Dream Again!
Acts 2:17-18 (NKJV) 17 ‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your young men shall see visions, Your old men shall dream dreams. 18 And on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days; And they shall prophesy.
Introduction:
Man Was Created In God’s Image Man was created to dream.
Before you tune out thinking this is another dream big message. It is not. It is a message to dream.
Dreams come in both big and small packages.
Ela… a wedding ring comes in a small package but with big dreams.
The designer of our genetic make up created us to dream:
1. Shall see visions and dream dreams.
Acts 2:17…… Your young men shall see visions, Your old men shall dream dreams.
1.1. Vision = the act of seeing, the sense of sight, the eyes appearance, visible form a vision an appearance divinely granted in an ecstasy or dream
1.2. A dream is a vision while you sleep.
1.3. Many times our dreams wake us up during our slumber.
1.4. So does having dreams wake us up from our spiritual slumber.
2. Man was created to dream and create.
“Each after it’s own kind.”
2.1. God put dreams and desires on the heart of man. 2.1.1. Dream a little dream.
2.2. Dreams are meant to communicate.
2.2.1. Ela… we can always tell when we let our littles watch something they should not have watched because the next morning they will be telling us about their spooky dreams.
2.3. Visions and dreams give direction and or insight.
3. On the backside of the dessert.
Exodus 2:14-15 (NKJV) 14 Then he said, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you intend to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” So Moses feared and said, “Surely this thing is known!” 15 When Pharaoh heard of this matter, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh and dwelt in the land of Midian; and he sat down by a well.
Exodus 2:21-22 (NKJV) 21 Then Moses was content to live with the man, and he gave Zipporah his daughter to Moses. 22 And she bore him a son. He called his name Gershom, for he said, “I have been a stranger in a foreign land.”
Exodus 3:1-2 (NKJV) 1 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the back of the desert, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 And the Angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush….
3.1. Has anyone ever been on the backside of the dessert?
3.1.1. What is the backside of the desert? When you end up in a different place than you thought or planned God head prepared for you?
3.1.2. Let us not discredit our time in the backside of the dessert.
3.2. If we have seen anything throughout scriptures we have seen that God does not operate on our time line.
3.2.1. We are both never too young and never too old to do something or start a work for God.
3.2.2. Paul tells timothy “let not anyone despise your youth”
3.2.3. Where as Moses was 80 years old before his great adventure even began.
Ruth Johnson: http://lighthouse-of-hope.org/fulfilling-our-purpose/the-back- side-of-the-desert/
4. Life has a potential of using it’s meaning if, while on the back side of the desert, we don’t have a purpose beyond our every day responsibilities and provisions.
4.1. God assures us He does have a plan for each of us so that we can have a meaningful purpose for our life:
“I know the plans I have for you, for good and not disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”Jeremiah 29:11 NASB
4.1.1. Once we understand this plan, we most often enter into a season of waiting. How long that season will last is different for each person.
4.1.2. While we wait, the following promise is comforting to the soul and its message is clear. No matter how many years go by, there is an appointed time for each of us to enter into the fullness of what our life has been all about.
“The vision is yet for the appointed time. It hastens toward the goal and it will not fail. Though it tarries, wait for it. For it will certainly come. It will not delay.”Habakkuk 2:3 NASB
4.2. It is during the gap between God revealing to us His plan and it coming to pass, many of us end up in the “backside of the desert” (Exodus 3:1 KJV) just like Moses did.
4.2.1. Ela… have you ever considered how much Moses must have struggled for those 40 years. Throughout all those years when Moses tended the flocks in the desolate land of Midian, he surely must have wrestled with what God had shown him. It must have seemed so very far away and totally impossible.
4.2.2. His ministry was for an appointed time, which was not at the time he had calculated.
4.3. Much is learned in these season on the backside if you allow yourself to be taught.
4.3.1. Moses started a new life, met and married his wife, built a family, learned to become a shepherd, and learned to become content. A totally different life than what he was brought up in.
4.3.2. The desert reprograms us.
4.3.3. In our own desert experience, we are confronted with the same struggle. And when the vision for our life seems so painfully distant, we can feel a gamut of drastically different emotions, such as: anticipation, discouragement, joy at the thought of our destiny being fulfilled some day and the temptation to just forget the whole thing and wish we had never embraced the God-inspired dream in the first place.
4.3.4. While we are hidden away and it seems that what we have to offer is invisible to people, God shapes us, changes us, humbles us and molds us into a “vessel for honor” (2 Timothy 2:21 NASB) until we are finally ready for Him to use.
4.4. When we emerge from these years of waiting, we are not the same person who began that journey.
4.4.1. Wrong attitudes and personal agendas die in the desert where we come to the end of ourselves.
4.4.2. If we have allowed the Father to reshape and change us, we finally are convinced that whatever we do for Him can never be about us again.
4.5. This transformation is dramatically evident in the life of Moses. I marvel at the difference between the confident Moses who grew up among royalty in Egypt and the shaken man who returned years later to lead the Israelites to freedom.
4.5.1. When he was young, “Moses was taught all the wisdom of the Egyptians and he became mighty in both speech and action” (Acts 7:22 NLT). Yet by the time God called him out of the wilderness and into his destiny, he felt totally inadequate. This once articulate man, who had a swaggering arrogance in his younger days, didn’t even have the confidence to speak.
4.5.2. He was a broken man when he told the Lord, “Please, I’ve never been eloquent, neither recently nor in time past, nor since You have spoken to Your servant. For I’m slow of speech and slow of tongue” (Exodus 4:10 NASB).
4.5.3. The Moses who was once so self-assured was now “very humble, more than any man who was on the face of the earth” (Numbers 12:3 NASB).
4.5.4. When our years in the “back side of the desert” finally came to an end, we also won’t be the same person who had begun our search for God’s ultimate purpose for our life. Just like Moses, we become broken vessels ready for the master’s use.
5. Time to dream again.
“When dreams come true there is life and joy.”Proverbs 13:12 NLT
“I will keep guiding you with My counsel, leading you to a glorious destiny.”Psalm 73:23-24 NLT
“I will be with you constantly until I have finished giving you everything I have promised.”
5.1. Moses encountered the Lord and the dream was revived.
5.2. Just ask the Lord and be patient.
5.3. I do find that you should be asking and looking for these strange things to happen.
James 4:2-3 (NKJV) 2 You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures
5.4. The passage is a depiction of two different ways of attempting to goo about getting something we want.
Conclusion:
God’s provision often arrives in the most unorthodox ways and at the strangest of times but for the purpose of providing, communicating and encouraging forward movement toward the dream.
Exodus 17:5 The Lord answered Moses, “Go out in front of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6 I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.” So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel.7 And he called the place Massah and Meribah because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”