Last week at the Catalyst Conference we explored the theme #awakenthewonder. Hearts were revived. Hope returned. Snow even fell.
Much of the conversation circled around dreaming and vision casting as a leader.
I’m a dreamer. Maybe you’re one, too.
We imagine possibilities.
Develop newfangled ideas.
Sketch the invisible.
Resist the confines of reality.
That’s what dreamers do. That’s who we are. That’s how we roll.
No matter how immense our dreams, Jesus echoes the truth that even the most gargantuan of dreams remains too small.
In Matthew 5:1-12, Jesus dreams an epic dream for humanity. He describes:
The poor in spirit as blessed
The mourners as blessed
The meek as blessed
The famished as blessed
The merciful as blessed
The pure hearted as blessed
The peacemakers as blessed
The persecuted as blessed
Jesus shakes us awake, wide-eyed to the reality that we live in a world that spins on the axis of what is and what should be.
For many, being impoverished or shattered hearted or emaciated sounds like a night terror, no dream come true.
But Jesus imparts a grander dream so we don’t have to survive on pipe dreams.
Jesus’ epic dream exposes how far our world spins from such realities.
Our world doesn’t…
celebrate the poor in spirit
commend the mourners
bestow awards on meek
decorate the famished
respect the merciful
honor the pure hearted
esteem the peacemakers
understand the persecuted
We live in a world that bestows blessings on the powerful, accolades on the ambitious, awards on the most innovative, and tributes to the hardest working.
Privilege and power and striving are marks of most dreamers.
But Jesus suggests that to dream God-sized dreams, the types of dreams that full the kingdom of God, that we must be prepared to lay down our lives, experience heart-wrenching loss, and live without much.
To experience kingdom dreams, we must ask God for His kingdom to come rather than ours. For His will to be done rather than ours.
As Danielle Shroyer observes in Where Jesus Prayed:
“On the Mount of the Beatitudes we gauge the distance between the kingdom we live in and the kingdom we long for. God, they feel miles apart.
What can bridge the distance other than faith, hope, love, an other than mercy, meekness, and peace?
It’s perhaps the gift of blessedness itself that allows us to speak our fervent prayer, three words of home and near-pleading:
Thy kingdom come.”
Yes. Even in the dreams you’ve planted within us. Entrusted to us. Nurtured within us.
Even in the midst of waiting. Hoping. Anticipating. Longing.
Name the dream God seeded in your heart.
Now offer the seed back to Him.
Now speak the holy mantra of everyone entrusted with a God-sized dream:
Amen.
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