Dream Year – Redream Your Life

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

For more information, visit Access.tv.

The future belongs to those who dream.

Every great song that's ever been sung, every incredible note that's ever been played, every piece of art that has ever been brushed, every sculpture that has ever taken shape, every empire that has ever risen, every king that's ever led from prominence, every great company, every great business, every great thing that you've experienced in the history of this world started with a dream.

And you need to understand that God is a dreamer.

If you were to read the Bible at a very small micro level, you might kind of get lost in some of the details, but if you take a higher view of scripture, it's hard to read the Bible and miss the facts that God is a dreamer.

Genesis chapter one, God dreams the world, and from his voice he creates the world.

If you keep reading into it by the Ephesians chapter one, we see that before God laid the foundations of the earth, he had a dream, which was you.

He had you in mind.

So if we are created in the image of God, like the book of Genesis says, that means that hardwired into the tapestry of who we are is the capacity, the ability to dream.

God wants you to dream.

Why does this matter?

Because how we dream shapes how we pray.

And how we pray determines who we become.

It's like the script of our prayer life becomes the transcript of our lives.

And if this is the way it happens, all of that starts with a dream.

It's funny because so many adults walk through this life kind of dreamless, but but every child seems to have a dream.

I'll never forget being a child, believing that someday I would be good enough, tall enough, athletic enough to be in the NBA.

And there are all of us that have dreams that just seem kind of impossible.

But do you ever notice with kids that we never step on their dreams?

We don't.

When my son Gavin was around three, I said to him, Buddy, what do you want to be when you grow up?

And he said, I want to be a dinosaur astronaut.

And I said, I there's never been one of those.

That's amazing.

You don't step on it.

But then what happens when you become an adult?

Something happens.

Someone says something, you settle for something, and life has this way of stealing your dream, doesn't it?

Doesn't it seem like this?

If you were to examine your life right now, let me ask you this question: are you living your dream?

Are you living your dream life?

Or did somewhere along the way, did you trade your dream for a paycheck?

Did you trade your dream for a person?

Did you trade your dream for a lie?

Did you trade your dream for words that were spoken over you?

Have you settled for a life less than the dreamer who dreamed up the world imagined for you?

If you have, welcome to Access Church, everybody.

Like we're gonna dream together.

Now, why is it that many of us never pursue our dreams?

Why is it that many of us live a life that feels so far less than the life we were created to live?

Well, I would like to submit to you, I think many of us live in this tension between two unique fears.

The first fear is this.

Some of us live with the fear of failure.

Others of us live with a different tension on the other extreme, which is a fear of insignificance.

And all of us live in between these two fears, and I want to challenge us today as we dream with God to dream a little differently.

The first one is the fear of failure.

The fear of failure asks a question.

It's what will happen if I try?

Like, what will happen if I try?

And what we tend to do is we tend to imagine the worst case scenario.

It will cost me, it'll cost me my reputation, I'll be bankrupt, I'll be devastated, I'll never be able to recover from this at all.

Some years ago, my wife and I were at a little kid's birthday party.

I mean, the kid was turning like two years old, and as a birthday present, someone gave this little two-year-old one of those little like car things that you can sit on and ride, but it also has the handles on the back of the car so a kid can get it and they can walk with it, right?

You've you've seen these before.

And so the grandfather of this child who was turning one or two or however old it was, that he decided to put it together, he took it out of the box, and while other things were happening, he put it together and he got it like 80% done.

All he hadn't done to this point was put the handlebars on the back.

And before he could put the handlebars on the back, the little kid was so excited that he ran over, sat on it, and started scooting around the room.

And this grandfather who was trying to complete the construction project had a full-blown panic attack.

No, no, no, no.

No, no, no, no, no, no, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, it's not safe, it's not safe.

And I looked at him and I said, bro, what is the worst case scenario here?

The kid is this high off of the ground.

And this is what we do when it comes to failure.

We're concerned about the worst possible outcome, the worst possible case scenario.

Mark Twain famously said this.

He said, I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.

When you worry about the worst case scenario, you pay for it twice.

