Dream Year – Overcoming Opposition

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

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Come on, can we celebrate that together, everybody?

What a speech, what a dream.

We honor the legacy of Dr.

King this weekend.

What you just saw happened on August 28th, 1963.

And on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Jr.

didn't stand up and deliver his speech.

He delivered a dream.

Four words captivated a country.

He said, I have a dream.

Dreams are powerful.

Dreams pull resources and people and energy to it.

Dreams also pull critics and haters and cynics and skeptics to it.

Martin Luther stepped up to the podium and he said those four words.

He said, I have a dream.

And the gospel artist Mahalia Jackson said this.

She said, Tell them about the dream, Martin.

And as history writes it, when he heard those words, he pushed his notes to the side.

His speech writer said, Oh no, they don't know what's about to hit them.

They're about to go to church, is what they what he said.

And he went off scripts and delivered a dream through the lens of a speech that forever transformed a nation.

Here we are, decades later, still remembering a person because of a dream.

The poet Edgar Allan Poe Poe said, All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

Every dream we dream is not necessarily just our own, but it's the dream in the context of another dream for Martin Luther King Jr., his dream was a dream within a dream.

In 1936, Michael King was the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

And in 1936, he took a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to go to a conference in Berlin, Germany.

And while there, so captivated by the story of Martin Luther and what he did by nailing the 95 thesis to the wall, to the doors of a Catholic church in Wittenberg, Germany, he was so moved by this that he changed his name from Michael King to Martin Luther King, Jr.

His friends that were close to him still called him Michael, but to the rest of the world he was Martin Luther.

What Martin Luther did, he had no idea that what he was doing was building something bigger than himself.

In fact, a way to say it is this: if every dream is a dream within a dream, you need to understand that legacy is not what you accomplish, legacy is what is accomplished because of you.

What would it look like if all of us understood that our lives and our dreams are merely dreams within a dream?

It's the dreams of your parents, it's the dreams of your ancestors, if nothing else, if you're living your dream, you are living the dream that God has for you.

And today I want to wrestle with this question.

What would happen if you don't live your dream?

What is left behind?

What legacy is untold?

What stories are unwritten?

What change does the world need that won't happen if you don't dream?

Think about what would happen if Martin Luther hadn't obeyed and nailed the 95 Thesis to the doors of the Catholic Church in Wittenberg, Germany.

What would have happened if he was not so moved by that dream that Michael King didn't change his name and his legacy from Michael King to Martin Luther King?

What would have happened were it not for a dream?

Let me just be bold and say this to you.

You need to dream.

Your family needs your dream.

Listen to me.

The world needs your dream.

But God gave you your dream, and God needs you to live your dream.

Let's pray and let's get to work together, everybody.

Lord, we love you.

Thank you that you are a dreamer.

Thank you that all of our dreams are nothing more than a mere dream within your dream for the world.

So, God, today, as we dream together, as we talk about what it means to live out this dream, give us the courage to stare our dream in the face, to walk through the narrows of fear, to hew out of the stones of fear a life.

So much greater than we can ever do on our own.

Because the truth is we don't have to do it on our own.

We do it with you.

So, God, today we ask for your confidence, not cockiness, not self-reliance.

We ask for holy confidence that can only come from you.

Thank you for it, God.

And God, I pray that tomorrow night the Dallas Cowboys will show up in a significant way.

It's the playoffs, God.

I'm gonna take a second here.

May Tom Brady be sent home to retirement, licking his wounds.

Strengthen Dak and Zeke and Tony, CeeDee Lamb, Micah Parsons, all of them.

God, just strengthen all of them in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

I have been harassed by Buck fans all morning.

Someone said to me, they said, uh, are you gonna pray for the cowboys since they're playing the Bucks?

And I said, I'm a grown man.

I do what I want.

The cold never bothered me anyway.

I got this.

Ain't no thing.

Let's go.

This week I was interviewed on Thursday for a podcast that is delivered to business leaders, to thinkers, to dreamers, and to communicators.

And in the interview, we were talking about how to dream and how do you live out your dream?

And so the interviewer was interviewing me because I have a company that started that's grown to some level of success, and our church has picked up some momentum and grown to some level of success.

And he said, How did you do this?

And I told him some of our story, and he said this question.

