Walking in the Wasteland // Living Your Dreams, Part 4
Each one of us has some big dream for our lives – woven into our DNA by God. Some of us actually step out of our comfort zones to live the dream. But inevitably when we do, the hard times come. We find ourselves in a wasteland. I’m so excited to be with you again today because this week and next week we’re talking about the subject of dreaming dreams and living out the big dreams that God has put in our heart for our lives. Maybe your dream is to be a nurse or a teacher or wife or a mother or a scientist or a physicist. Whatever that dream is, it tends to revolve around the things that we just love to do. It burns inside us like a fire that we can’t quench. Sometimes people take a risk and step out but they find themselves in a wasteland, in a desert, where it looks as though the dream has evaporated. Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the USA. He was a progressive reformer and the son of a Presbyterian minister. He said this, “We grow by dreams. All big men and women are dreamers. Some of us let the dream die but others nourish them through the bad days ‘til the sunshine and the light which always come.” During the week I’ve mentioned a couple of times the book called The Dream Giver by Bruce Wilkinson and David Kopp it is just an outstanding book. I would encourage you to think about buying it. It’s only $14 or $15 but an outstanding book. The first half of the book is a parable about a man called, “Ordinary” and it’s the story of when Ordinary left the land of Familiar to follow his big dream. He walked through that invisible wall of fear and where he expected to find himself in the middle of his dream, in the middle of the place where he would be satisfied, he found himself in the inevitable wasteland. I’d just like to read to you a short part of that parable from Bruce Wilkinson’s book. Again and again Ordinary lost his way. Again and again he cried out for the Dream Giver to show him the way, but no answer came. Why had he ever trusted the Dream Giver to guide him in the first place? The day came when Ordinary finally gave up. He sat on his suitcase and refused to move until the Dream Giver showed up with a plan. But the Dream Giver didn’t show up that day or the next day. Ordinary had never felt so lost and alone before. He became angry. He got angrier and angrier and then a hard, hot wind began to blow. The wind blew all day and all the next and sand blew into Ordinary’s eyes. It blew into his teeth and ears. When the wind finally stopped, Ordinary stood to his feet but as far as he could see there was only sand. The path to his dream had disappeared completely. Obviously his entire trip through the wasteland had been a waste. Hot tears coursed down his dirty cheeks. ‘You’re not a Dream Giver,’ he shouted. ‘You’re a Dream Taker. I trusted you, you promised to be with me and help me and you didn’t.’ “Then Ordinary stumbled in despair across the sandy waste, dragging his empty suitcase behind him. His dream was dead and now he wanted to die too. Weak, under a scraggly tree, he lay down in it’s scraggly patch of shade and closed his eyes. That night he slept the sleep of a dreamless dreamer. The next morning Ordinary heard something. Startled he peered up to see a shimmering somebody sitting in the branches of the tree. ‘Who are you?’ he asked as she climbed down to the ground. ‘My name is Faith’ she said. ‘The Dream Giver sent me to help you.’ ‘But it’s too late,’ cried Ordinary. ‘My dream is dead. When I needed the Dream Giver most, he was nowhere in sight.’ ‘What do you need that you haven’t received?’ asked Faith. ‘Well if it weren’t for those few springs of water I found,’ answered Ordinary, ‘I’d be dead of thirst by now.’ ‘Yes, and...’ she asked. ‘And if it weren’t for the fruit I found, I’d be a walking skeleton. Wait! I am a walking skeleton. I could die of starvation any minute.’ “‘Oh, my,’ Faith murmured. This parable is closely linked to the story of Israel. Israel was oppressed in Egypt. They were slaves. Hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of them. And God sent Moses, through a series of ten amazing miracles, to convince Pharaoh to set Israel free. “Let My people go” was the cry. Eventually, after the last devastating miracle, where each of the firstborn children of the Egyptians, right across the country, died under God’s hand. Pharaoh changed his mind and let them go. But no sooner had Israel left Egypt than he sent his army after them to destroy them because he was so angry. God protected Israel. God put a pillar of His presence between Egypt’s army and His fleeing Israelites. And then God parted the Red Sea and Moses led the people through the Red Sea on the other side. And as the Egyptian army followed them, God let the Sea fall back into place and they were all drowned. But no more than a few days had gone by. Remember Israel has seen miracle after miracle. The ten plagues that God sent on Israel. The presence of God in the pillar of fire, which stood between them and the Egyptian army. Moses, parting the Red Sea, for goodness sake, so that they could walk through. They’d seen amazing miracles, but a couple of days in the desert, listen to what the Bible says, this comes from Exodus, chapter 16, verse 3. The whole of Israel complained to Moses in the wilderness. ‘If only we’d died in Egypt where at least we had enough food to eat, you brought us into the wilderness to kill us all with starvation.’ Isn’t that the way? We decide to step out and follow the dream that God’s put on our hearts ... I remember when I stepped out to follow the dream that God had put in my heart and I lived that dream for a time. Then all of a sudden I found myself in a wasteland. It was a wasteland that lived on for two, long years. Two years may not seem a long time, but when you’re walking around in a wasteland, when the path to your dream has been obscured by the hot wind blowing and the sand, and you look in every direction and you don’t see your dream anywhere. You feel like complaining. I’ve got to tell you, you feel like having a big winge to God. But God is faithful. Just as in that story that Bruce Wilkinson wrote, God sends faith and faith, the Bible says, is a gift from God. Faith isn’t something that we muster up. Faith is a gift that God gives us to trust in Him when everything seems lost. Sometimes it seems like our dream is gone. Sometimes, in fact inevitably, when we step out to follow the dream that God has put in our heart, it looks as though it has totally evaporated. And the miracles that God has done along the way for us, well we kind of forget that it was God. Just like Ordinary. You know, he said, “Oh, if it hadn’t have been for the water I’d have died.” Well, Ordinary, who put the water there? If it hadn’t been for those few bits of fruit that I found, I would have starved. Well, Ordinary, who do you think put the fruit there? God is a faithful God and when He calls us to a dream, a dream which plugs into His big dream, a dream which meets a need out in the world, God needs to make sure that we’re ready for that dream. And we need to be sure that we’re ready for that dream. And that’s why, when we follow that dream, when we follow God’s call, we need to expect that we will spend a time in the wilderness. It is part of God’s plan. Jesus, when He was baptised and He was filled with the Holy Spirit just before He began His public ministry, it says that God took Him and threw Him out into the desert for forty days and forty nights after which time He was tempted by the devil. When God tests us when, we feel lost and hungry and alone and betrayed and angry, just like Ordinary did, all that time God is in that place with us. All that time He is there and by the power of His Holy Spirit, if we’ll reach out to His Son, Jesus, and say, “Lord, I cannot do this on my own,” He will send His Spirit to fill us with faith. With faith in the One Who called us to the dream in the first place. With faith to stand in that place, and believing God no matter what comes, no matter what life throws at us, no matter what the devil throws at us, to stand in that place and say, “Lord, I will stand in this place for you even if I die here.” God blesses that. God takes that and God uses that. Not for us. Not to give us a career, but to pour His love out to other people through us. We serve an awesome God.
New Zealand