When Dreams Delay

  Dreams are a vital part of connecting the 'what is' with the what 'will be' in our future. Our interior being was meant to actively engage and interact with our dream world. A man or woman with an active faith life will not easily dismiss the power and purpose of dreams in their lives. God uses dreams to paint broad brush strokes of hope onto our souls. They can act as a catalyst or ignition device to move and act in a specific direction or purpose requiring both discipline and risk taking. A dreamless life is a faithless life. A dreamless life is a symptom of a soul that has lost its ability or even desire to be fully human.
  Perhaps you have found yourself struggling to pursue your past dreams. Maybe it's been a very long time since you've thought about an earlier time in your life when so many possibilities ran rapidly through your heart and mind. Perhaps somewhere along the way you were beaten down by some mistakes or failures in your life. Someone might have told you that dreamers are irresponsible and that you needed to get a 'responsible' plan together and forget about the deepest desires in your heart.
  The challenge for many of us who receive a very real dream and vision for our lives is not its validity or possibility. The biggest challenge for dreamers is that there is a 'time between' what we see with our souls and what we see with our eyes. Dreams are really 'faith vision'. Dreams enable us to see the future before it happens. They are real....they are substance and yet they are 'not yet'. The Bible is largely an unveiling of God's will and purposes into the earth....dreams being released into the heart and minds of people willing to walk by faith into the future planned in advance. The grand adventure of all our lives is so magnificent that when we stop imagining, stop dreaming....we cease to really live as we were meant to. There in the land of the 'time between' we often falter and lose hope about our dreams ever coming to pass. We stop hoping, stop believing, stop dreaming....and slowly and painfully begin to die on the inside.
  In my own life I've had to learn that just because my dreams are delayed does not mean that they are in anyway denied or invalid. There is a purpose and a plan even in the delays to physically seeing a spiritual dream become a reality. One of my early life dreams was to live and work in Asia as a medical missionary. In 1989 I began talking with an Ophthalmologist in England about preparing to help establish an eye hospital in Pakistan. What began as broad brush strokes of purpose and mission over  time became a finely detailed painting of faith enmeshed in my soul. I believed in it long before I saw it in reality. All along the journey there were specific points of testing and trial that threatened to undue the faith vision I so desired to live. Many times I thought of quitting and giving up on the dream. Every great dream requires a corresponding great faith to accomplish it. Great faith is not born out of ease and comfort. Great faith is born out of adversity, resistance, testing and trial. When I initially was exploring going to work in Pakistan as an eye nurse, I was an officer in the United States Navy Nurse Corps. I had served in the military for seven years and was making a 'good living'. I had wanted to perhaps do work overseas while still keeping my good job and career....security. But God clearly and dramatically (I'll tell the full story later) told me I needed to resign from the military and serve him full time. I left the U.S. Navy in the fall of 1990 after completing my term of service. I then worked in hospitals in Pensacola as an ICU staff nurse. I was supposed to be 'raising support' to enable me to serve as a missionary overseas. In other words I needed to somehow convince people and perhaps churches to pledge monthly financial support to enable me to work and establish the hospital in Pakistan. I honestly had no idea how to do this and faltered for many months. One day I received a call from our mission agency director on the phone. The call was brief, frank and discouraging, "Jim, I think you are not going to make it as a missionary. You have not raised support. You might want to give up and move on." I hung up the phone. I told my Mary what my director had said and then I fell onto the couch in our living room in despair. I went into a deep sleep and had a dream that I will never forget. In the dream I was standing by a rail road track with a slow moving train going by. I was watching the cars go by and noticed that there were loads of fresh fruit on the insides of the box cars. I felt like I wanted to get onto the cars... I wanted to get on board...but I felt a strange and dark presence lurking nearby resisting me...not allowing me to get onto the train. I felt this huge inner struggle going on and then I woke up in a full sweat on the couch. I woke up and then I understood some things about my future and my dreams. I understood that there is a battle for our future... for our dreams and that I must be willing to fight for my dreams... in prayer and in faith. A turning point erupted inside of me that day. I began to believe in my dreams at a deeper level and also began to understand more fully the cost of those dreams. The cost of pushing through... the cost of resisting discouragement....the cost of believing when others disbelieve. There will still more delays to encounter but all of them were not meant to deny the God born future I desired.... no they were meant to do a deeper work in me... shaping my character, preparing relationships, forging partnerships and softening hearts. You see, our dreams are not isolated from a much bigger reality we all need to embrace. God is big....and we are small. When we look up at the sky and see the immense beauty of a star lit night it should humble us and also encourage us. Each star has its purpose...its place and its light in the sky. It got there on purpose and its destiny is assured. It will burn and it will enlighten exactly that portion of sky it was created to.  So it is with you and me. Today, I encourage you to begin dreaming.... or dream again. The dreams for your life might be delayed but in God and by faith they will come to pass. Don't lose hope for your dreams connect you with a loving God and a beautiful humanity waiting on the dreamers who won't quit before the night ends.

Jim