Dreaming BIG

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I was talking with a good friend the other day about
different theological ‘this and that’.  I
came from a background in college where I and a select group of men decided to
gather around a table several times a week and throw different topics on
it.  We didn’t do it to serve any other
purpose than to stimulate our thinking and to entertain ourselves.  We never intentionally planned on anything
coming out of it other than shared views and a mind provoked to thoughts of its
own.

My theological think-brain has been resurrected.

I’m not sure what it is but I enjoy mulling things over
inside my head.  Ask me at any random
moment what I’m thinking and more than likely it’ll be something you probably
don’t want to be thinking about.  But him
and I were talking about his gifts, his passions, and his heart.  This man is incredibly intelligent, buzzing
with the Spirit, and drawn towards academia. 
And I think it’s great.

I think if everyone’s willing to be honest with themselves
they would say that somewhere in their walk through life they’ve had some sort
of dream of changing the world.  And if
we were even more truthful we could easily say that our dream of changing the
world is, in fact, a potential reality – if only we pursue it.

I’ve always been a firm believer in this.  I think that our most far-fetched and wildest
dreams, no matter how practical or impossible they seem, can actually be a
reality and a desire that God has placed in us. 
Andrew Shearman is notorious for saying, “I’m Andrew James Shearman and
I’m a keeper of God’s dream!”  We are
keepers of God’s dream.  I think that God
plants a piece of that dream within each of us and it’s our jobs to live it
out.

I have a dream of being a writer and a musician who will
impact the world with Kingdom in an eternal way.  Is it a far-fetched dream?  NO! 
I’ve left a lot of good opportunities in pursuit of this dream because I
believe it is Truth that God planted inside of me.  Chasing after what seems like only an idea
and an impractical reality has taken a lot of faith, but I see that in my
pursuit it’s beginning to take shape. 
And it wouldn’t have happened had I not taken a leap and gone for it.

Seth Barnes said in a few weeks ago, “We need to dream
more.  We may be wearing the saddlebags
of responsibilities, but we serve a God of miracles who delights in rewarding
our faith.  He loves it when we trust him
and especially when we trust him with something important like a dream he gave
us.” 

How true is that?  We
serve a God of miracles who can make anything happen.  We let dreams get buried by practicalities of
life?!  Sure – think of ways to pay the
bills and make ends meet.  I understand
that concern and exercise of wisdom, but why let a dream die because ‘the
world’ has you convinced you need this or you need that?  God’s going to honor you being a steward of
the dream he’s placed inside of you.  “Some
dreams are so deep they seem to become a part of the very fabric of your being”
(Melody Green, No Compromise).

My friend wants to write as well.  He wants to enter the field of academia and
infuse it with the Spirit of the Living God in a way that the world has yet to
encounter.  Theology and doctrine has
been so watered down by the traditions of the Church, traditions that never
tasted the sweet nectar of God in the first place because it’s been so far
removed from Jesus.  He wants to change
that.  Right now his efforts seem meager
and full of vanity, but he knows that even fifty years from now the words that
he pens on a page or speaks in a classroom can change the course of Church
history. 

Here’s some more good blogs from Seth on dreams:

If You Could Do Anything

Shattered Dreams