Flying through the sky, saving the day like Paw Patrol, and being strong like Daddy. These are some of the dreams my four-year-old boy tells me about. I love it when he shares his dreams with me.
From the time we are young, we know what it’s like to have dreams. We want to have a positive impact on this world. As kids, some of us dream of being astronauts and exploring God’s good creation. Some of us dream of being doctors who heal people or vets who help animals. Yet, as we age, we stop dreaming of dreams like this.
In a world full of brokenness, our dreams of creating a better world can quickly turn into dreams of not wanting to be in the world or dreams about how the world can serve us. How does this happen? For me, it happened when fear and shame came into my world. At a young age, I encountered firsthand the brokenness of addiction, depression, and verbal abuse. This caused fear in me, which led me to many isolating hours playing video games and escaping the world through sports. My dream quickly became to make enough money to solve all my problems. Praise God that He had other dreams in mind for me!
In Genesis 15:5, God shows Abraham His dream for him:
5 He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
Abraham was not in a place with light pollution. He was in the desert, so he could see billions, if not trillions of stars. What a dream God had given him.
The only problem was that Abraham’s wife, Sarah, was barren. Her womb was dead. This sounds more like a far-fetched fantasy than an achievable dream.
Many of you today may feel like the dream God has given you is more of a far-fetched fantasy than a possible reality, and as a result, you may feel like giving up. Or worse, maybe you feel like giving up on God’s plan to achieve your dream and are tempted to pursue your plan.
That’s exactly what Abraham and Sarah did. After ten years, Abraham took Sarah’s slave Hagar and married her, and she gave birth to a son. The problem was that this offspring wasn’t the offspring who would fulfill the dream God had for Abraham.
Thankfully, this didn’t stop God from fulfilling His dream given to Abraham. Fourteen years later, Isaac, the child of the promise, was born to Sarah and Abraham. Yay, the dream was fulfilled! End of the story, right? No.
This was the next step of a dream that would be kept alive for centuries through faith!
You see, Isaac is the distant grandpa of Jesus. And Jesus is the offspring that blesses the world and brings the multitudes into the family of Abraham.
One thing that Jesus taught us during his earthly ministry was the power of faith. He says in Matthew 17:20:
“Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
This is what starting small looks like. It’s one small step of faith at a time, and before you know it, God is moving mountains on behalf of your faith.
Hebrews 12, the faith chapter in the Bible, refers to what it means to have a mustard seed-like faith. Hebrews 12:1 says:
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
The chapter is filled with men and women who took small steps of faith and contributed to fulfilling Abraham’s dream to redeem the world back to God.
In 2018, the Lord gave me a dream to plant a church in South Wichita, where I grew up. As I mentioned earlier, this was a place where I felt like my dreams had died as a child, and yet, God was giving me a dream to bring revival to a place of death for me.
I had no idea where to start. The Lord told me to begin by praying, and that’s what I did for five years. Sometimes, I would get discouraged and question if I heard right from God. Like Abraham, I sometimes would get impatient and try to force it, which generally only resulted in frustration.
God was so merciful and kind to me, and every time I got impatient, he was there to encourage and teach me, knowing full well what He would do.
God fulfilled this dream in April of 2023. Amazing what a merciful, good God we have! God is undoubtedly bringing revival not only in South Wichita but in my heart, redeeming every dream that was crushed as a child.
Along the way, He taught me to start small and dream big. What small steps of faith is God asking you to take?
It could be to connect with someone and pray. It could be to sell your house or schedule a call for a meeting. It could be to be faithful with the little things before you, like your marriage, kids, or job.
Here is the thing, God's dreams are always way more significant than your dreams. This is something I quickly realized once we started SouthLife Church. He promptly showed me that what He is doing in South Wichita isn’t just for South Wichita, but it’s for the world.
That’s right; the small steps of faith we take in South Wichita have eternal implications for the world. I have learned that we have to take the small steps of faith for God to fulfill His dream for our lives.
God made you to have dreams because he wants you to know His dreams for you! Every one of you has a God-sized destiny that God has dreamed up for your life. What small mustard seed faith steps are you taking today?
He is a good Father and like a daddy to his four-year-old child. He delights in your dreams to save the world! You are made for it!