He said, Did you ever do you ever feel like giving up?

And I said, How long do you got?

He goes, What do you mean?

I said, I feel like giving up every Monday.

I feel like giving up every Tuesday.

Usually by Wednesday I feel a little better, but come Thursday I feel like giving up again, and then there's Friday.

Saturday's pretty good day, and then Sunday, I just I want to give up.

Like, like this is a part of the process of dreaming.

He said, Was there ever a moment when you thought you were gonna throw in the towel?

And immediately I was taken back to a story.

The very first night that we had a service that was going to become what is Access Church.

I drove a 2001 Nissan X Terra.

It was my dream car.

I love this car.

And I pulled a homemade trailer that we bought because we had no money.

We bought this homemade trailer that was so heavy that when I put it empty on the back of my car, it made my car ride at about a 45-degree angle, is what it felt like.

And I remember I was so nervous for the service, I was worried that anybody would even show up.

A few people showed up, and it was a pretty good night, but like we didn't have teams.

We we just kind of started.

There was not people to help me.

So I was tearing everything down and trying to get it out to this rickety old trailer.

And I go outside to the car, and I'm just gonna go get a change of a t-shirt, and I hit the key fob on my car, and from a distance, the inside of my car lights up, and it looked like it had rained or something because it looked like there was drops of water all over the windows.

But as I got closer, I discovered it wasn't drops of water.

During the service, someone had smashed in my window, rifled through my car.

If you've ever had that, if you've ever been robbed in any way, you know how invasive that feels?

And I'm already like vulnerable in this moment, I'm already feeling weird in this moment, like one of the most vulnerable places as a communicator.

If you speak to audiences like I do sometimes, the moments after a service, I walk off the stage, I feel like a puppy dog.

I'm like, someone pet me, someone loved me, please.

Anyone like, was that good?

It's how I feel in the moment.

And I'm feeling like this in this moment, and I walk out to my car and someone's broken in, and I feel so abused.

And I tell this man on the podcast the story.

I walked out into the parking lot where no one could see me, and I had one of those moments like David does in the book of Psalms, where I just yelled at yelled at God.

It's like, I didn't ask for this.

You can have this, I don't need this.

I've got some job offers, I can go somewhere else and do something else.

I don't, I don't need this.

Discouragement is a part of every dream.

Opposition is a part of every dream.

Dealing with criticism is a part of every dream.

And so today I want to talk to those of you who are trying to live your dream.

And it's not just your dream, it's God's dream.

You're trying to work out the details to live the dream that God has called you to.

Well, let me give you some encouragement.

Here's what you need to understand.

If you're holding on to a dream in your heart, it's actually the safest and most dangerous place for your dream.

Why is it safe?

It's because it's insulated and isolated from criticism.

It is.

The problem is so many people die with their dreams still firmly planted in their heart and they never step out and try it.

The moment you vocalize your dream, the moment you give any life to your dream, the moment it goes from being just something that you've been mulling around and you think about early in the morning when you wake up, to something you're sharing with your family and friends, immediately three audiences emerge, and you need to know this if you're gonna fulfill the dreams in your life.

The first group of people that emerge is what I call a dream encourager.

These are the people who love you.

They celebrate you, they're not intimidated by you, they want you to succeed, they're celebrating with you.

If you outdo them, if you earn more money than them, they're cheering you on.

Listen to me, the world is full of cynics, critics, and haters.

You and I need to be the kind of people who are dream encouragers, pour gasoline on dreams and water on fears.

Like we need to be the kind of people who encourage the dreams of other people.

And you need some dream encouragers in your life.

This is one of my goals.

Like one of my personal life mantras is I help my friends win.

Like I want to help my friends do the things that are in their heart.

You need some dream encouragers in your life.

The second group of people are the people who are just indifferent.

Doesn't make any real difference to them whatsoever if you accomplish the dreams in your life.

No big deal.

Doesn't change them if you start the business or if you fail, if you write the book or write the song, if you paint the painting that's been in your heart, if you do the thing that's in your heart, they're like, who cares?

And they move on with their life.

The third group, though, is the one that we need to pay attention to.

Because I believe there are some silent assassins out there.

And for one reason or another, they're not content to let you succeed.

They're not indifferent, they're haters, they're dream killers.

