When Dreams Die
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
Good morning church fam!
My schedule is pretty set each week. Mondays we have a food give away here at the church. I usually leave early on Mondays because my kids get out of school early. So a typical Monday is checking emails, helping food pantry if necessary, meetings if scheduled, and other office duties.
Tuesdays I come in and start prepping for Sundays. I usually have some clear direction as to where I am going by then.
Wednesdays are pretty busy as I am helping with food pantry on the first and third Wednesdays and then I leave early to meet with Rotary.
Thursdays I usually take all day to prep for Sundays. Fridays is food pantry (I try not to come as to take a day off). Saturdays I try to take off, but still finishing up for Sundays.
But this past week I have been battling a head cold. Wednesday was food pantry, and I wasn’t feeling the greatest. Thursday I left the office early and went home to try and sleep it off. I slept for about 3 hours or so. Woke up, picked my kids up from school, came home and rested some more. Didn’t sleep well Thursday night, woke up Friday still not feeling well. I did nothing on Friday. I laid on my couch, slept, binged watched some tv, slept, ate dinner, watched a movie with my kids, then went to bed.
I woke up Saturday feeling a lot better. Came to men’s breakfast. Had a great conversation with some guys. Then came home.
I had a message that I thought I was supposed to share, but yesterday God interrupted those plans.
As you know Jason David will be with us next week and he just released a new single. I was listening to it while I was setting up for the men’s breakfast and it just wrecked me.
There was a line in the song that said:
When a dream dies…Dream a different dream.
I felt the presence of God, I began to cry, and God began to speak. He downloaded this message for me to share with you today.
So my question this morning for you is, “What do we do when our dreams die?”
Let me unpack that question a little. Growing up we all had dreams and aspirations. Many of us were asked the question in Kindergarten, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
I have shared with you all that my dream was to be a police officer. Maybe that is why I binge watch Chicago PD so much and watch other police shows. I have often thought of still doing that line of work. What would it be like. But here I am. Leading a great church full of some pretty awesome people.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely LOVE what I get to do. I know my calling and I know what God has ordained me to do. I have come to terms of that dream dying and following after what God has for me.
Unfortunately, not everyone does. Some of you may be struggling with the idea that your dream is dying or is dead. Whatever that may look like for you. Maybe it is a career change. Maybe it is relationship goals. Maybe you thought you would be further along in life than you are now. Maybe you thought that you would be a homeowner, or have that dream job, or start that dream business.
So what do we do? How do we handle the death of a dream.
Acknowledge the Pain, but Trust God
Acknowledge the Pain, but Trust God
Something that helped me with my own dream is this.
Acknowledge the pain, but trust God’s plan
The truth of the matter is that when there is death in our life, any kind of death not just death, that there is some pain that comes with it. We need to acknowledge this.
11 Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God! I will praise him again— my Savior and my God!
In this verse the Psalmist, believed to be David, acknowledges the pain and turmoil that they are feeling. They are not ignoring the fact that they are hurting right.
Too often we want to dismiss our feelings. We want to dismiss our emotions. Guys, we are notorious for doing this.
It is ok to question why you are feeling this pain. It is ok to address your emotions. This scripture teaches us that it is ok to have a time for some self reflection. It is an important part of our walk with God.
God gave us emotions. He gave us the ability to feel joy, pain, sorrow, happiness, grief, ect. We were not created with these emotions to suppress them or to wildly express them.
Neither one bring healing. Neither one bring life to anything.
When you suppress your emotions, it can cause inner turmoil.
David tried to suppress his emotions when it came to the sin in his life.
3 When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away Through my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. Selah.
When we dismiss our feelings, we will in turn dismiss our healing. It wasn’t until David acknowledge it that he was healed.
5 I acknowledged my sin to You, And my iniquity I did not hide; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord”; And You forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah.
The same thing can take place when we acknowledge our pain from the death of a dream before God.
11 Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him, The help of my countenance and my God.
Think about a seed for a moment. In order for that seed to become a tree, it first must be buried in the dark. Then the seed itself needs to die. In that moment of death, still in the dark, it may seem like the potential of that seed is lost forever.
But it is in the process of death and breaking that new life springs up.
Some of you your dreams have died and you feel left in the dark. You don’t know what to do. You don’t know what direction to take. Some are ready to give up on life all together.
Often this death feels like the end. But can I tell you this morning to hold on just little bit longer. You see that dream may have died. But God doesn’t see it that way. God sees something you don’t. It may seem like the end to you, but it is just the beginning to something far greater to God!
Put your hope not in the dream. But put your hope in God!
Trust the Process
It may take some time. It may take some watering. It may take a couple of seasons. But rest a sure that He who began a good work in you will see it through to the end!
Sometimes you need to let that dream just die. Some of you all are trying to resurrect something that God don’t want resurrected.
You walking around like “Why God? Why?” You don’t need to know why.
8 “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord.
9 “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.
Maybe the reason God don’t want to resurrect that dream because It was your dream. And not God’s dream for you. Some never even ask God, “God is this dream from you for me or something I want to do?”
Sometimes we think we know what we are doing and never asked God if this is how it is supposed to be done.
I seen a tik tok video of a guy who was called to pastor. He did it for 9 years the way we think a pastor is supposed to pastor. Had a church. Spoke at conferences. He struggled with all kinds of emotions. It wasn’t until he asked God, “God how do you want me to pastor?” God said, “Thanks for asking.”