And we worry about the worst case scenario.

Many times it never happens.

Many times we're so worried about what could happen that we never step out in faith and try.

Can I tell you what will happen if you fail?

Two things.

Number one, you will have learned a very valuable lesson.

And number two, what it will cost you is usually far less than what you're worried about.

Like, like you may have to downsize a house.

You may make the decision to go from a two-car house to a one-car house.

But at the end of the day, wouldn't you rather risk and try than to like settle for luxury or comfort or whatever you have?

Many of us live with this fear of failure, and so fear of failure causes you to never step out, it causes you to never risk.

And really what it says is it says that God, I don't, I don't actually know that I trust you.

Okay.

Fear of insignificance is different though.

If fear of failure says, what happens if I try?

Fear of insignificance asks the question, what will happen if I what happened if I don't?

What happens if I don't try?

What song never gets written?

What book never gets written?

What project never happens?

What never happens to bless the people who are less fortunate than me?

What never happens to rectify the homeless situation in our community?

What doesn't happen?

I don't try.

And I think fear of insignificance to the extreme can be a problem, but fear of insignificance is actually something that reveals the heart of God in your life.

So, what do you mean?

I believe that every person in this world was born with a purpose.

I quoted it earlier, Ephesians 1.4.

Before God laid the foundations of the earth, he had you in mind.

God had a dream for you.

Can I tell you what God's dream for you is?

It's about others.

It's about making a difference with your life.

And sure, if you start a business that does really well, praise God.

But how is it for others?

It's so that the blessing in your life doesn't just enrich your standard of living, but it increases your standard of giving.

Like God has a plan for you, and God's plan for you is never always just about you.

It's always about others.

It's about others.

A book was written some years ago called Die Empty.

It was a fascinating book.

And the author was telling a story about how he was at a conference in South Africa, and the speaker asked a question, and the question confounded him.

The question was this: what is the most expensive property in the world?

If you were to think about this for a moment with me, what would you think it is?

Hawaii?

Hawaii has such a limited amount of land that the price of land is so astronomically high, it's not not Hawaii.

You might think downtown Manhattan, super expensive, but it's not there.

You might think last year, Lakeland, Florida, because it got really stupid, didn't it?

But it's not that.

The most expensive property in the world is every cemetery you drive past.

Because buried six feet below the earth are the dreams of countless people.

Books that were never written, songs that were never sung, steps of faith that were never taken, businesses that were never started, dreams that were left unfulfilled.

And I just don't want you to be that person.

So last week we kicked off the series and I said, if we're gonna be the kind of people who accomplish our dreams, if we're gonna be the kind of church that becomes a dream factory where people come from all over the world to be a part of this place because we want to accomplish our dreams, it's gonna take something.

And what I said it's gonna take is it's going to take courage.

Some 365 times in the Bible, it's like once for every single day of the year, there is the admonition from God to fear not, do not fear, have courage.

Why?

Because every single day, if you're gonna live a life of significance, you are going to have the constant companion of fear with you.

How do you accomplish your dreams?

You do it afraid.

You do it, you take a step, even when you don't understand, you just take a step and trust that God is with me.

Let me be really clear in the series.

What I don't want to talk about for the next few weeks is how do you start a good business and I love that stuff.

I don't want to talk to you about how to be more entrepreneurial or how to get Mark Cuban to invest in you on Shark Tank, though I love all of that stuff.

The question I want to ask when it comes to dream year is what is God's dream for you?

What is God's dream for you?

What is the dream that he had in mind when he created the world for you?

And why do I care about that?

Because I want you to go to bed every single night and lay your head down on your pillow at night.

And I want you to take a deep breath and say, that's how you live a life.

That's how your life matters.

That's how you do something with your life on purpose and for a purpose.

Quick side note, this is why we do something called next steps class at our church.

It happens again in February, the first two Sundays in February.

It's really about you joining the church and then finding something to do with your life that has an eternal impact, an eternal difference attached to it.

Today, as I kick this series off, I want to wrestle with that question: what is God's dream for your life?

And really the follow-up question is how do you know?

How do you know it's just not you being selfish?