And I don't know why this is, but here's what I've discovered over the years.

Usually the loudest critics are the people who feel bad because they gave up on their own dream.

And in order to somehow make themselves feel better and to appease the pain in their own conscience, they'd rather assassinate your dream so they feel better about themselves.

You're gonna have some critics, you're gonna have some haters.

There was a brilliant theologian that described these people perfectly.

She said the hater's gonna hate.

Hate, hate, hate, hate.

It's Taylor Swift.

Like this is you're gonna have critics.

You're gonna have people that don't understand the power of your dream, and they'll criticize because it's easier to roll a grenade than it is to help.

It's easier to slash someone's tires than it is to celebrate them, honor them, and to bless them in the process.

So, what I want to do today is I want to talk to those of you who are in the middle of your dream and you don't know how to deal with criticism.

You don't know how to deal with the haters, you don't know how to deal with it, and so what you've done is you've allowed the words of others to paralyze you, stopping you from pursuing your dream.

I just want to say this one more time.

If you're going to accomplish your dream, there is a treacherous, narrow road you will have to walk through.

It's directly through the path of your fear, and honestly, it's directly through the criticism of people in your life that you love.

So, what do you do with that?

Well, if you were here last week, we we talked about the story of a guy named Nehemiah.

If you missed last week, allow me just a moment to recap what happened.

Nehemiah was a Jewish man who was held in captivity, but he's working under the Persian king, the ruler of the free world, King Artaxerxes I.

And if I had to be a servant or a slave, this is the job that I would want.

He was what's called a cupbearer to the king.

Now, what this means is his whole job is to taste the bite of any food the king gets, or to take a sip of any drink that the king is going to drink, to make sure that no one had tried to poison the king.

And so this is a dream job.

King orders himself a porter house, medium rare.

You are getting that first bite, everybody.

Baked potato, butter, sour cream, cheese, bacon bits, miss the chives.

You get the first bite of that, right?

Broccoli, the king can risk it, right?

But whatever.

Like, you try the first of everything the king tries.

And Nehemiah has this moment where his brothers and friends came to visit from Jerusalem.

And Nehemiah asked them the question hey, what's happening in the land of our forefathers, the land of our ancestors?

And they say, well, you know, that the temple had been torn down, we rebuilt it, but the walls of the city still lie in ruins.

And instantly, when he hears the story of the walls lying in ruins, his heart breaks and he gets a vision.

I said this last week.

Vision is a picture of what could be, but it's fueled by the conviction of what should be.

And instantly his heart breaks for this, because this city of Jerusalem is more than just a city to him, it is representative of the goodness and the greatness of his God.

And he says something has to be done about it.

And he prays this beautiful prayer, Nehemiah chapter 1, for like six or seven verses, he prays this prayer, and then I want you to get this.

Nehemiah 1 · chapter mention

He begins to work.

And he prays and he works.

And he prays and he works.

And a lot of Christians are really bad at dreaming because we pray, but we use prayer as a scapegoat.

We pray and we don't do anything.

Like if you want the supernatural to happen in your life, you do the natural and trust God to do the super.

And a lot of people are like, God help me, and they sit on their hands and they don't put any work into it.

Last week I said that those who accomplish their dreams are those who pray like it depends on God and work as if it depends on them.

And so he prays and he works and he prays and he works.

Four months go by.

Four months of sleepless nights, four months of him wondering if he'll ever get a moment with the king.

And there's a moment in chapter two where he's in the king's presence, and the king's like, What's wrong with you?

I've never seen you like this.

And he he goes on to tell him, Why shouldn't my heart be broken when the land of my ancestors lies in ruins?

The king says, Well, what do you want to do?

And because he worked, and because he had a plan, the king sent him on a mission with all the supplies and all the people and resources he needed to go rebuild the walls.

Now that's where I left off last week.

I want to pick it up with the story.

If you're a leader of any kind, chapters two and three are a leadership masterclass.

In chapters two and three, he leads these people on the journey from where they were in Susa to Jerusalem along the way.

I'm sure they ran into obstacles along the way.

People were probably like, What are we doing?

And he didn't tell them at all.

You need to understand there is a right time to share your vision.

And until people can see with their eyes what you see in your heart, it's probably not the right time to share your vision.

