Dreaming Dreams for Your Life

Did you ever wonder if Jesus, when He was a young man, had personal dreams about His future? As a teenager, did Christ recognize the potential within Himself to be and to do virtually anything He wanted?

For example, do you suppose Jesus ever dreamed of having a wife and children? What if He had imagined building His step-father’s carpentry shop into a wealthy business? Did He consider what it would be like to become a political Messiah? By mobilizing a nation chafing under Roman occupation, He could have ruled Palestine by the time He was 40.

And why shouldn’t Jesus have had these dreams? He had every right to “be the best He could be,” right?

That’s what you and I are always told: Set your sights as high as you can. Aim for the stars. What you can believe you can achieve. Right?

Of course our Savior didn’t pursue His own dreams, did He? He explained it this way: For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me (John 6:38). Jesus submitted His life and plans to His Heavenly Father. Christ, the only perfect Man, had unlimited potential to achieve any personal goal He might ever have envisioned. But He chose to say, even in His last hours…not what I will, but what you will (Mark 14:36).

So what about your dreams? Wanting to make your mark in the world by setting goals and pursuing them—that’s a good thing. Christ’s followers ought to try harder and achieve higher than anyone. But to the glory of God. And that’s the hard part, I guess—figuring out how to aim high and try hard, but also how to submit to God and adapt to the inevitable changes and detours He brings into our lives.    

When you reach a certain age, you look back on your life with a bit more perspective and wisdom than when you were younger. Often the dreams you dreamed, the plans you planned and the goals you set didn’t materialize as you had hoped. So how do you make sense of that?

In the end, I think the only question will be, were our ambitions and dreams only attempts to place ourselves in the spotlight, or were they our best and most faithful efforts to throw the spotlight on Jesus?

Pioneer missionary C.T Studd put it famously: Only one life, 'twill soon be past, Only what's done for Christ will last.

I Had a Dream: The Lord's Closed Fist

I want to tell you about a dream I had a few years ago. I didn't make this up to illustrate a point, or as some sort of parable. It was a waking dream, and it came to me while I was praying.

Another thing: I'm not much of a believer in "dreams and visions" the way some people on Christian television seem to be. But I do believe in the reality of angels and demons, and the absolute supremacy of Jesus over all things.

So I'm telling my dream for two reasons. First, I'm convinced it's real--that God showed me something about my early life, just a glimpse. And second, it reveals once again why I admire Christ.

In my dream I saw myself when I was a small boy. My parents and I were back on the farm in Western Colorado. I saw the top floor of our old farm house. It was nighttime, and we had gone to bed. It was a small upstairs, almost a loft, two bedrooms connected by a narrow hall with no door separating them.

My parents slept in the first room, at the top of steep, narrow wooden stairs. My bedroom was at the other end. I still remember as a little boy taking a nap with the window open and a summer breeze carrying the perfume of the huge lilac that grew in purple splendor below.

But in my dream it was dark, late at night. I could see the sleeping forms of my parents in one room and my own small shape in the other.

Suddenly a black form flitted across the room. Like an oily stain, the shadow slid rather than floated. I knew it was a malevolent spirit, a spirit of death, and it moved between the rooms, from mine toward my parents’, as large as a vulture, or a huge bat. As the creature approached, my dad and mom began to breath erratically, almost to choke. 

Then I looked again.

Near my parents’ bed I saw the glowing shape of a shining, beautiful Person. He stood strong, protectively, assuredly, clearly in control of the room and everything in it.

The black shadow began to move erratically, like a moth after you take a swat at it, and it seemed much smaller somehow, maybe the size of a small, ugly bird.

I looked once more.

The black spirit was now the size of a fly. It seemed irritating instead of menacing. As it buzzed about the room, the Beautiful One shot out His hand and snatched it out of the air, effortlessly capturing it in His fist.