DREAM - Seize Your Tomorrow Today 1

Audio on demand from Vision Christian Media introduces today's message, Dream. Seize your tomorrow today. Today we're going to talk about what it means to have a vision for your life, what it means to ask God to give you a dream for the future, a time for you to visualize what God might want to do in your life tomorrow.

Right now, I want us to get started with the very first lesson. It's called Dream. Seize your tomorrow today. When we think of great dreamers, we think of people like George Lucas, Elon Musk, or Walt Disney. I mean, anyone who's seen a Star Wars movie, read about electric cars, or visited Disney World knows that great accomplishments begin with one person's larger-than-life imagination. Walt Disney's dream began with cartoon sketches, two failed companies, and a borrowed book on animation. In time, he brought beloved characters to life. He created classic films and built Disney World, Disneyland, and the Epcot Center. He created The Happiest Place on Earth and became known as the man who made dreams come true. Disney's public persona was Uncle Walt, a smiling man who kindly signed autographs and a tweed jacket while puttering down Main Street in a fringe-topped car driven by Mickey Mouse. But behind the scenes, the real Walt Disney was a demanding, hard-charging man of a million ideas who exasperated family and colleagues. His life was a whirlwind of visionary projects that exhausted his associates and literally changed his world. When Disney was diagnosed with lung cancer, he was still planning movies, developing theme parks, and mulling over his newest idea, an experimental prototype community of tomorrow, or Epcot. As he lay on his deathbed with his brother Roy sitting nearby, Walt looked up at the hospital ceiling tiles, raised his finger, and every fourth tile he said represented a square mile.

Using that mental map, he suggested routes for his envisioned highways and monorails. Having said all that, I believe Walt Disney's dreams were too small. Believe it or not, you and I can dream bigger dreams than Disney ever conceived. It's one thing to invest one's life in a magic kingdom, and it's quite another to play a part in the kingdom of God. As followers of Christ, we can cultivate a dream for our lives that outlasts the world, transforms time, changes eternity, and advances his cause and his kingdom for his glory. In fact, that's the story of the Bible. The Bible is filled with people who saw what life could look like in God's kingdom and then moved forward in faith. Abraham dreamed of a great nation when he was yet childless. Moses envisioned a free people when the Israelites were still making bricks without straw. Joshua envisioned an occupied land, Samson a defeated enemy, and David a temple on a hill.

Nehemiah built miles of reconstructed walls in his prayers before a single stone was laid. Daniel glimpsed a future kingdom, Peter an established church, and Paul a global mission. All these stories, the dreams of men and women of God thousands of years ago, still inspire and guide and affect us more than we know. They remind us to keep dreaming.

There's always more out in front of us, always a reason to look forward to tomorrow. By the way, when I'm talking about a dream, I'm not describing a self-made vision of your life apart from God's will. And I'm not using the word as the ancient prophets did when supernatural visions of inspired revelation came across them. I'm not talking about seeing heavenly creatures or having apocalyptic dreams. No, instead I'm talking about envisioning the next step or the next stage of your life. A dream or a vision is simply a picture of what you feel God wants you to do next.

Let's talk for just a moment about the power of a dream. Jan Kum was born into a Jewish family in Kiev, Ukraine in 1976 during the Soviet era when anti-Semitism was rampant. There was no running water in their home and his parents were seldom together because of work. They assumed their phone was tapped so they had limited contact with the world and Jan grew up with a constant feeling of being bugged and surveilled. When he was 16, Jan and his mother immigrated to California.

His dad planned to come later but died before he could make the trip. Jan's mother found work as a babysitter and Jan swept floors to help pay bills. When he got his first computer in high school, he taught himself programming by buying used computer manuals and that skill led to a job as an internet security tester and later he was hired by Yahoo.

One evening, Jan visited the home of Alex Fishman who often invited the local Russian community to his home for pizza and movies. Forty or so people showed up and that's where Jan's dream was born. He wanted a way for people to stay in touch without Big Brother listening, an encrypted phone app. Apps were the new thing then. Jan had bought his first iPhone and visited one of the first app stores a few months before. He wondered if an app could actually help people connect safely around the world. He remembered the difficulty of communicating with his family in Ukraine and the expense involved.

He also shuddered as he thought of being monitored. Coom began to envision an app that would safely connect people around the world. He thought of the name WhatsApp because it sounded like what's up. Jan found some cheap cubicles in a converted warehouse and worked day and night covering himself in blankets to stay warm and instead of making money, he drained his bank account. This was during the great recession of 2009. Who launches a startup in a downturn? Well, Jan Coom and his partner from Yahoo days, Brian Acton, worked on.

We won't stop until every single person on the planet has an affordable and reliable way to communicate with their friends and loved ones, Jan promised. And when he sold WhatsApp to Facebook for $19.3 billion, he chose an unusual place to sign the papers. An old white building that used to house the social services office in the California town where Jan went to school.

