews were like, these knives don't do anything, they break because they have holes in them.

It was stuff like that.

And I realized something.

I I have spent a part of my life, not just pastoring, but also involved in marketing.

And I realized as I'm looking at this infomercial, here is the formula they use to try to sell you stuff.

And I'm gonna set some of you free.

I'm gonna save some of you lots of money.

Are you ready?

Here it is.

Your life is incomplete.

If you will just add our product, your life will be perfect.

Okay, it's just that easy.

Like, watch this.

Ladies, does your husband snore?

Are you not sleeping?

Are you miserable?

Do you want to punch him in the nose?

Your life's incomplete.

Add snorex, and you'll sleep again like a baby, right?

Right?

Now here's another one.

When I was in high school, I bought something called the ab roller, and it was like, are you tired of being flabby in the middle?

And I'm like, I am so tired of that.

Add the ab roller and you will have abs like this guy.

And I added the ab roller, and all I got was a sore neck from trying to do that dumb thing.

Okay, are you with me?

All of us understand how this formula works, and all of us understand the principle that we have purchased something in our lives and it has let us down.

It made a promise that it couldn't deliver on.

You've had this before.

Okay, you ever had a person make a promise to you and then they didn't come through?

You ever trusted someone and they betrayed you?

You ever shared a secret with someone and you say, like, I need you to take this to the grave, and next thing you know, all of your friends know the secret you trusted to one person?

Okay, anybody have this?

I think all of us, if we can separate ourselves from the emotion, we know that people will let us down.

We know that products, things we buy will let us down.

But if we're gonna dream again, you have to wrestle with this question.

You ready?

What do you do when God lets you down?

Maybe a better question is what do you do when you feel like God has let you down?

Because I don't know that God does, but I think sometimes it feels like he does.

Maybe you've chased after a dream.

Maybe as a child you felt like God gave you a vision, a picture of what you were to do with your life, and somewhere along the way it felt like God didn't hold up his end of the bargain.

So what do you do?

Next question, when your dream dies.

Like I came today on mission.

A lot of messages are for everybody.

Today's message is for somebody.

Maybe that's somebody's you.

And maybe you feel like you've had a funeral and a burying ceremony for your dreams, and God came today to wake you up to say, it's not over.

Why do your dreams matter?

I want you to see this.

Write this down in your notes.

Because how you dream shapes how you pray.

And how you pray determines who you become.

It's almost like the transcript of our prayer life becomes the script of our lives, and it starts by the way that we dream.

So if this is true, we need to do something about the dreams that have died in our heart so that we can take hold of the dream that God's placed, so we can step into it and allow God to breathe life into it again.

Today, what I want to do is I want to spend a lot of time.

In fact, I want to read something like 19 or 20 verses, maybe more.

I mean a lot of verses today, way more than normal.

And I want to tell you a story about what to do when it feels like your dream has died.

I want to talk about what you can do when you need to dream again.

Second Kings chapter 4, there's this interesting thing that happens.

2 Kings 4 · chapter mention

We'll go to it in a moment, but we're gonna read the second story in 2 Kings chapter 4.

2 Kings 4 · chapter mention

And it's interesting to me how this is written because the first seven or eight verses is a different story that feels like the two different people who have kind of the opposite problems of each other.

We meet a man, his name is Elisha.

Now, here's what you need to know about Elisha.

Elisha followed a man named Elijah.

In the Old Testament, people said Elijah was the greatest prophet, he was the strongest prophet.

They said he did the most miracles, like he was the Jeepot, the greatest prophet of all time.

He was that guy.

And then he he's followed by a man named Elijah.

And Elisha says to him, Hey, before you go, like I just want you to pray that God will give me a double portion of what's on you, the anointing that's on your life.

Give me a double portion of that.

And he prays and God gives it to him.

In fact, if you read through the life of Elijah, scripture records 14 miracles that Elijah did.

Interestingly, Elisha, 28 miracles.

There's this moment, 2 Kings chapter 4, where Elisha is out doing his thing, and this woman comes and throws herself at his feet, and she says, You know my husband, he was a servant of God, he's dead, and I have nothing.

2 Kings 4 · chapter mention

He left us broke.

