What is the essence and origin of a true dream?
Now many of us have silly-frilly mental-only dreams, but the concept of a dream does have a deep mystery because it … includes God.
In Scripture we read the first mention of the word dream in
Genesis 20 says, “But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said unto him, Behold …”
And he gave him something.
The next time, Genesis 31, a person is having a dream and it had a meaning.
31:11 says, “And the angel of God spake unto me in a dream, saying, Jacob.
And I said, Here am I.”
Genesis 37, the most famous dreamer probably in Scripture, “And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it his brethren.”
It's almost impossible to contain your dream if it's genuinely gifted from outside of yourself.
So I would propose that a true dream, a divine dream, would be a gift of a moment of connection and communication with
the Being Who is Ultimate, outside of yourself. And the value of that dream comes not from you but from without-side of you, therefore the dream is awesome and nearly impossible to contain. And then Joseph shared it with his brethren. Which he probably regretted sharing because that dream caused contention but that dream was part of his life purpose and he fulfilled it
Genesis 37 verse 9, three verses later, “And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more.”
And, anyway, all that to say, the word dream appears 61 times in your precious, pure, holy, English Bible.
And it's good to allow God to define Himself through the inbound, interwoven dictionary of context, which just means the words around a word tell us what the word means by its use-case.
And then you need to ask yourself, would God be loving enough and willing enough and adventurous enough to involve me in casting a life vision dream that I could participate in, but that was originally nuanced and choreographed and scripted and put together from His heart; His vision for my life?
Am I living my God dream life?
Not my dream life. You know most people … you go to Disney and they get up on the scene like “I have a dream!” Okay I don't want a dream. I do not want to follow my heart to hell. I do not want to live my own dream. I want to live God's dream for God's life. I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live yet not I … yet not I,
But Christ liveth in me.
Is God living out His dream life through my shell?
Am I here for myself?
How well did that go yesterday?
No, I am not a self-contained, self-promoting, self-dreaming, self-motivated.
No, I need to be a God-filled, God-dreamed, God-envisioned, God-flowing, God-filled,
person.
Now, back to the core.
How do we invite God to want to dream through us?
How do we invite God to emblazon and embolden and stamp that dream into our heart and into our mind so that He can ensure us that we have a dream from God?
Now, there's …
Maybe four sources of dreams, possibly.
I don't know.
There's maybe plenty more, but I'm just going to throw out four.
The number one is obviously from the Lord Himself, and there's maybe a way to discern that by cutting away.
The word discern means to cut.
It means to remove and separate.
So one way we can discern whether a dream is truly from the Lord is to remove all the non-from-the-Lord options, meaning:
If this dream is from myself, there will be an element, it would seem, of self-protection, self-promotion, self-enjoyment, self-visualization, self-actualization.
There'd be way too much or some elements of self in the dream.
This would make me suspect as to whether or not it was truly Divine.
I should be involved but I should not be the primary in this vision.
I do not want to live my own dream.
Number two, a dream could be influenced by evil.
Like there is wickedness in the world, and a dream could be planted or an idea …
A suggested path of action could be planted by spiritual forces that do not have God's best interest at heart.
And there must be a way to identify if a dream is demonic.
And one way is to bring that dream to the Lord and put it on the altar and ask Him to kill it.
“Dear God, please kill this vision for my life.
Let it pass.
If it's not from You, do what You do.
Remove it.
Let it pass from me.”
And then another source might be just the world.
That's what I meant to say.
This world has just a strong influence on us.
We live saturated our soul every day in the culture and with the people and with social media, and we have all these influences on our life.
So we can pray, “Dear Holy Spirit, please purify my dream life.
Please clarify my dream life.
Dear God, please take all the time You need to remove the influence of worldly thinking, demonic thinking, selfish thinking, and make it only Your vision.
When it's ready, when the time is right, bring the vision to fruition.”
So many of us have had a dream.
Implanted.
I've had a dream implanted over a decade ago, over two decades ago, and it has not yet come to fulfillment.
And it is a, I believe, very pure, selfless, God-honoring vision to help people get their testimony together in a printed format for its easy distribution.
I mean, I think that would benefit the body of Christ.
I think it would promote the gospel.
There's a big vision, but …
I can't find the gas pedal for when that dream comes to reality, but I'm not going to be discouraged knowing and believing and wanting to let that dream percolate because God must evidently be still working out some details to allow it to come to pass in due time.
You know, Joseph's dream took a while before the smile.
I mean, the timing is way not up to us.
You know, the dream of …
Abraham having a son; the vision that God would provide that son.
Well, I'm not my wife is 90 I'm a hundred; is it gonna happen?
God said it would; it will. When God implants a dream He polishes the dream.
“Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:” Phil 1:6.
I like to read the Old Testament version of that same promise here.
Here it is.
We'll back it up just a minute.
It's the end of Psalm 90.
“O satisfy us early with Thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.”
We're going to skip a verse.
We're in the same context.
Let THY work.
Pause.
Emphasis.
Rewind.
Let THY work appear unto thy servants.
and Thy glory unto their children.
So he's pleading for legacy.
I want my work to matter.
I want to leave a lasting effect and I need it to be God's work.
I want to be His servant and I want it to matter to my children and to their children.
That's what he's asking for.
God work through me.
And here's how he says it in the final verse.
“And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us.”
In other words, it would be a beautiful thing if God got involved in the dream that He has for our life.
Let the beauty flow through me so that the next generation can know that there's a God.
“Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us” and then he emphasizes one word at the very end of this song.
They're singing it.
I want to hear the notes.
And establish thou.
Who fixes it?
Who makes it matter?
“Establish Thou the work of our hands upon us;
Yea, the work of our hands establish Thou it.”
Now I want you to notice the emphasis is not on …
my hands, but it's on God establishing His work through my hands.
So I tapped in and we're going to go look at the interlinear definition of the word “establish”.
It's the word transliterated: kun, K-U-N, and it's “establish Thou”, all together in one word: establish Thou.
So if you tap through in the Strong’s Concordance, it means:
to be firm, [you knew that], stable, to be established.
Now envision …
All these words happening with God doing the primary action to fulfill His dream for your life.
To be set up.
To be fixed.
To be stable.
To be enduring.
To be securely determined.
To be directed aright.
To be steadfast in a moral sense.
To be ready.
To be prepared.
Is God doing that for you?
To be prepared.
To be arranged.
Settled.
To provide for, to furnish.
I love it. To be restored. Called-up for a purpose.
To render functional. Fitted. Ordain.
I love it; I love it. It's just a great word.
Should dig into that word.
Let's read the passage one more time.
We want to live our God-given dream, right?
So here it is, Psalm 90 at the end.
“Oh, satisfy us.”
Why?
We have this burning drive and desire.
“O satisfy us early with Thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.”
“Let Thy work appear unto thy servants, and Thy glory unto their children.
And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish Thou the work of our hands upon us;
yea, the work of our hands establish Thou it.”
And if the Bible allowed for emojis, that would be a great place for an emoji! :)
Living the God-Given Dream Life