He and his mother had stood in line in front of that same building years before to collect food stamps. When Jan Coom had nothing, he actually had the one thing many people never find. He had a dream. Despite hardship and against great odds, the vision of a better tomorrow drove him forward in his life. That's what a dream can do for you. And you don't need a computer, a movie studio, or a theme park to realize it.

All you need is a picture of what your tomorrow could be as you follow Jesus Christ. Lillian Trasher had that kind of a dream. At the beginning of the last century, Lillian was working in an orphanage in North Carolina when she felt God's call to pursue missionary work in Egypt. The call was so strong that she broke off her engagement when her fiancé did not share her vision.

She sold her belongings, boldly booked passage to a foreign country with less than $100 in her purse. One day, she was asked to go to the bedside of a dying young widow who begged Lillian to care for her malnourished baby girl. Lillian agreed and began the first orphanage in Egypt. Those first years were filled with great difficulty and limited support, but Lillian persevered to realize her vision of not only an orphanage, but also schools and evangelistic ministries. By the time of her death in 1961, Lillian had cared for more than 8,000 orphans and touched thousands of others.

The organization she founded, the Lillian Trasher Orphanage, still serves the needy in Egypt today. For me, the best part of Lillian's story was the prayer she offered to the Lord when she was just a child. She never forgot it.

I'm sure the Lord didn't forget it either. She said, Lord, I want to be your little girl, and if I can ever do anything for you, just let me know, and I'll do it. Can you think of a simpler prayer than that? Try it.

Lord, if I can do anything for you, just let me know, and I'll do it. So, vision is so important. How do you build your vision? There are some biblical models you could follow, but I believe the best example of dream building in the Bible is the story of King David's vision to build a temple for the Lord atop Jerusalem's Mount Moriah. For hundreds of years, Israel had worshipped around the frayed remains of the tabernacle, the elaborate tent that was constructed in the days of Moses as a portable house of worship. But now, the nation was occupying the land God had promised, and Jerusalem was its capital, so David began dreaming of a permanent place where people could worship for centuries to come. David's story reveals the principles that you and I can follow as we build our own dreams.

Principle number one, root your dream in history. In 2 Samuel 7, David told the prophet Nathan, See, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells inside tent curtains. He said to David, go ahead and do it.

So David grabbed hold of his dream and began moving forward to see its fulfillment. But David's idea to build a temple didn't just poof into his head like an exploding nebula. No, it was rooted in the history of Israel. You see, centuries before, God told Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice and burnt offering on a distant mountain. And God was specific about the mountain, not just any hilltop would do.

No, it had to be Mount Moriah. A thousand years later, when David and then Solomon planned to build the Jewish temple, they placed it on that very mountain, Mount Moriah. David's vision for the location of his temple had roots as deep as Genesis 22. It was grounded in the story of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his only begotten son as a burnt offering. And it's no coincidence that a thousand years after David, Jesus Christ gave himself as an offering for sin on or near that very ridge. From Abraham and his son to David and his temple to Christ and his cross, everything was linked and each event had its roots in the one that preceded it. You see, the best dreams don't start with us, but instead are planted in us by God.

If it isn't rooted, it's rotten. We stand on the shoulders of others. We are linked in a chain that we build on what others have done, even as future generations will build on the work that we have done.

That's why it's all right to look around for ideas and see what other people are doing. We get ideas from history and from how others are inspired to act today. To develop your dream, think about your heritage, what you love to do, your life experiences. Think about your background.

Everything in your life has prepared you for the next steps. So look at what's already happening in your life and in your church and start where you are and work outward and forward. Root your dream in history. Second, reproduce your dream in a picture.

As ideas and intentions begin to bubble up in your heart and mind, you need to figure out where to begin and how to implement your dream. So you have to nudge the abstract burden into a real-life plan. After all, for your vision to touch others, it must become as practical as Esther's dinner, David's slingshot, Gideon's torches, the boy's lunch of bread and fish, and the Good Samaritan's wine and oil, and Paul's pen. But David's idea to build a temple didn't just poof into his head like exploding nebula.

Remember that. David had a plan. We never know how a single detail born from a visionary mind will be used by the Lord in helping us experience our dream.

Let me tell you what I've learned. Visionaries have an uncanny ability to see their dreams and convey them in images. That's how David built the impetus needed for his temple project. As we have seen, David's dream began when he told the prophet Nathan, quote, see now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells inside tent curtains. The temple wasn't some abstract concept. No, it was a vision that filled David's mind in technicolor. He was able to convey that image to others and motivate them to action by drawing a contrast. Look at my palace with its paneled walls and glorious bulwarks, and look at that frayed tent called tabernacle.