Some people die and they leave wills.

My husband died and he left bills.

Like I got nothing, and if I don't have anything, I'm going to die.

He says to her, Go collect every pot you can collect and put it in your house and take the little tiny bit of oil you have and pour it into the pots.

And so she goes and she collects as many pots as she can.

She obeys the word of the God.

And as she pours, the oil never stops flowing, and she has enough money for this because of this miracle to survive.

It's a crazy miracle.

And here's the point of that story that I think is so interesting.

The amount of her blessing was directly proportionate to the amount of her obedience.

If she went and got two pots, God would have given her two pots of oil.

If she got two hundred, God would give her two hundred.

I think a lot of us are more educated than we are obedient, and we need to be obedient just to whatever God tells us to do.

That's a free one.

That's not even the sermon, okay?

And then in Hebrew, there's this interesting word.

It's like a little uh conjunction word that ties the two stories together.

It wouldn't make it into English because it doesn't translate to English.

But you got this one woman who's so down on her luck, and then we're gonna meet a woman in the story we're gonna read today who's got it all going for her.

In fact, I'll show it to you.

She's got money, she's got seemingly everything she could want.

2 Kings 4, verse 8.

2 Kings 4:8

Here we go.

A lot of verses today, so buckle in, all right.

One day Elisha went to Shunum.

Now we don't know a lot about Shunim.

It's not a very interesting city, it's not remarkable.

I think it's mentioned three times in the Bible.

And a well-to-do woman was there.

So we don't know a lot about Shunim, and we don't know a lot about this woman.

In fact, the story's not even gonna tell us her name, but it will tell us she is well-to-do.

I mean she's got money.

It means her needs are met.

It means when she goes to the Shunam Mall, she can shop at Nordstrom or wherever she wants.

Like she's not having to shop at Ross and Marshall's everybody.

Like, she can go, she can get her Louis Vuitton, whatever she wants, so she's well-to-do.

And I want you to see it says she urged him to stay for a meal.

Now, why would I highlight the word urged?

Um, you ever have someone invite you to their house and like they try their hardest to cook for you, but you were like, baby, on the way home, we are stopping a Taco Bell.

Anybody have this?

Like, I traveled for years and spoke at churches all over the country, and I used to like hate it when people would invite us to their house because sometimes they cook a meal for you and you have to find a way to compliment them, and you're not lying, but you don't say, Oh, this is so good.

You say things like, Oh man, you went to so much trouble for this, right?

Or I can taste the love.

Sure, I can also taste the carbon because you burned the fire out of it, but I taste the love here, right?

Are you with me?

And so she urges them to stay for a meal, and she must have been a good cook because it says so.

Whenever he came by, he stopped there to eat.

She was like the Shunam Wolfgang puck.

She was a good cook.

So one day it says she said to her husband, I know that this man who often comes by our way is a holy man of God, so let's do something.

Let's make a small room on the roof and put in it a bed and a table, a chair, and a lamp for him.

Then he can stay with us whenever he comes to us.

Um, in old school church, they might have called this a prophet's chambers or a prophet's quarters.

And this is the first example of this.

And so she literally spends her money to build onto her house so that whenever Elisha came by, he'd have a place to stay.

Like he wouldn't have to stay in the Shunam Holiday and Express, he could stay with them.

And it goes on to say this one day, when Elisha came, he went up to his room and he laid down there, and he said to his servant Gehazi, which fun news, by the way, if you are pregnant with the boy, that's a name option for you.

He says, Call the Shunammite, call that woman.

So he called her, and she stood before him.

Elisha said to him, Tell her, you have gone to all this trouble for us.

Now what can be done for you?

I I love this line because it's a picture of the heart of God.

That that when you bless God, he conspires to bless you.

Like it's his desire.

So he goes on to give her examples.

He's like, Can we speak on your behalf to the king of or the commander of the army?

Like, can I can I talk to the influential people for you and get you something that maybe you want?

And she replied, I have a home among my own people.

Like, translation is I'm good, I got money, I'm fine, I'm well to do.

I grew up in West Palm Beach, and West Palm Beach is funny because West Palm Beach is known for its extravagance, its opulence, it's known for its money.