So he leads this group of people to Jerusalem.

He stands them on the outskirts of the city and he says, Look, do you see this?

It's a disgrace to our ancestors and it's a disgrace to our God.

We have to rebuild it.

And the story goes that the people see it, they get a heart for what his heart has broken for, and they begin to work on rebuilding the walls of the city.

This is a leadership 101 leadership masterclass.

And it says each person worked on what was right in front of them.

And then chapter four comes.

And in chapter four, here's what's happening.

We learn later in chapter four that they're about halfway down the wall.

The wall's about halfway up to where it's going to be.

Here's something you need to understand.

Outside of when you share your dream, usually people won't pay any attention to you till you have some success.

And the moment you have success, haters and critics come out of the woodworks.

It's crazy.

I've got too many stories of this in my own life.

The moment you have some success is the moment you need to stop, start dodging the arrows of the people you thought were close to you.

And all of a sudden, the people of the people of Israel, Nehemiah's people, they find themselves now surrounded on three sides by three different armies that couldn't care less about the people of Israel, they couldn't care less about the walls of Jerusalem, until the wall started growing up, and so they started seeing some success.

Here's where we pick up Nehemiah chapter 4, verse 1.

Nehemiah 4:1

When Sanbalat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, he became angry and was greatly incensed.

He ridiculed the Jews, and in the presence of his associates and the army of Samaria, he said, What are those feeble Jews doing?

We'll come back to that word in just a moment.

Then he starts asking some questions.

He says, Will they restore their wall?

Will they offer sacrifices?

Will they finish in a day?

Can they bring the stones back to life from those heaps of rubble, burned as they are?

This is one of the leaders of one of the armies.

Then Tobiah, the Ammonite, and one of the other armies, who was at his side, said, What are they what are they building?

Even a fox climbing up on it would break down their wall of stones.

Okay, do you hear the criticism?

Do you hear the opposition that they're facing in this moment?

You need to understand that when you're going to pursue your dream, you will face opposition.

Let me give you a high-level thought on opposition, okay?

If you're not facing opposition, you should ask the question am I doing anything worth opposing?

That's easier said than done.

But the truth is, we live in a world where we can't agree on anything.

We can't agree on what the color of something is, what the gender of something is, we can't agree on anything as a country right now.

And in a world where nobody can agree, why would you assume that everyone's going to agree with your dream?

Why would you assume that if God's giving you a dream, the world's going to stop what they're doing and celebrate you?

You need to understand that opposition means you're doing something of value and worth, because if you weren't, nobody would try to oppose it anyway.

Are we on the same page on this?

So they're rebuilding the wall.

He faces this opposition from these neighboring countries.

I want to point out a few things about opposition.

Write these down.

Opposition, number one, attacks your identity.

Your identity is the truest thing about you.

There's a lot of things that are true about you.

You are a certain height, you are a certain weight, your eyes are a certain color.

You were born in a certain place, you have certain parents.

There are certain things that are true about you, but what is the truest thing about you is your identity.

And the funny thing is, so many of us find our identity in what we do or what we accomplish.

We have find our identity in our circumstances.

Well, I'm I'm divorced or I'm married or I'm walking through this situation.

We find our identity in all different kinds of places.

What we've said in the past, in the book of Ephesians, Paul says that your identity should be found in one place in Christ, who you are as a son or daughter of the Most High God.

Like that's where your identity comes from.

But here's what happens we find our identity in the wrong stuff, and then opposition comes along and it attacks our identity.

Remember what is said by Sinbalat?

He says, What are those feeble Jews doing?

They're weak.

Their identity is they have no, like the city's in ruins, they're nothing.

Second thing is opposition attacks your motives.

And this is a hard one, right?

Because we tend to judge others on their actions and we judge ourselves on our intentions.

And so what tends to happen to us is when opposition comes, it feels like a personal attack on our motives.

It's like you see what I'm doing, but you don't know why I'm doing it.

Sam Balad asks this question Will they rebuild the wall for themselves?

Like this is this is a selfish move.

What is wrong with these people?

They they don't care about others, they don't even care about God, they just care about themselves.

Here's another one, and this is where it gets really personal.

Opposition attacks your relationship with God.

Funny story.

Uh, there's there's some friends in my life who that they're much older than me.

