Shortly after I woke this morning I put on some music and as I listened with eyes closed I began to see the old and the young. Africans. Beautiful Africans. Not just any Africans, but the ones I know and love. The children I have led to Christ, the women I have rescued from abusive homes, the widows with hardly enough food and the witch doctor that finally bowed to King Jesus. I saw Porsha, an eight-year-old girl who was repeatedly beaten by her step-father and then placed with other family members who used her as slave-labor. I saw Matilda, a baby who would have died of Sepsis but as we walked with God in his dream, He walked in us right into her hospital room.
As the Lord brought these beautiful faces before me tears began to flow and turned to travail. “Yes, I have helped them to know Jesus, but have I really helped them out of their suffering?” I wondered, still deep in travail. I wept because I haven’t been able to help them the way I dream about. As I wept, I was convicted about the $6.00 coffee I had bought knowing it would have fed one of these children for nearly a month! I wept as I considered the careless ways I have wasted on the unnecessary and thought of Pastors Stella and Lordina who, by the recent photos I’ve seen of them, are growing leaner and leaner by the day. I wept because I know that they would give their own food and little money they have to help the widow, the destitute and orphan. The children and pastors I speak of may be nameless and faceless to you, but not to me. I know them. I feed them. I worship with them. I’m knee deep in it. I must have hit the replay on that song five times. It was a message I needed to here. Not for me, But for them. In those moments I was joined with the travail of Jesus and knew He was weeping. Yet He was letting me know that even though I had been care-less, He was caring for them. In some sense, this comforted me, but not completely, because Jesus has called me to steward this. And I’m wrecked again. In over my head.
As God wept His burden through me, my self-absorbed behavior was cast down as the overwhelming, compassionate love of Jesus took its rightful leading place. Again I can hear Jesus say, “Won’t you walk with me in my dream?” How can anyone say no to that? These are not my dreams. I was just a shy housewife in love with Jesus and His word. I loved decorating and gardening and being a homemaker and Mom (and there’s nothing wrong with that!) How could I ever hope to dream bigger? God tends to dream big. But big, gargantuan, supernatural, impossible dreams are in the heart of Christ Jesus and Christ is living in you and me! We only have to let this ginormous God walk His dreams out through our lives. So many beautiful God-dreams are waiting for us. All we have to do is ask Him what He wants to dream through us. King David said that the Lord would give us the desires of our heart. This means that if your heart desires and keeps on desiring to be and do something, most likely God has put it there! Of course, God will never walk His dreams out through us if we are so loaded up with our own stuff or don’t even care to really know Him. You can’t and won’t share your dreams with me if I don’t care to be in a relationship with you. That’s how God is. I often have to take inventory and see if my stuff is crowding Jesus out or if I have taken my relationship with God for granted; satisfied with the conversation I had with Him a week ago.
And so I’m dreaming with God and I’m in over my head. You can also dream with Him. God’s ultimate dream is to build a house, a people who He might fully inhabit. A people who will be a perfect reflection of who He truly is, and who will walk with Him in His dreams. This is how the world will be transformed; one dreamer at a time.
OVER MY HEAD IN GOD-DREAMS
I dream of building a school for children who already go to school but will come out illiterate. They graduate not knowing Jesus and will never be able to read His word. I dream of men and women everywhere, truly burdened with what I am burdened for, who will look beyond their own fence, broaden their reach and gift their resources Africa-bound. I dream of being a faithful servant of God whose vision is caught not taught. I dream of a children’s community center that will repurpose drunken, drug-addicted youth into servant-lovers of Christ. I dream of planting and building more than two churches. I dream of waking up the Body of Christ from her slumber and I dream of building a people, sons of God, who love Jesus more than life its self who will lay down their lives to follow the beautiful Lamb wherever He goes. Dream with God.