Episode 1027: Dream a Dream

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1027 of the inspired stewardship podcast.

[00:00:07] Laura Warfel: I'm Laura waterfall. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your calling, having the ability to realize there's always more that God calls us to.

[00:00:26] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Mader.

[00:00:34] Scott Maderer: So prayer is important. Keep praying that calling plus persistent. Plus passion plus hair equals our connection to God's purpose. That's that connective tissue that keeps us going, even when things are hard. Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship. [00:01:00] If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast, who will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:21] And today's spiritual foundation episode about developing your influence. I talk with you about Genesis chapter 37 verses one through 11. I talk about how having a dream is so important to change, but why sharing? It may challenge you and others. And I also talk about three things we need to do to focus on turning our dreams into reality.

[00:01:44] Genesis chapter 37 verses one through 11, says Jacob lived in the land where his father had stayed the land of Canaan. This is the account of Jacob's family line. Joseph, a young man of 17 was [00:02:00] tending the flocks with his brothers, the sons bale holla, and the. Zelpha his father's wives and he brought their father a bad report about them.

[00:02:10] Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of the other sons, because he had been born to him in his old age. And he made an ornate robe for him. When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to. Joseph had a dream. And when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all.

[00:02:32] The more he said to them, listen to this dream. I had, we were binding sheaves of grain out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright. While your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to. His brother said to him, do you intend to reign over us? Will you actually rule us? And they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said, then he had another dream and he told it to [00:03:00] his brothers.

[00:03:00] Listen. He said I had another dream. And this time the sun and the moon and 11 stars were bowing down to. When he told his father, as well as his brothers, his father rebuked him and said, what is this dream you had will your mother and I, and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you and his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.

[00:03:25] No, this idea of Joseph who's, one of 12 sons of Jacob had a dream where he could rise up in authority over his family. And the interesting thing is that having a dream is important, having dreams that feed your soul, that bring wings to what you want to do that drive you forward. From dreams is important.

[00:03:53] There's many things that come from dreams. Ben Franklin says that the idea of pushing for [00:04:00] independence came from a dream. Albert Einstein said that the theory of relativity was inspired by a dream handle her. His Cantata, the Messiah in a dream Martin Luther King's. I have a dream speech was inspired by a dream that he had there.

[00:04:16] There's all of these different examples of how dreams have inspired us, but dreams remember here, aren't just the dreams that happen while we're sleeping. They're also dreams that occur, even when we're awake. They're the things that happen when we let our imagination run wild. I've heard of several missions and missionaries and various nonprofits that have been started through that sort of, why not dreaming?

[00:04:46] Why not this? Why not? Can this happen? But the truth is when we have God-sized dreams for our life, when we let God put a purpose and a drive on our life that are [00:05:00] bigger than what we read. Tab. And then when we share those with others, when we recognize that this dream is going to create big change, like the change that Joseph was protecting for his brothers and his father and his mother, whenever you have dreams that are bigger than what you believe you can do, those God-sized dreams are going to challenge us.

[00:05:28] And challenge others. Look at the explanation when Joseph tells the dream to his family, he's immediately wait, what? That's not going to happen. You can also expect hardship. Joseph actually gets sold into slavery. As a response to this stream, you can expect rough times to come. You can expect difficulties and challenges to come because when we're given a God sized dream, Oftentimes, we are challenged by it.

[00:05:59] And [00:06:00] sometimes that means we try to scale it back and make it sized right for us, which is not what God is calling for us to do. And that creates failure of one sort. Or sometimes we try to twist the dream and make it about something that it's really not about. And that causes hardship. Or sometimes we actually are trying to live out the challenging dream and actually do what we're being called to do.

[00:06:23] And that creates. There's always going to be challenges that happen. There's going to be difficulty that comes whenever you're dreaming big dreams. There's also sometimes difficulty and even interpreting what the dream really means. That may be also illustrated in this story with Joseph to some extent.

[00:06:47] So what then can we do to focus on turning our dreams into reality and actually being persistent and. Through on them. Firstly, we need to stay [00:07:00] focused on the big picture. We need to look at it from the point of view of the purpose of the dream in our life and in the life of others, despite and B.

[00:07:10] And then despite where we are today. We need to focus on what this dream or vision means for the future. We need to get moved from our present circumstances and more future focused. Second, we need to remember that God is faithful to us. If God is giving us a God-sized dream, God doesn't give up on us.

[00:07:34] And so we need to not give up on ourselves or on others or on God. We need to know that God is with us, even when things get hard. In fact, sometimes even more when things get hard, God is with us. If God really wants to use us for this, God's not going to leave us throughout that. And yet [00:08:00] we often forget that at the very time that we most need to remember it.

[00:08:06] The third thing, we need to tap into our passion. We need to recognize that our passion will align with God's purpose in some way, because the truth is when we get closer and closer to fulfilling. Purpose of God. It often gets more and more challenging. And passion is what keeps us going even still.

[00:08:30] That's the thing that keeps our enthusiasm up. That's what keeps our spirit up in many ways. So God will usually give us a calling that is alignment with our passion. Cause that's the thing that fuels us and keeps us. The truth is we also need to do the fourth thing. We need to utilize the power of prayer.

[00:08:53] We need to recognize that God is using this in part to build a deeper relationship with [00:09:00] us. And therefore we need to build that relationship by praying each and every moment so that we build that relationship and have that conversation with God. You'll pray. Is important. Keep praying that calling plus persistence plus passion plus pear equals our connection to God's purpose.

[00:09:24] That's that connective tissue that keeps us going, even when things are hard. Thanks for listening.

[00:09:33] Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listened, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoy this episode, do me a favor. Go over to facebook.com/inspired stewardship [00:10:00] and like our Facebook page and mark.

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