God had a different kind of pastoring in mind.
Have you asked God about that dream that died? Maybe it was supposed to look different than you thought. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to be at all.
God Resurrects Dreams
God Resurrects Dreams
Sometimes the dream may have died because it wasn’t the right timing. Too often we get the cart before the horse and we end up crashing the cart and killing the horse.
We know without a doubt that it was a God dream, but then it doesn’t work out.
There is hope.
God resurrects dreams in His timing
I think back to Joseph. Joseph was a dreamer. Joseph recieved dreams from God about his family.
Just a little back story. Joseph wasn’t liked by his brothers. Maybe because Jospeh told daddy on them for things they were doing.
2 These are the records of the generations of Jacob. Joseph, when seventeen years of age, was pasturing the flock with his brothers while he was still a youth, along with the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives. And Joseph brought back a bad report about them to their father.
God gives Joseph dreams that one day he will be in a position of leadership and authority. He tells his brothers and father about these dreams. I don’t recall God telling Joseph to tell anyone about these dreams, especially the brothers he narced on.
The story goes that his brothers ended up selling Joseph into slavery and took his coat that his father had given him, put goats blood on it, gave it to their father, and told him he was eaten by wild animals.
Joseph now in slavery, ends up imprisoned for being falsely accused of rape, while imprisoned the Pharoah’s cup bearer and chief baker were thrown in and both of them had dreams. God gave Joseph the interpretation. One was good, one not so good. He told the cup bearer:
14 “Only keep me in mind when it goes well with you, and please do me a kindness by mentioning me to Pharaoh and get me out of this house.
23 Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him.
Long story short, Joseph gets out and ends up being second in command to Pharoah.
For years, Joseph’ life appeared to be the opposite of his dream. Yet, in God’s timing, Joseph’s dream was resurrected when he became second in command in Egypt, saving his family and an entire nation. What looked like a series of setbacks was God setting the stage for something greater.
God is a god of resurrection and restoration. Even though you may have got the cart before the horse and the dream seemed to have died. If you know without a doubt that it was a God dream, God can resurrect it…but in His timing.
1 There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven—
The Lord has given dreams to me and my wife concerning the church and the ministry He has entrusted us with. Some of those we are seeing coming to fruition. Others have not yet.
We do not want to rush what God desires to do.
When you go before God, you leave God behind.
We do not want to get ahead of God. His timing is perfect and when it happens, people will see that it is ALL GOD!
In the mean time, while you wait for that God dream to be resurrected. Hold onto this truth.
6 For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.
Embrace New Dreams & Keep Moving
Embrace New Dreams & Keep Moving
As I mentioned before, sometimes those dreams are not meant to be resurrected.
After you acknowledge the pain and bring your emotions to God:
Embrace the new dream and keep moving forward
Your hope is not in a dream, but in God. All is not lost because a dream died.
13 Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead,
14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Forget that dream, let it go. Begin to dream a new dream. Ask God for a new dream. A dream from Him. Those are the best kind.
I think of Abraham when God called him. He called him to leave all that he had known and go to a place he had never been. Talk about trusting in God.
Was it easy? No. He faced trials. He tried to do things his way at times. He had victories and he had defeats. But Abraham had faith in God.
I likened it to when God called us to California. A place we never been nor seen. A place where there was no family. We never dreamed we would be living in God’s country in the wonderful city of Corning.
I never dreamed that God would double the size of our church and call us to leave one denomination we served in for over 20 years to merge together two congregations.
We embraced the new dream. We left behind all that we knew. All that we had. We pressed forward into what God has for us now.
Sometimes when our dreams die, God calls us into new dreams. Dreams that are way bigger and better than the one we lost.
Just like Abraham had trusted God with his dream, we must also be willing to trust that God can give us new dreams.
This walk with Christ is a journey of continuous faith. We cannot dwell on past disappointments of dreams that have died. When we dwell on the past, we miss out on what what God has in store.
To emphasize again what Paul said.
14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Call to Action
Call to Action
Stand with me today.
Church, God is not done with us yet. God is not done with you yet. Jesus has invited us on the boat like he did the disciples.
Jesus was asleep on the boat in the middle of the storm and the disciples were scared and began to get anxious.
Did Jesus know what was doing on? Yes.
Did Jesus care? Yes.
So why didn’t Jesus wake up at the sound of the storm?
Because Jesus owns the storm.
But look at this.
25 And they came to Him and woke Him, saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing!”
26 He said to them, “Why are you afraid, you men of little faith?” Then He got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and it became perfectly calm.
Notice Jesus didn’t wake up until the disciples came to Him. I think we miss what Jesus was doing here because we focus on the disciples going to Jesus.
I mean, that’s what we are supposed to do right? Go to Jesus when there are storms. And we should. But why did Jesus rebuke them?
Why did Jesus say, “Why are you afraid, you men of little faith?”
Here is what we miss. Jesus invited them on the boat and they followed.
In this life there are ebbs and flows, waves, and storms. Just like the disciples, we too are invited on the boat…and just like the disciples we have an option to trust in Him with our dreams…dead or alive.
Maybe you are here this morning and you had some dreams that have died. Let’s bring them before God.
Let’s get Him in the middle of it.
Ask God to reveal His plan for your life
Ask God to resurrect what needs to be resurrected
Ask God for a new dream
Or maybe you just need to put your hope in Him today