How do you know that you're in the will and the plan of God?

To do this, I want to go to an ancient story in the Bible.

It's found in kind of an obscure spot in the Old Testament.

It's the story of a man named Nehemiah.

Now, to understand the story of Nehemiah, let me give you a little bit of backstory.

Some thousand years or so before Jesus was born, King Solomon wanted to build a temple for God that would scream of his magnificence.

This temple that he built is considered one of the wonders of the ancient world.

It was carved with so much marble, and technological wonders and advancements were put into the space.

It was seen to be unbelievable, unimaginable for its time period.

And he builds this and it lasts for several hundred years.

Around 586 or 587 BC, the Babylonians take over the known world.

The Babylonian Empire reigns, and to flex on everyone, they go into different countries and they completely pillage and destroy it.

And the Babylonians came to Jerusalem and they destroyed the temple and they destroyed the city with fire.

Well, the people of Israel were so heartbroken by this because this temple it represented the greatness of their God.

Quick fun side note.

I talked about how great Solomon built this temple.

Why did he do it?

Because it showed off the splendor of God.

Every once in a while, people will say, Why do we need all the lights on Sunday?

Why do we need all this?

We don't need all this, but all of this done with excellent screams of the beauty and the splendor of our God.

You understand this, right?

We bring God our best.

So the Babylonians tear down the temple.

The people of Israel, they're so heartbroken because this represents their God.

They do their best to reconstruct it as best as they possibly can, and then some 60 or 70 years go by.

There's a new empire that has taken over.

It's the Persian Empire, led by a king named King Artaxerxes.

And we pick up this interesting story in King Artaxerxes the first reign.

It says this, Nehemiah chapter 1, this is written in 1 person, verse 2.

Nehemiah 1 · chapter mention

He says, Hanai, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that had survived the exile.

Like, what's going on with the people who are still there in Jerusalem?

What's going on?

And all and I also asked them about Jerusalem, and they said to me, Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble.

I want you to see this word, disgrace.

Like they're lacking grace for what they're walking through.

The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.

Why does this matter?

Because the walls of the city protected the city from anyone else coming in and ravaging it and destroying the temple again.

So he hears what's happening in what is his father's homeland, like his ancient forefather's homeland, and it breaks his heart.

He says, When I heard these things, I sat down and I wept.

For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven.

And instantly, when this happened, all of a sudden, what was happening, just several hundred miles away from him, now got incredibly personal to him.

I don't know if you've ever had this experience.

If you can remember back to being in elementary school, you read stories in the history books of things that have happened in the history of the world, but if you were there and saw it, you feel differently about it.

It's like for everybody here that's old enough to remember when September 11th happened, you probably remember where you were.

But children, like my children, are reading about it in history books.

They don't feel the same emotional connection to it.

I'll never forget being in sixth grade in my history class.

We talked about the atrocity of what happened in the Holocaust.

And it is an atrocity.

It is an atrocity.

And we read about it, but like as a sixth grader, you're reading a story and it's not all that personal.

Well, come to find out as we were learning this, my sixth grade teacher was this wonderful lady named Mrs.

London.

Mrs.

London was a messianic Jew.

What that means is she was Jewish by birth, but Christian follower of Jesus by choice.

And so the story was personal to her, but it was even more personal because her mother survived the Holocaust as a child.

And so one day, to help it all make more sense, she brought her mom in.

And her mom pulls up her sleeve and shows us a tattoo with a number on her wrist.

And all of a sudden, for a whole room full of sixth graders, the Holocaust goes from being a story in a book to something personal to us.

I was in Israel several years ago on what's called the National Day of Remembrance.

It was one of the most holy, solemn experiences of my life.

It just so happened with my Torah that the day of my Tora, we went to the National Museum of Remembrance where we walked through and we experienced the atrocities of what happened.

People crying, holding on to memories from their family who were murdered maliciously in the Holocaust.

It moved from the pages of a history book to feeling like something personal.

For Nehemiah, this wall, it was such a big deal.

Why?

Because it represented his great God.

This city represents the God of his forefathers and his personal God.