They have loved God and served God basically their whole life.

Some of the most wonderful, incredible Christian people that I know.

Amazing, wonderful.

They're people that pray, they're people that love, they're generous, they're some of the best people I know.

And they've walked through a difficult season here, and as a result of it, we've talked to them, and they've wondered if God is mad at them.

They've wondered if they've somehow done something wrong to anger God.

This is what opposition tends to do.

It tends to attack our relationship with God.

Remember one of the questions that's asked about these people of Israel?

Will they even offer sacrifices to God there?

No, no, no.

You you need to understand what is true in these moments.

Here's the final thought.

Opposition will attack the confidence you need to chase the dream in your heart.

Opposition will attack the confidence you need to chase the dream in your heart.

This is why I said earlier, you need to surround yourself with people who love you.

You need to surround yourself with people who have your back.

You need to surround yourself with people who are not intimidated by your success, but they're encouraged by your success.

They want you to win.

Said this earlier, let me say it again.

We should pour gasoline on people's dreams and water on their fears.

This is what dream encouragers do.

So let's be these kinds of people for other people.

Quick side note this is why access groups matter so much.

Listen, my goal for our church is I want everybody connected.

Whether that means you're serving or connected in a group or something, I want everyone in our church to be connected in some way.

Why?

Because we need some dream encouragers.

Like you can't accomplish the plan purpose of God on your life all in isolation.

You need some people who love you.

You need some people who support you, you need some people who know your secrets and who know your worst moments and who still say, I love you and I still see the best in you.

You need this.

So you're gonna face opposition.

It's just part of the story of pursuing your dreams.

Here's the question: what do you do with it?

What do I do with opposition?

What do I do?

Well, the first one is gonna sound so obvious.

You're gonna be like, duh, here it is, ready?

You turn to God for help.

Now this sounds dumb.

This sounds like, well, there it is.

Came to church for that.

Of course, you turn to God for help.

Can I tell you what most of us do?

Most of us, when we face opposition or challenges in our life, is we exhaust.

Ourselves trying to fix the problem.

And then if it doesn't work as a last resort, we turn to God.

Listen to me.

Prayer was always intended to be a first response, not a last resort.

And what we do is we turn to God as a last resort saying, God, I'm trying everything else.

I guess I'll give you a shot.

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

Turn to God for help first.

Nehemiah chapter 4, just a few verses down from what we read, here's his prayer.

Nehemiah 4 · chapter mention

Hear us, our God, for we are despised.

Turn their insults back on their heads, give them over as plunder in the land of captivity.

Do not cover up their guilt or blot out their sins from your sight, for they have thrown insults in the face of the builders.

This is a powerful, strong prayer.

But the first thing Nehemiah does is he turns to his God.

This is important.

Second thing you need to do is we need to prepare our hearts.

Now, this is interesting because what we're going to read actually feels different than this.

But here's what I need you to understand: preparing our heart means we're prepared, knowing that opposition will come.

You need to prepare your heart knowing that if you step out and pursue the life that God has for you, if this year is going to be a dream year for you, if you're going to risk, if you're going to sacrifice, if you're going to put your heart on the line, you need to prepare your heart for the attacks that are going to come.

A few verses down, Nehemiah chapter 4, verse 13.

Nehemiah 4:13

He says, Therefore I station some of the people behind the lowest points of the wall at the exposed places, posting them by families with their swords, spears, and bows.

What does this mean?

He's prepared in every possible way.

He knows they're going to face attack.

So what does he do?

He has them working with a tool in one hand and a weapon on their side to protect themselves.

What are you doing to protect and guard your heart?

Who are you surrounding yourself with that tells you the truth when someone else wants to feed you a lie?

And here's what happens: you're going to face criticism.

This is a part of the story.

And there is this to be this part of you that's going to want to turn back and just throw criticism at them.

Isn't it easy when someone slings mud at you?

You want to pick up and throw mud at them?

Can I say something to you?

The only ones that messel in rut uh wrestle in mud are pigs.

Like, don't get down to this level and wrestle with people in the mud.

Here's how you criticize.

Watch this, ready?

You criticize by creating.

Get this.

The greatest criticism you can bring to someone is to create your dream.

You want to shine a spotlight on someone else?

