11.13.9 "Your Dream must Die to Live"

"Your Dream must Die to Live"

Ezekiel 27:1-28:26
Hebrews 11:17-31
Psalm 111:1-10
Proverbs 27:15,16

"A constant dripping on a rainy day and a cranky woman are much alike!" Prov. 27:15 - Not the devotional thought for today, but it's in the reading... I just threw it in to boost the ratings! :)

Hebrews 11:17-19 says, "While God was testing him, Abraham still trusted in God and his promises, and so he offered up his son Isaac, and was ready to slay him on the altar of sacrifice; yes, to slay even Isaac, through whom God had promised to give Abraham a whole nation of descendants!"

What strikes me as a theme throughout God's Word is how when there is a great dream given by God, the individual must lay it down to see it come to life. Abraham is one of the most specific examples. He was promised to be the father of nations. It wasn't happening. Things seemed hopeless. Then finally, the son of promise came. Then God told him to sacrifice him.

Why do you think that is? Is it because God is mean? Is it some sort of morbid manipulation? Or do you think it's because of what it does inside the heart of the dreamer? God didn't need Isaac dead. We know that now, but I'm sure Abraham was wondering what God was thinking. What Abraham didn't realize was the need for Isaac to be dead in him.

So often we have a Big Dream. (not to be confused with the acronym DREAM which represents the Balanced Christian Life) We have this picture of something God has placed in our heart. It can be as huge as being president of the company, or as seemingly unpretentious as a fulfilling marriage. What happens when this dream is birthed in our heart is that we become attached to it. It soon becomes "about me". "This is what I want". "This is MY dream."

If we feed that too much we start to figure that we need to take our own steps to make it happen. Not that it's bad that we are motivated to accomplish great things, but if things aren't happening in our time-frame, we start to take short-cuts. Like Abraham & Sarah, we have an Ishmael. Like Moses, we murder an Egyptian. All done outside of God's plan and God's timing. This dream that has been birthed by God can actually become a tumor that kills us if we are not careful. So what has to happen?

We have to lay it down. We have to give the dream back to the Dream Giver. We have to say, "It's not mine. It's Yours." This requires trust in a God who loves us. Our flesh (being fed lies from the enemy) begins to think that God just wants to punish us. We think he just wants to take our dreams for the purpose of making life miserable. (Remember the warped perception of the third servant in Matt. 24. He says, "I knew you were a harsh master, taking what is not yours.")

The truth is that he needs to test us. He needs to prove we can be trusted with the Big Dream. If we become too attached to the Dream, it becomes our god. And God loves us too much to allow that to happen. So he asks us to lay it down.

This is not an isolated biblical example. It happens again and again and again. So often the path to the fulfillment of the dream is the OPPOSITE direction our flesh thinks we should go.

What's your dream? Is it the fulfilling marriage that you can't see happening unless you get out of it? Is it the promotion at work you seek so you want to backstab the competition? Have you been running from job to job trying to find fulfillment of your goals? What you need to do is lay it down. Offer it back to God. I think many times we believe that we've done that. We lay it on the altar, but really we pick it up again and take it with us. To really lay it down, we must grieve it's loss. THEN there's something inside us that realizes it was never ours to begin with. Then we realize who God really is. Our faith is increased, and we receive the power to step out as never before. And suddenly, and even unexpectedly, the dream has become a reality.

Do you want to know the ultimate example?

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever should believe on him should not perish, but have eternal life." John 3:16

The Dream must die to live.


Through the Power of the Spirit,
Live the DREAM!

P Greg


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