But what's funny in West Palm Beach is you can be on the richest road that you've ever seen and literally go one block over and see the most abject poverty you've ever seen.

Like on one road, there will be houses where people buy them for$15 million, tear it down, and build a$20 million house on top of it.

And then right next door, there's rows of people living in tents on the street.

It's very interesting.

One of the things I learned down there is people with money don't feel their needs.

They don't because they have money.

She's like, I'm good.

I don't need anything.

And so she leaves and the story goes on.

What can be done for her?

Elisha asked.

And Gehazi said, Well, she has no son.

And her husband is old.

Like Gehazi, his assistant, is like super observant.

He's like, when I come to her house, there's no kids playing.

If you come to my house, there's pictures all over the walls of my family, and I love my kids.

He says, There's no noise of laughter, there's no toys on the floor.

I stepped on no Legos, praise God.

Like I nothing has happened, everything's good.

But she doesn't have a kid.

I want you to notice something.

In the time of the Bible, to not have a kid was to be seen as being cursed by God.

But I want you to notice something.

There's other stories in the Bible where people beg God for a child.

We don't have any record of that at all.

She just doesn't have a kid, and she's accepted her reality as final.

So then Elisha said, Call her.

So he called her, and she stood in the doorway, and he said to her, About this time next year, you will hold the son in your arms.

You would think this would be a big deal and an exciting deal, but I want you to see her response.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

No.

Uh-uh.

Timeout, like take that back, rewind it.

Uno reverse, stop.

No, no.

My Lord, she, come on, say this word.

She.

She objected.

She said, stop.

Absolutely not.

What is the subtext of this?

I've already tried everything.

I've exhausted myself, and it's easier to live without hope than it is to live with a hope that doesn't seem to ever come true.

A big deal for her.

Please, man of God.

Don't mislead your servants.

But she objected.

But apparently her husband didn't object to this because the woman became pregnant.

That's a weird joke.

And the next year, about that same time, she gave birth to a son, just as Elisha had told her.

Now this feels like an awesome place to end the story, doesn't it?

Praise God.

God comes through in his word.

She has the miracle baby.

Everything's wonderful.

Let's give God praise.

Woo! The story goes on.

It says the child grew, and one day he went out to his father who was with the reapers, like working out in the fields, and he said to his father, my head, my head.

Sunstroke was very common in the Middle East in this time.

And he's like, My head hurts, my head hurts.

And the dad, like, he did the most dad thing ever.

He told his servant, get this boy to his mama, carry him to his mother.

And it says, and after the servant had lifted him up and carried him to his mother, the boy sat on her lap until noon.

What do you do with that?

What do you do with that?

The boy was literally physical in flesh and blood, the fulfillment of a dream so tucked away in her heart, and now she's holding him in her arms, and he's dead.

The scripture uses the beautiful illustrative language.

It's that at noon, the point of the day when the sun is at its highest, she's at her lowest.

She's holding in her hands the physical representation of a dream that has died.

And what do you do?

What do you do when your dream dies?

Many people throw in the towel, but not this woman.

She literally likes laces up her Nike Metcons, puts on her Lulu, puts that eye black stuff underneath her eyes, pulls her hair back, and she's a woman on a mission.

So it says this next verse.

She went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God in that prophet chamber we talked about.

Then she shut the door and she went out and she called to her husband and said, Please send one of my servants and get a donkey so I can go to the man of God quickly and return.

The husband says, All right, fine, but why go see him today?

And she said, It's not the new moon or the Sabbath.

Like, why do you need to go today?

And listen to the resolve in this woman's heart.

She says, That's all right.

I got this, don't worry about it.

And she saddled the donkey and said to her servant, Lead on, don't slow down for me unless I tell you.

And so she set out and came to the man of God who was at Mount Carmel, a place that in just like the chat the book before Elijah had one of his biggest miracles ever.

It goes on to say, when he saw her in the distance, the man of God said to his servant, Gehazi, look, there's the Shunammite, there's the woman, and she looks angry.

He says, Um, how about this?

How about Gehazi?

You run and meet her, like I'll just stay back here.

She's mad, you run and meet her, and ask her, Are you alright?

Is your husband alright?

Is your child alright?