Let God avenge your problems.

You be a creator.

If you spend all of your time and all of your energy criticizing and trying to defend yourself, you will spend all of your time and energy doing that.

But if you want to accomplish something, you let the voices fade into the backdrop of obscurity and you criticize by your creating.

Create something that matters.

Do something, live out your dream.

That's how we do it.

The third thing we do, we turn to God for help, we prepare our hearts.

But number three, we have to remember God's faithfulness.

Let's keep reading.

Nehemiah chapter four.

After I looked things over, I stood up and said to the nobles, the officials, and the rest of the people, don't be afraid of them.

Here's what we do: we remember the Lord who is great and awesome.

Let's say it one more time.

We remember the Lord who is great and awesome and fight for your families, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your home.

We remember.

Now remembrance is interesting because if you study the history of wars in the world, remembrance is often a beautiful strategy.

In World War I, it was remember the Lusitania.

In World War II, it was remember Pearl Harbor.

In the Mexican-American War, it was remember the Alamo.

Why?

Because we have to remember why we're fighting.

We have to remember why this matters.

Remembrance is powerful.

And the funny thing about so many of us is it's the moment we get into trouble, the moment we face criticism, the moment the waters of our of our journey get a little choppy, we tend to forget the faithfulness of God.

God, where are you?

Where are you?

Can I tell you where God is?

He's going to be where he's always been, which is there for you.

The greatest way you can trust God for the future is to remember his faithfulness in your past.

Our faith is rested in the faithfulness of God.

How do you remember the faithfulness?

Write down every miracle he does.

Create a way for you to remember his faithfulness to you.

When you're walking through difficult times, instead of licking your wounds, how about you sit around and tell the stories of the other times in your life where God has shown up in powerful ways?

We remember God's faithfulness.

Number four, we refuse to quit.

Refuse to quit.

Now, this is the big one.

The story goes on, chapter four, verse 15.

When our enemies heard that we were aware of their plot and that God had frustrated it, so God's the one doing it.

We all returned to the wall, each to our own work.

From that day on, half of my men did the work while the other half were equipped with spear, shields, bows, and armor.

So here's here's literally what he did.

It's like he divided his workforce in half, and he said, Half of you are gonna work and half of you are gonna defend, but we're gonna refuse to quit.

No matter what opposition we face, no matter what challenges we face, we're gonna keep going.

The officers posted themselves behind all the people of Judah who were building the wall.

Those who carried materials did their work with one hand and held a weapon in the other.

It's a hammer and a sword.

It's awesome.

This is brave heart stuff.

And each of the builders wore his sword to the side as he worked.

They refused to stop.

They refused to quit.

They refused to do it.

Why?

Because they understood that what they were doing mattered.

Let me say this to you.

If your dream matters, let me step under the limb and say, if it's from God, it matters.

How do I know it matters?

Because if it's a dream from God, it will affect others.

It will bless others.

It will help humanity move forward if it's a God-sized dream.

If you're dreaming a God dream, you can't give up.

The the brilliant theologian Eugene Peterson called it this.

He called it long obedience in the same direction.

I had a pastor a few months ago say to me, Access is kind of like an overnight success.

And I said, What nights?

Like 15 years of nights?

It's not an overnight success.

What access is, is access is a story of long obedience in the same direction when we wanted to quit.

Long obedience in the same direction.

When we were ready to throw in the towel, long obedience in the same direction.

What if the story of your dream, when it gets a little difficult and a little challenging, is no, no, no, I'm not quitting.

God's called me to this, so I'm going to obey, but I'm not going to obey in what I call the microwave style of faith.

A lot of Christians want microwave faith.

We want to do something and immediately get the results that we want.

Really following Jesus is often more like crockpot faith.

Takes a little longer.

But can we all be honest?

Food tastes better in a crock pot than it does a microwave, right?

You'll appreciate your success more.

You'll celebrate more.

You'll remember the faithfulness of God more when you've been obedient the whole way.

I get emotional thinking about this.

The first service we had in this building was for like 20 people.

And we called our staff together and a handful of the ministry leaders.

And um we were just gonna, we wanted to walk everyone through and celebrate it.

For 13 years, we didn't have a building to call our own.

And Pastor Andy got up and sang a song.

And I'd been so busy working on this.