It's a big deal that the walls of the city were in ruins.

And I believe when he hears this story, it breaks his heart.

And when it breaks his heart, it gives him a vision.

I want to give you this definition.

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

And a lot of people think of dreams as just what could be, what's something I could do that would make me a lot of money.

You don't need a dream for your life.

You really need a vision for your life.

A vision is from God, it's a picture of what could be.

Aristotle said that our souls never think without a picture.

It's a picture of what could be, but it's fueled by a conviction.

And the conviction is what should be.

Let me ask you a question: what do you see that no one else sees?

What breaks your heart in a way that doesn't seem to affect anyone else?

Like it's funny because three or four friends can be in the same car together and they can see a need and respond entirely differently to it.

You can be in a car and you can be pulled up next to a person who's standing on the road asking for a few dollars.

And one person sees them and makes some terrible joke, or they'll just blow it on drugs or alcohol or something like that.

Another person sees the exact same person and sees the exact same issue and their heart is broken, they pull their wallet out and they give five or ten dollars to help the person.

Another person sees the person and it breaks their heart and they don't give money and they don't make a joke.

They think to themselves, what can I do not just for this person, but for every person who finds themselves in this situation?

You need to understand that God, the dreamer, is also God the vision giver, and he wants to give you a vision.

It's a picture of what could be, fueled by the conviction of what should be.

And when Nehemiah hears the story that the gates of his city lie in ruins, it breaks his heart, and I can imagine that this holy frustration sets in on him.

I need you to understand something.

Frustration is actually a gift from God.

This is one of those things, because we think of frustration as like, oh come on.

Come on, like I'm why am I so frustrated by this?

Your frustration is actually an indicator of what matters to you.

In fact, every great business, every great company that's ever been started started as the answer to a problem that existed before the company existed.

Every great person who's ever accomplished something that's made a societal impact started by meeting a need that probably for them started as a point of frustration.

It frustrates me that homelessness exists.

It frustrates me that poverty exists.

It frustrates me that inequality exists.

And when it frustrates you, it should reveal the thing that is the directive of your life.

It's a picture from God.

So Nehemiah, he's frustrated.

His heart is broken by the fact that the walls of his city lie in ruins, and this is a detriment.

It's a terrible picture of the greatness of his God.

So I want you to see this.

He does two unique things.

After he gets this vision from God, he begins to pray and he begins to work.

He prays and he works.

And a lot of Christians are really good at this part.

God help me.

Really, what we're saying is, come on, God, do it.

You do it.

I'll take the credit for it, but you just do it.

No, no, no.

It's pray and work.

These things work in conjunction with each other.

He prays and he works.

And I want you to see something.

As he prays and as he works, something fascinating happens.

If you were to keep reading the story of my story from Nehemiah chapter 1, for like five or six verses, there is an prayer that he prays.

Nehemiah 1 · chapter mention

And at the end of his prayer, there's this interesting little line that kind of just hangs there.

I want you to see.

This is literally the end of his prayer.

Nehemiah chapter 1, verse 11.

Nehemiah 1:11

Lord, let the ear of your the ear, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of this, your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your name.

Give your servant success today by granting him favor in the presence of this man.

He prays for favor.

And then I want you to notice something.

This has always been weird to me.

This is all a part of verse 11.

This is the end of his prayer.

The quote closes out the prayer, and then there's this like dangling little sentence.

It just hangs there.

Seven words.

Two, four.

No, six words.

Six words just hangs there.

I was cupbearer to the king.

I want you to pause here for just a moment.

That's never made sense to me.

Why is it not verse 12?

You ever notice that we when we get a message from someone, a text message, an email, we tend to put a tone on it.

You ever notice this?

You ever had this experience where someone texts you something and you read it and you're like, why are they mad at me?

And what did I do?

And so you talk to them later and they're like, I wasn't mad, I was laughing when I sent that.

Fun side note for you.

I've had a lot of side notes today.

Fun side note.

When you read scripture, imagine God smiling as he writes it to you.

Little picture that changes how you interpret scripture.