Shouldn't God's house be better than any home of yours or mine? You see, the ability to see what could be in the future is essential to straining forward toward the realization of your dream. I've been a pastor now for right at 50 years. I've been involved in 10 building programs in my career. And by God's grace, I've been able to see every one of those buildings in my mind before they showed up in the blueprints. I don't know how you can fulfill a vision unless you can see it in your prayers and in your dreams.

Here's a good illustration. One day Edwin Land was sightseeing in New Mexico. He had his three-year-old granddaughter with him, and they were taking pictures of things that interested them. The little girl was impatient to see how the pictures turned out.

She wanted to know why she couldn't see them right away. Land took a short walk in the desert and pondered that question. And by the time he returned, he had visualized a camera that would develop its negatives instantly. He saw the whole thing in his mind, and he went on to invent the Polaroid Land camera, one of the most successful photographic products of the 20th century. Describing how he invented the camera, Land later said, You always start with a fantasy. Part of the fantasy technique is to visualize something as perfect.

Then, with the experiments, you work back from the fantasy to reality, hacking away at the components. You see, having a dream for tomorrow men and women isn't just a matter of feeling a generalized burden. It may start there, with a yearning to feed the hungry or help the homeless or evangelize the world. But as your vision develops, it takes on distinct and detailed images. You can see yourself rolling up your sleeves and getting a grip on the very things needed to press forward with your dream. You can convey it to others in a way that excites them. Don't worry if you can't see the final fulfillment of your long-term dreams. We will walk through the practical steps toward reaching success in the time to come. But for now, what matters is being able to imagine your dream in a way that captivates both others and you. And then number three, not only root your dream in history and reproduce your dream in a picture, reinforce your dream with determination. David discovered that every dream faces discouragements. I can give testimony to that.

That's part of the process of proving its validity. David's dream for the temple excited him like nothing else in his whole life. He was fired up, ready to go, eager to lead the campaign to build. He could see it in his mind's eye every time he looked from his palace rooftop toward Mount Moriah.

He was ready to see his dream accomplished. But then, if you know the story, the roof caved in. God told David he would not be allowed to build the temple because of his violent past. Here's what God said. David, you shall not build a house for my name because you have been a man of war and have shed blood.

It is your son Solomon who shall build my house and my courts. You talk about the death of a vision. Oh, how many of my visions have died. And each time it feels like a small part of my heart dies with it.

I have this little place near my house where I go and park my car and pout when a dream of mine doesn't pan out. I think through it. I surrender things back to God.

And then I drive away looking forward through the windshield and not backward in the rear view mirror. But David didn't pout for long. I love this story. He told himself something like this, well, if I can't do it myself and if God has appointed the task for my son Solomon, then I'll just do all I can to help him succeed. In refusing to give up on the project because he was taken out of the driver's seat, David illustrated a core value of dream building. No dream is ever realized without a huge measure of determination.

If you're going to see your dream through, you have to be determined. Reminds me of a story of my oldest grandson, David Todd. One of our family Christmas traditions in the Jeremiah family is assembling jigsaw puzzles.

This year, David Todd joined in and he enjoyed it so much that he told his roommates about it when he got back to college. And they decided to tackle a puzzle together. To my amazement, they bought a 2,000 piece puzzle.

I've never even thought of doing one of that many pieces. So what did he and his friends do? Determined to complete what they started, they took 10 days to finish the puzzle around their regular obligations.

And then I got a phone call from a very frustrated David Todd. He said, Poppy, our puzzle is done, but we can't find the last piece. There's one piece missing. One piece out of 2,000.

So what did he do? They went back to the store. They bought the very same puzzle in another box. They used the box top as a guide and they went through all 2,000 pieces of that other puzzle until they found the culprit. And with great satisfaction, they snapped that final piece into place. The completed puzzle now hangs on their wall bearing the signatures of everyone who helped.

I don't know if I would ever have had the determination to do that. I mean, the puzzle was just a fun project, a simple shared goal among a bunch of friends. But their determination to achieve that goal was real. The picture on the box top was both vision and guide showing them their goal as well as the exact puzzle piece they needed to achieve it. God's vision is a guide for you to follow too. And when God places his dream in your heart, you become more determined and dedicated and you press on to make sure the work is finished. Oh my goodness, what determination will do even when you're putting a puzzle together?

Determination is so important as you perfect your dream. We'll see you next time right here on Turning Point. When you do, be sure to ask for your copy of David's powerful new book, Forward, Discovering God's Presence and Purpose in Your Tomorrow. It's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study Bible in the English Standard Version, the New International Version, and the New King James Version.

All are available in a variety of handsome cover options. Visit davidjeremiah.org forward slash radio for details. Gary Hooke Fleet join us tomorrow as we continue the series, Forward, that's here on Turning Point with Dr David Jeremiah. Thanks for taking time to listen to this audio on demand from Vision Christian Media. To find out more about us, go to vision.org.au