And so he does that, and then the woman responds, everything is alright.

Now, this might seem like some sort of a lie.

I actually see it as a declaration of faith.

Like I can't see it with my eyes.

With my eyes, I see my son who is lying dead in your bed at my house.

But I don't see through physical eyes, I see through the eyes of faith.

Goes on.

It says, When she reached the man of God at the mountain, she took hold of his feet.

So she literally throws herself at Elisha's feet and Gehazi came over to push her away.

But the man of God said, Leave her alone.

She's in bitter distress.

But the Lord has hidden it from me as to why.

He hasn't told me why this is happening.

And then listen to the pain in her voice.

She says, Did I ask you for a son, my Lord?

Didn't I tell you, don't raise my hopes?

Because it's easier to live with no dream and hopeless than it is to let your heart get hurt.

And Elisha said to Gehazi, Tuck your cloak and your belt, take my staff in your hand and run.

Don't greet anyone you meet.

And if anyone greets you, do not answer, lay my staff on the boy's face, because there was a miracle in the book before this where Elijah lays his staff on the face of a child and they come back to life.

And maybe that'll happen again.

So it goes on.

But the child's mother said, As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you.

Pause here for just a moment.

Is there anything in the world scarier than an angry, ticked-off, full of resolve mama?

Anybody ever stand in the way of one of those?

She's like, Okay, fine, but I'm not leaving you.

So Elisha did what most men would do.

It says, so, next, so he got up and followed her, right?

He's like, change his mind.

I'm with you, girl, whatever you want, just don't hurt me.

It goes on.

Gehazi went ahead and laid the staff on the boy's face, but there was no sound or response.

So Gehazi went back to meet Elisha and he told him, The boy has not awakened.

When Elisha reached the house, there was the boy lying dead on his couch.

He went in, shut the door on the two of them, and he prayed to the Lord.

Now, this you might see this as a prayer of faith.

I see this as a, hey God, look, if this boy doesn't come back to life, I will soon be joining him in death.

That's the kind of prayer that I think this is, okay?

And then I have to admit something to you.

The next couple verses are, in my opinion, some of the weirdest verses in the Bible.

Are you you cool with this?

Like, everybody good?

It says, then, watch this.

Then he got on the bed and he laid on the boy, mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands.

What?

Okay, like I know the Bible was this was written thousands of years ago, but imagine like you were in a coma in the hospital and you woke up and the doctor was laying on you eyes to eyes, mouth to mouth, hands to hands.

I would think that's weird to weird.

Anyone else is strange?

Super strange.

And like, um, if I woke up in that position, I would be thinking one word, a lawsuit.

That's what I would be thinking, right?

But this is different.

This is different.

It goes on and it says this.

It says, as he stretched himself on him, the boy's body grew warm.

And it says Elisha turned away and walked back and forth in the room, and then he got on the bed and stretched out on him once more.

It's like the first one, okay, weird decision.

Second time, like, bro, what are you doing?

And I've read biblical scholars who are like, eyes to eyes means vision and mouth to mouth means like God breathed life into us.

And I'm like, it's just weird to weird.

Like I don't get it at all, that's but that's what he does.

And then it says this it says, the boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes.

Uh, this isn't in the Bible, but an ancient Jewish oral tradition is that they believe that when God created Adam, when he breathed his life into him, Adam sneezed seven times.

It's like somehow connected to life.

So maybe this is what that is.

And it says Elisha summoned Gehazi and said, Call the Shunammite, and he did.

And it says, when she came, he said, Take your son, and she came in and fell at the start at his feet and bowed to the ground.

Then she took her son and she went out.

This is such an interesting moment.

Because for this woman, this boy was her dream.

This boy was her dream.

And then she gets the boy, and in the brightest point of the day, she has the worst moment of her life, and the boy he dies.

What do you do when your dream dies?

Um got to admit something.

I am a huge football fan, you know this, and um, there's a meme that I post just about every year around this time as football's about to start again.

It's Michael Scott from the office, and he says, I'm ready to get hurt again.

That's how I feel as a Cowboys fan every season.

I am ready to get hurt again.

And if you like football, you know this.

And if you don't like football, I'm gonna teach you something new.