He says this, he says, I was cupbearer to the king.

Why does tone matter?

Because you could read this two ways.

He could say, God, the gates of the city of Jerusalem lie in ruins.

But who am I?

But a lowly cupbearer to the king.

A cupbearer was a slave.

But he worked for the king as a personal protector.

Whatever the king would eat, whatever the king would drink, it was the cupbearer's responsibility to take a bite first, to take a drink first.

So when the king got that beautiful fillet cooked medium rare with a baked potato, butter, sour cream, cheese, and bacon, holler at me when he got that.

Who gets the first bite?

The cupbearer, to make sure that no one poisoned the king.

He's just a servant.

Honestly, just a slave.

The tone could have been, I'm just nobody but a cupbearer to the king.

But listen to this tone.

What if he understood something?

What if he understood that God had uniquely placed him as a person of none of no nobility, as a person of no prominence, as literally nothing more than a paid servant for the king?

This could have been his tone.

God, it breaks my heart that the walls of the city are in ruins.

And you placed me in this position on purpose.

I'm a cupbearer to the king.

I I get to be with the king three, four, five times every single day.

He realizes something that you need to realize too, that you are not where you are on accident.

It's not an accident that you have the job you have or live in the neighborhood you live in.

It's not an accident that you're placed where you are relationally.

It's not an accident that you work out in the same gym as other people.

It's all on purpose and for a purpose.

And when you start seeing that God, the master artisan who dreamed up the world, also dreamed your life up, you need to understand that he's working pieces together in your favor in ways you can't even get your mind around.

You are placed where you are on purpose.

For a purpose.

I had not been sad in his presence before, so the king asked me, Why does your face look so sad when you are not ill?

This can be nothing but sadness of heart.

I want you to notice the honesty.

I was very much afraid.

Pause here for a moment and let me say this to you.

Nehemiah chapter 1, verse 1 starts with a verse similar to how chapter 2 starts.

Nehemiah 1:1

It says in the year of and in the month of.

This month, they don't use the same Gregorian calendar that we do, but we know from history that four months have passed by.

From chapter 1, when he gets the news about the walls of the city, to chapter 2, when he's in the presence of the king and he's sad.

Four months.

For four months he's carried a vision.

For four months he has waited and prayed for an opportunity.

For four months he's prayed and he's worked on this dream, waiting for God to open the door of opportunity so he could step in and seize his divine moment.

For four months, I think a lot of us pray, and if we don't see like the skies part and the heavens open tomorrow, we're like giving up on the dream.

For four months, I just imagined he had sleepless nights.

For four months, I think he stayed up way past his bedtime working on this.

For four months, he woke up early and prayed and asked God to provide an opportunity.

And he's in the presence of the king and he's sad before the king.

And he says, now that he has this moment, he says, I was very much afraid, but he did it.

Are you getting this?

Like, the future belongs to those who dream and then who have the courage to step into these moments.

He says, I was afraid, but I still did it.

But I said to the king, May the king live forever.

Why should my face not look sad when the city where my ancestors are buried lies in ruins and its gates have been destroyed by fire?

The king said to me, What is it that you want?

Then I prayed to the God of heaven and I and I answered the king.

If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in his sight, let him send me to the city in Judah where my ancestors are buried, so that I can rebuild it.

Then the king, with the queen sitting beside him, asked me, How long will your journey take?

And when will you get back?

If it pleased the king, it pleased the king to send me.

So I set a time.

The story goes on.

In fact, over this next month, I'll tell you more of this story.

But because Nehemiah was prepared in this moment, because it wasn't enough to pray and sit on his hands and hope that God did all of the heavy lifting.

Because he prayed for favor and because he prayed for an opportunity, and because he prepared as if God, the promise keeper, is going to be one who keeps his word.

Like, because he did all of these things, God steps in and gives him a moment of opportunity.

I'll tell you the end of the story in just a nutshell.

Literally, Nehemiah leads a team of people and they go accomplish the dream, the vision in his heart.

Over the next few weeks, I'll tell you more of the story because the story is beautiful.

Every wonderful story that's ever been written has a protagonist and antagonist.