This was the first moment I kind of like it took my breath away.

And I went over here to the stairs and knelt, and I couldn't stop crying.

Why?

Because there are moments along your journey where the sweetness of long obedience tastes better than it ever could have possibly tasted if God had just dropped a building out of the sky on day one.

Are you with me?

Your dream is better and it's more beautiful when it's long obedience in the same direction.

We live in a world that likes to celebrate and highlight the overnight success.

What's better than an overnight success is a life of faithfulness to our great God.

Okay, how do you get to this?

This is one of my favorite parts of the Bible.

Skip chapter 5, Nehemiah, chapter 6.

Nehemiah 6 · chapter mention

The wall is done.

He's finished it, and I want to point out one of my favorite verses in the Bible.

When word came to Sanbalat, the hater, Tobiah the hater, Geshem the Arab, and the rest of our enemies, all the haters, that I had rebuilt the wall and not a gap was left in it.

Though up to that time I had not set the doors and the gates, Sanbala and Geshem sent me this message.

They sent him a message.

Come, let us meet together in one of the villages in the plain of Ono.

Oh no.

Oh no, no, no, no, no.

You know this, right?

But he understood something.

He's up working, he's on his ladder, doing his thing, finishing this great work that God's placed in his heart.

They say, Come, let us meet in the plains of Onoh.

And he understood.

This is written in first person, but they were scheming to harm me.

So what do you do when you have haters and cynics?

What do you do when there's opposition in your life?

Here's how he responds.

Why did I miss part?

No, I'm sorry, you're right.

So I sent this message to them with this reply.

I am carrying on a great project.

And I cannot go down.

Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?

I think sometimes we think saying yes to everything makes us a hero.

Saying no gives you authority.

Why should I stop what I'm doing to talk to you?

Forget the death threat.

What I'm doing is more important than any conversation we could ever have.

When you know what your dream is, it gives clarity to every part of your life.

You will say yes to only the things that matter, and you'll say no to everything else.

Why?

Because your dream matters.

So why would you waste your energy?

Why would you waste your heart?

Why would you waste your time?

Why would you exhaust yourself doing anything other than the dream that God's placed in your heart?

So let me end with this.

Here's the challenge for each and every one of you.

It's time to do something, it's time to dream bigger.

It's time to pray harder, and it's time to think longer.

And a lot of us, we we get big dreams, but they stay in our hearts and in our minds.

But if you're going to accomplish your dream, you're going to dream bigger, but you have to pray harder.

Pray as if it depends on God.

Trust Him with all the details.

But honestly, you need to remember most dreams start small.

It is okay to start small.

A small start is actually a gift from God, it's actually a laboratory of obscurity.

Small starts don't attract critics and haters.

You get to get better before you get bigger.

You get to work before anybody takes notice.

So think a little longer.

Long obedience in the same direction seems to me to be the thing that God has a way of blessing in significant ways.

So how incredible would it be if we're people who pursue our dreams?

That we change the way we think about dreaming.

We need to understand that it is one thing to have a dream from God.

And we started with that.

It takes courage to have a dream from God.

Then, secondly, you have to identify what is it, but once you identify what it is, once you start, you need to understand there is a treacherous path forward to your dreams.

And my hope is that we'll learn to turn to God, that will prepare our hearts for what he has for us, that will remember his faithfulness, and then we won't we won't quit.

Like, why should I come down when what I'm doing is so great?

Why would I stop what I'm doing when what I'm doing is the most important thing in this world that I was uniquely created to do?

So let me ask you one question.

What would happen if you didn't live your dreams?

What business would never start?

What social change would never happen?

What financial blessing through your local church wouldn't happen?

How would the world be different if you don't accomplish your dreams?

And I just want to challenge you to make the decision to be obedient.

Long obedience in the same direction.

And watch what God can do through a lifetime of your faithfulness.

Would you bow your head and close your eyes all across this room with me?

Let's pray, Lord, give us courage because it takes courage to pursue the dreams you have for us.

Give us wisdom.

Help us to understand how to properly navigate the treacherous waters of our dreams.

But may we be people who are not content to know that we have a dream.

But may we be the people who risk it all, trust you implicitly, and give everything we have to pursue the dreams you have for us.

We love you, God, and that's our heart.