There are two different types of flags they use in football.

The first one is the yellow flag.

And there's referees and umpires on the field, and if a player commits a penalty, the referee will take the yellow flag and throw it up in the air, and that means that there was a penalty on the play.

But for a long time, one of the problems was referees would call penalties, but they only could see it from one perspective.

And often the coach and the coaches who had the higher perspectives would say, no, no, that wasn't the right call, and they'd argued, and so a few years ago the NFL came out with a second flag called a red flag.

And the red flag is the challenge flag.

And if a coach believes that the referee got a call wrong from his perspective, the coach can take the red flag and he can throw it up and literally says, What we have to do is we have to go back to video replay and look at it from different angles to see if maybe your viewpoint was wrong.

I like the really petty coaches.

Sometimes they throw them high.

I like the coaches who go to the referee and just throw it at their feet.

I think it's so funny.

I mean, like, I'm all about this.

And here's what happens when they throw the red flag, the game stops for a moment and they go up and they look at that same play from a higher perspective and from a different point of view.

What do you do when it feels like your dream dies?

You throw the red flag and you appeal to someone with a higher perspective.

Remember the woman, it says about her that when Elisha said to her, You will have a son, she no, no, no, and she objected.

Throwing the red flag reveals this truth that God has a way of overruling our objections.

And look, I don't know what you came in objecting to.

I don't know what dream in your heart feels too good to be true, but maybe somewhere along the way it didn't come true, and so you've thrown in the towel and you're like, I'm out on this dream.

What if instead we appealed to a higher perspective?

What if instead we said, God, I don't understand this, but I'm gonna have faith that you can see the things that I can't see.

What is faith?

The author of Hebrews says it like this in Hebrews 11:1.

Hebrews 11:1

Now, faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

Let me talk to somebody today.

Somebody came to our church today and you can't see anymore.

You, your eye, your vision for your life is so astigmatized that you can't see past this moment right now.

You have been so hurt, so betrayed.

And what if today you said, God, I'm choosing to go to you.

I'm choosing to throw the red flag and to see from a higher perspective and a higher point of view.

Faith, according to Hebrews, is not about what you can see, but I would like to submit to you that faith is seeing from God's point of view.

What would it look like if all of us just made this decision to say, God, even when I don't understand what you're doing, I trust your character.

And even when I don't know what the next step looks like, I trust that the God who has always been there with me and who has always been faithful will be faithful.

What happens when we do this?

It's that the God who is the dreamer, He gets permission to breathe life into our dreams again.

Would you bow your head and close your eyes with me at all of our locations?

Let's pray together.

God, in this place, some of us just somewhere along the way, we just gave up on our dreams.

God, may today be the day that you breathe life back into our dreams.

May we dream again.

God, before we dig into how to dream and how to dream with you and what a dream looks like, I pray that today will be the day that breathes life and perspective back into those dreams that feel dead and dormant.

God, for those of us who have given up on our dreams, may we throw the red flag and may we appeal to a higher perspective.

And God, my prayer is a result of it today that you will show your faithfulness and that we will see dreams come back to life.

Thank you for it, God.

With your head still bowed and eyes still closed.

Maybe you came to one of our locations today and you don't know if you're right with God.

Maybe this means you've never started following Jesus, or maybe you just feel like you've walked away from it.

In either case, right now, this moment is for you.

You say, Jason, I need to start or restart with God.

Would you raise your hand?

I want to pray with you.

Thanks.

Yeah.

Thank you.

See you, thank you.

At any of our locations, if this is you, I'm gonna ask you to pray this with me.

Now listen, praying a prayer doesn't change things unless you mean it with your heart.

So if this is you and today you need to start or restart with Jesus, would you say, Jesus, I give you my life?

Would you save me?

Change me, make my life completely new from the inside out.

Jesus, I believe you're the Son of God.

I believe when you came into this world and died on the cross for me, you paid for my sins.

I believe when you rose again, you show that you have power to give me life anew.

So, Jesus, today I give you my life for the rest of my life.

I receive your forgiveness, I receive your salvation, and I choose to follow you.

I love you and I give you my life in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Come on, church fam, everywhere.

Let's celebrate those who made that decision.