Every story has highlights and it has difficult moments, it has villains and heroes, and the story has all of those moments.

He doesn't do it easy, he works through opposition, and yet God uses him to rebuild the walls of the city.

Here's my point today.

Before we get to the work of your dream, you have to know what is your dream.

Before we get to doing your dream, you have to begin to ask God, God, what is your dream for me?

Let me ask you a question.

When was the last time you prayed that?

When was the last time you asked God, God, what is your dream for my life?

What did you uniquely wire me to do and how can I do it?

Here's my goal for you.

This is what we see in the story of Nehemiah.

I want us to be people who dream, big dreams.

Because how we dream shapes how we pray.

And it's how we pray that determines what we do.

So this week I have one piece of homework for you.

I want you to pray different kinds of prayer.

Don't even ask God to give you his dream.

That's like step two.

Step one is I want God to break your heart.

Here's your prayer.

God, break my heart for what breaks yours.

Just this week, say, God, open my eyes to see the things that break your heart.

God, break my heart for what breaks yours.

And as we kick off these 21 days of prayer, how incredible would it be if you just prayed this prayer every single day?

God, break my heart for what breaks yours.

God help me to see what you care about.

Can I tell you what will happen when you dream with God?

When you ask God this question, God, what breaks your heart?

He's gonna show up.

I don't know if you have any moments in your life that you profoundly remember.

Potentially, like one of the greatest spiritual moments I had in all of college, undergraduate, forever ago, 20 something years later, I still remember.

The professor said to me, If you'll find what breaks the heart of God, and if you'll give your life to meeting that need, God will pour out his blessing in ways you can't even begin to understand.

The story of access is the answer to that prayer.

God, what what breaks your heart in this city?

Lots of great churches, but so many people who need a relationship with Jesus.

Okay, God, you have our attention.

We'll do it.

And look around.

Over a hundred people baptized last year, hundreds of people who put their faith in Jesus, and the story's just getting started.

What is yours?

One more time.

God, break my heart for what breaks yours.

Let's come back next week.

Let's continue to dream.

Like as you determine what breaks the heart of God, then we get to put a plan together.

Let's start by asking God, what breaks your heart?

All across this room, would you bow your head and close your eyes?

Come on, let's pray, Lord.

We love you.

We said it earlier today.

We don't just want you to be savior, we want you to be king.

Lord and King means you call the shots.

It means we submit to you, we do what you want us to do.

So, God, today I pray that you will give us the courage to ask you that bold prayer to break our heart for what breaks yours.

We love you, God.

We want to be concerned about what you're concerned about.

We want to orient our lives around what you care about.

And God, I thank you that as a result, your kingdom expands.

More people come to know you and love you.

Heaven gets a lot more crowded.

And this place looks a lot more like heaven.

Thank you for it, God.

With your head still bowed and your eyes still closed, maybe you came today and you don't know if you're right with God.

Here we are, the first Sunday in person, back in church.

It's a new year.

And maybe you've never made a decision to let Jesus be the actual Lord of your life.

Maybe you prayed a prayer as a kid, but today's the day.

Like today is the day you draw a line in the sand and you say, Jason, from this day forward, January 8th, 2023, Jesus is my savior and he's my king.

If you want to make that decision to let him be the Lord of your life, would you just raise your hand?

No one's looking because this moment is for you and God.

Thank you.

Yep, thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, wow, thank you.

Here's your moment.

With this is you, would you pray this with me today?

Would you say, Jesus, today I make this decision?

I invite you to be my savior and my king.

Would you step into my life, forgive me of my sin, save me of my sin?

But I make this decision that from this day forward I'll follow you.

You're my Lord, you're my King.

Whatever you ask of me, I'll do.

So, Jesus, I believe that you came into this world, died on the cross for me, you rose again for me because of your great sacrifice.

Now my life can be made new.

So, Jesus, would you take my life?

I give it to you.

I love you and I give you my heart, and it's in your name I pray.

Amen.

Church, look at them.

We just had people all over the room pray to make that decision.

Come on, let's give God some praise in this place.