But is it God's Dream // Living Your Dreams, Part 5

I was asked recently by a woman – if I have a big dream for my life, how do I know it’s from God? How do I know if it’s real? Isn’t this whole living your dream thing just a bit dangerous? Now – she asks some very, very good questions. It’s just great to be with you again on another Friday heading to another weekend. This week we’ve been looking at the subject of living out the dreams that God puts in our hearts. It’s an exciting time because I believe that God puts a dream in everybody’s heart. God gifts us and creates us and makes us for a certain thing in life. And that dream often burns so deeply in our hearts. What I think is really sad is when people get to the end of their lives and they look back on their lives and they realise that they missed the one opportunity that they had to live the dream that God has given them. I was lecturing about this at a Bible college recently. A woman came up to me afterwards and she asked a question. It went something like this, “What is a dream? I mean, how do you know that it’s real? What if it’s just something that I dreamed up and it’s not God’s dream for me? Isn’t that dangerous?” Now, I think that’s an excellent bunch of questions. I heard someone say recently that God is a bit like your American Express card. You should never leave home without Him. I like that. You know, it’s interesting, all sorts of people dream dreams and some of them achieve greatness without ever once believing in Jesus Christ. I believe that’s because we’re all made in God’s image. We are made to be creative. We are made to dream. We are made as ordinary people to do extraordinary things. Is it possible to achieve a dream without believing in Jesus? Absolutely. You just look at some of the great artists and some of the great adventurers and some of the great business leaders down through history and even today. Many of them don’t believe in Jesus. But, if we want a dream that satisfies us, I mean really deeply satisfies us, if we want to be God’s man or woman in the place where He’s called us doing the things that He’s gifted us to do, then the questions that woman asked me about dreaming are very, very good questions. The world is full of successful people who are unsatisfied by what they do. They get to success, whatever success is, and they discover that it’s empty. They discover that when they buy into sweet success, it tastes bitter and sour The only way that we can find fulfilment is in the Person of Jesus Christ. God gifts us, God creates us, God calls us to be ordinary people who do extraordinary things. The questions that woman asked me are these - “What is a dream? I mean, how do I know if it’s real and what if it’s just something that I dreamed up and it’s not God’s dream at all? That’s dangerous,” she said. I think she’s right. So there are four markers that, for me, point to whether a dream is from God or whether it’s something that we dreamed up. I mean, for fifteen or sixteen years of my life I lived my own dream. I was very successful at my dream. It’s just that it never satisfied me. The first marker is this: I believe the Bible teaches us that it is normal for us to dream God’s dreams. In Acts, chapter 2, we read about Pentecost. Pentecost was an amazing time because just as God had promised way back in the Old Testament, that was the day that He poured His Holy Spirit out on all believers. In the past the only people who had the Holy Spirit were certain prophets and certain leaders. And then Jesus came and those who were close to Jesus had a close relationship with God. But this day, after Jesus had risen from the dead and after He’d ascended into heaven, this day of Pentecost is when Jesus poured His Holy Spirit out on all the believers. The people watching saw the believers speak in other tongues, they heard the believers talking in all different languages, they could hear the gospel, the good news, in their own language and they thought the believers were drunk. But Peter the apostle, the one who had stood against Jesus and said, “Lord, You can’t possibly go to the cross.” Jesus had also filled Peter with the Holy Spirit on that day. And the very first sermon that was preached on Pentecost went like this, it was from Peter. And remember Peter is preaching to the Jews in Jerusalem. These are the same people who lynched Jesus, who caused Jesus to be crucified. So this is a gutsy sermon to preach a few weeks after Jesus was crucified. This is how the sermon went - “But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed the men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem. ‘Let this me known to you and listen to what I say. Indeed these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only 9 o’clock in the morning. “No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel. In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour My Spirit upon all flesh and your sons and ...