I’d like to rewind a little bit and take you back to our last few days in Romania. We traveled to Brasov for the Awakening, a worship conference that brought together all four active race squads, as well as alumni and staff. 220 of us gathered for worship, prayer, seminars, fellowship, and even an incredible dance-off. We heard from Andrew Shearman, who has a vision of raising up 100,000 leaders and started G42 Academy in Spain to do so. He challenged us to be generation he’s been waiting for – a generation that claims what God has for us. A generation that stops at nothing in the pursuit in ushering God’s kindgom to the nations. It was powerful.
One of the things that had the biggest impacts on me during the Awakening was a set of talks by Seth Barnes, founder of Adventures in Missions (the organization that birthed the World Race). The subject was “Kingdom Dreams”. Below is a post from his blog on the subject.
I’ve been teaching on the subject “Finding your kingdom dreams” here at the Awakening in Brasov, Romania. The response from the racers has at times been electric. They’re getting awakened to all kinds of needs and possibilities as they travel the world and they’ve begun to dream about how to embrace them.
Remember the Supertramp song “Dreamer”? The lyric taunts, “Dreamer – you’re nothing but a dreamer.” And we resonate, because who hasn’t felt taunted for their dreams?
Most of us are at least ambivalent about our dreams. I’m not talking about the dreams we have while sleeping. It’s our waking dreams and what they might require of us that we’re a bit scared of.
We come by dreaming naturally. As children we play at being adults. We create alternative worlds in our daydreams. We dream about getting rich, solving problems, getting married. In this world we’re lonely, poor and we feel ugly. In our dream we’re a prince or princess. We’re inventing a cure for cancer, running a successful business, having a family. We see someone across the room and find him or her “dreamy.”
But if someone dreams too much, they have their head in the clouds. They’re impractical.
The reality is, dreaming is an important part of living. God is a “dreamer.” He shares his dreams with us and lets us call them our dreams. Jesus asks us to pray “your kingdom come.” It has not fully arrived – that’s God’s dream. The world is not spiraling down into decay – it’s getting brighter. And we Christians engage our faith when we dream and pray our dreams into being. Dreams are hope-filled visions of the future. With a dream, we have hope and can bring hope to others.
I gave the racers the following points about kingdom dreams:
1. We need a dream
- We are hard-wired for purpose
- We practice dreaming – daydreaming
- AIM was a dream. The World Race was a dream. Swaziland was a dream.
Sometimes we’ll go for months or even years without having a dream. It’s not a good way to live. We need dreams – they keep us going. God gives us his dreams for us to birth and then steward.
We need to re-imagine our lives from time to time. That’s the point of the World Race. It introduces you to God’s dream for the world and helps you re-invent yourself according to it.
2. Our dream is shaped by four things
- World’s needs
- Our passion – heart
- Our plan – head
- Our skills – hands
Most of us have dreams, but they’re much too small. They center on our needs. We want a certain kind of car or house or experience or relationship. We need to look beyond our lives for God’s dreams.
3. We need to serve someone else’s dream first
There are four reasons why:
- Mentoring – we get it when we serve others.
- Humility – if we get our dreams too fast, we become proud.
- Kingdom connectedness – we borrow the relationships of our mentors.
- Start with a two-year internship somewhere and you’ll have the raw materials for your own dreams.
My dream: To fill the nations with God’s glory. For the twenty years that AIM has been in existence, I’ve been dreaming about raising up a generation of radical disciples. I’m starting to see glimpses that the dream could one day become a reality.
A group of about 20-30 of us sat and listened to Seth speak…and as we discussed our dreams, I felt validated. Some people wanted to start orphanages in third-world countries. Some wanted to start rehab centers for addicts to give them tools to prosper in life. Some (like me) didn’t have details nailed down, but just wanted to make a difference. I have no clue what I will do when I return home in 9 months. But I do feel expectations for what I’m “supposed” to do…
You got that out of your system, so now you can get your head out of the clouds and join the real world.
I’m finally seeing the real world for the first time in my life. I’m seeing a world that doesn’t revolve around always being a step ahead of other people. A world that doesn’t revolve around having the nicest house or largest bank account. A world that values genuinely loving our neighbors and putting others before ourselves. My dream is that we wouldn’t see this existence as idealism. My dream is that this would become our idea of the real world, that we would make that happen. I see the good in people, and I’ve been told that makes me naive. I have all these visions of how the world should be, and that makes me irrational. I don’t have the desire to come back to America and settle down in to a 9-5 job, and that makes me irresponsible. I’ve felt so alone – misunderstood. Not only did I see that everyone else on the World Race was in the same boat, but I was told to keep dreaming. Keep dreaming of a different world. Keep dreaming of what life could look life if we really lived like Jesus did. Keep dreaming of ways to continue to bring His kingdom to earth. And that’s what I’m going to do.
