Читать книгу There is More: When the World Says You Can’t, God Says You Can - Brian Houston, Brian Houston - Страница 12

Among the youngest of the sons in his family, Joseph probably took his fair share of mocking and rough-ups from his older brothers. Yet when Joseph dreamed of his mother, father, and brothers bowing down to him, he didn’t hesitate to share with them the God-sized dream. It had the predictable effect: it enraged his family.

Joseph’s brothers waited for their chance to get back at him. When they were out with the flocks one time and Joseph came to them, they knew their chance had come. “They saw him in the distance, and before he had reached them, they plotted to kill him. They said to one another, ‘Here comes that dreamer! Come on, let’s kill him and throw him into one of the pits. We can say that a vicious animal ate him. Then we’ll see what becomes of his dreams!” (Genesis 37:18–20, HCSB).

Because of Joseph’s dream, his brothers tried to kill him. He was captured, thrown in a pit, and sold into slavery. Talk about dream killers!

But Joseph didn’t stop dreaming.

Have you ever had a dream die? Have you ever shared your dream with anyone? Perhaps you have and you’ve been mocked for it. Maybe when you finally opened your mouth to share about the impossible longings in your heart, you were met with laughter or cynicism or hurt by the words spoken to you by the people you love.

Dreaming can be a lonely place. If you’re going to dream things that will set you apart, sometimes the people who are closest to you and know you best will be the very ones who are threatened by the trajectory of your life and will oppose you, try to squash your dreams, and bring you down to size. So, if you are going to be a dreamer, understand that it can be a lonely road. You are going to need to hold fast to your convictions and hold firm to the Word of God and the desires of your heart, despite the criticism or accolades you receive along the way.

What it comes down to is that you have an enemy who would love to kill your dream with all sorts of “realities,” such as opposition or lack of resources. Often the negative voices of other people, or even the wrong ambition in your own heart, can suffocate your dreams. Sometimes along the path toward your dreams, you have to make choices and sacrifices that feel like backward movement instead of forward motion.

When I married Bobbie, I told her, “Sweetheart, we might never own our own home or have a new car or a lot of money, but we will serve Jesus together.” For the first year of our marriage, to be volunteer youth pastors in a small suburban church in South Auckland (near where Bobbie grew up), we both worked multiple jobs. Bobbie was a secretary in a pharmaceutical company, and I was in sales. I had after-hours jobs cleaning the bathrooms in an automobile factory and stocking shelves in a supermarket—all because we were passionate to serve God. And we desired to, when the time was right, build a local church that was enjoyable and warm and filled with people who were influential in their own spheres. In many ways it wasn’t easy as we gave our all in the local church, but it was the very sacrifices that we made then that enabled us to keep dreaming now, confident in a God who always provides. We could have let the setbacks take us off course, but we held fast to the vision we had for our lives.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to just live on a dream I had way back in the past. I want to keep dreaming new dreams. Being a dreamer isn’t past tense; it is an ongoing part of life! Just like Joseph of old, dreamers never stop dreaming. Despite the obstacles put in front of them, the limitations imposed on them, or the dream killers that get in the way, dreamers just keep on dreaming!