Dream Joy

Some of what we heard at this years ATF was about dreaming. Ron told us how God is a dreamer. How He had a dream before creation and turned it into reality. Only 2% of the population are dreamers... Bill Gates, Martin Luther King, the guys that invented Google, Ebay, Ipods, people that make movies and write books.... it all started with their dream. The other 98% are simply participating in the 2% dream.
I have to be brutally honest for this to make sense... So often I get discouraged as a youth leader and just want 'out'! I think I can't do it anymore, I've overwhelmed, I'm uninspired, stuck in a rut, don't want to put the time into it, etc... Honestly, I was feeling this way on the bus ride to ATF! But, I HAVE A DREAM! A vision! Call it what you want, but God has shown me what this youth group is capable of and what we can do. I have BIG dreams that most would say our little group can never accomplish. But if we only dream small dreams that our group is capable of doing, how does that allow God to demonstrate His power? If people can look at us and say "any small group can do that" how does that prove anything? Yet, if we dream big and we are people of prayer and we have faith and believe that with God all things are possible, and we allow God to do GREAT things THROUGH us... then that will bring honor and glory to God. If we do something too big to do on our own, then people will know that God had everything to do with this dream! God is too big for small dreams, right? Ephesians 3:20 says this, "Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us," God doesn't need us to accomplish anything for Him, yet it is His desire to use us. He wants to demonstrate His awesome power through us. And if we can dream the biggest dream our little finite brains can dream, God can do exceedingly abundantly above that! How awesome!
If we don't dream for our youth, MTV will have a dream for them, the world will have a dream for them. God has a dream for them and I want to be a part of it. I don't do this because I don't have anything else to do, I do this because I've been given a dream.
Anyway, Acquire the Fire was really encouraging for me and I kept thinking about this 'dream' business. So here's what happened. Last fall, I bought some homemade stamped greeting cards at our Missouri Days festival. I had decided I wanted to send my sister-in-law a note so I got my sack of cards out. I picked one out and began to unwrap the celephane it was in... the envelope fell out and in the bottom left corner the maker had stamped "dream". I got warm fuzzies! Just what I needed. Cool, right? Well, it gets better. I finish unwrapping the celephane and notice the back of the card has stamped right in the middle "joy"! So here I am holding the envelope that says 'dream' in one hand the card that says 'joy' in the other. Now if that isn't a word from God and encouragement straight from the 'Maker'! How chilling to know that God knew my doubts and fears and desired to encourage me. The method and the message positively overwhelm me! What an AWESOME God we serve! I love Him so much!
So those of you that stumble across this blog.... watch out for Group180! Here we come!
Positively His... JMS