Are You “Leveraging” Your Dreams For The Future? (Part 4)

This is the fourth and final part on dreams, so if you haven’t read the first three, please do so before reading this final article. Dreams are far more important than we have been led to believe and I believe they can be awakened and developed if we understand their importance.

With the inception of movies and TV I fear we are losing our ability and appreciation of dreams. I am a big Si-Fi fan. I love the whole idea of encountering things outside of the normal realm of our current life as we know it, but there is a cost in being to occupied with such wonder in films like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings.  When all the dreaming and imagination is done for us with such brilliance it dumbs down the creative center in our brains and makes us observers rather than participators. God designed our minds and souls to be creative, after all we are made in our Creator’s image, but when we fail to use our brain muscles they become inoperative and useless. Remember when God set Adam in the garden and gave him the privilege to name the animals? He was helping Adam discover his own creative ability so that he and his children after him would learn to develop our potential. The average child growing up in America no longer has the responsibility to work in the fields for food or ride a horse or milk a cow. Everything is done for us and we just take those privileges as a given and feel poorly for underprivileged cultures that still have to do such minimal tasks. But what if those tasks were meant to do more than meet a need of living and eating.  What if they were meant to teach us to develop our brain skills as we develop our coordination and balance?

One of Satan’s “Schemes” is to get humanity to become dumbed down all the while thinking we are getting smarter.

2 Corinthians 2:11                                                                                                                                                                   

So that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes.

Satan’s greatest desire is to do three things in our lives. Though scripture does not give us details of the things he wishes to dismantle I believe one fundamental tool in our lives is that of removing the ability to grow from our dreams.

John 10:10                                                                                                                                                                        

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

We need to always remember that Satan’s character is that of a thief. He takes what is not rightfully his from those who should benefit from their rightfully owned property. Dreams are given to all people because all people dream, but not all people benefit from their personal dreams. If you read books from just a 100 years ago you can see that dreams had a more major role in our soul. They were treated as a vehicle of warning and encouragement whereas now they are discarded as soon as we wake. Even in psychology around the turn of the 20th century it was believed that dreams were “a little hidden door in the innermost secret recesses of the soul” and should be guarded and explored.

First, Satan intends and is engaged in stealing our dreams. Now that may sound “Mystical” but it is really very practical.  If Satan can get us to discount our dreams as random thoughts we will let them go as soon as we wake.

Second, Satan intends on killing our dreams so that we can’t recall them even if we wanted to. Our minds are wired to use dreams to sort out the details of life and then discard unless information. If Satan can convince us to not pay attention to what is discarded it’s like hitting the delete button on your computer…..once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Third, Satan desires to destroy any link or record in our minds of any communication God has given so that we will not investigate possible words from God. Like prophecy in the scripture, we lose interest and therefore ignore God’s word. We are becoming more ignorant of God’s words and advice and yet have more tools.

With all the biblical helps out there the average Christian now can look up Greek and Hebrew words when just a few generations ago you had to go to bible collage or seminary for years to do the same thing. You would think Christians today are more biblically literate because of these tools and yet the truth is just the opposite. The average Christian knows less about scripture than ever before partly because all the work is done for us. We don’t have to think for ourselves.  We can just go to church and the sermons are presented with lights and graphics and video.

When we dream of things in life we start to build pathways to make those dreams a reality. Great inventors discovered great things because they had a dream first. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a great speech about having a dream. It’s what propelled him to make great sacrifice in his life. Think of the thousands of people who have heard his speech about dreams since and who have developed their own dreams and gone on to do great thing. When we lose the ability to appreciate our dreams and the dreams of others we sooner move into the place where we just want to watch TV more than we want to go out and do great things in life. We become convinced our ideas are never going to amount too much and therefore don’t even try to dream about them.

Let me close with this encouragement. Your dreams are important and mean more than just your brain deleting useless information before you wake. They are the pathways of God that can unlock your future. They are the things that Satan hates about us. He hates that we have been made in the image of God to do great things with our lives. Don’t let Satan steal your dreams. Don’t let Satan kill the possibilities of God leading you in life to make a difference. Don’t let Satan destroy your future before it even arrives. Let God fill you with expectation of hearing His voice. Let the Holy Spirit fill you daily so that at any time, in any place, you will hear God’s voice for your life and the lives you will touch.

God is looking for a man or woman who will appreciate the dreams they are given by writing them down once they awake should they be significant. The Holy Spirit is looking for the soul that will pursue spiritual growth in their lives whether they are awake or asleep. D. L. Moody once said, “The world has yet to see what God can do with a man fully consecrated to him”.  Let your dreams be consecrated to God.

Questions:

1) Have you asked God to move in your dreams? It’s simple and yet meaningful if you do.

2) Are you expecting God to speak in your dreams? God responds to faith even in our dreams.

May God give us the dreams that will propel us forward in our faith.

Pastor Dale