The American Dream
You may not be aware of it, but you have a dreaming nature. (I’m speaking of visionary dreams regarding the future, not dreams that occur while sleeping.) You inherited this part of your disposition from your Creator. He created us in His image and likeness so our hearts could relate to His and in order that His dreaming heart could find millions of expressions. You were designed to dream, and you must dream - both for yourself and for God. In fact, if you don't dream with Him, He can't experience all of His dreams, and you'll never achieve your destiny.
Abraham was a dreamer, maybe one of the greatest ever. God liked that about him - at that time in history, He desperately needed a dreaming friend. The Lord had been waiting for just the right dreamer to come along, one He could partner with to recapture His dream. These two friends walked together for many years, enjoyed a special covenant with one another, and modeled for all of us the power and beauty of divine-human partnership. Their story begins in Genesis 12, where God initiates His plan by instilling a dream in Abraham.
“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you; and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you…’” (Genesis 12: 1-2a)
Please notice that God began His journey with Abraham by appealing to his dreaming nature. How fascinating is that! “I’m going to make you My partner in rescuing My dream, Abraham. And I’m going to begin by giving YOU a dream.” Why, when looking for someone to help him recapture His dream, would God approach it this way? He could have just demanded that Abraham do what he wanted. But the Lord is well aware of the strength of our dreaming nature. He placed it there, after all. And also, He loves it when we dream.
With this in mind, God knew that for this partnership to endure for a lifetime, Abraham would need the freedom to release this God-given nature. It couldn’t be a one-sided dream. Therefore, God began by placing a dream in Abraham’s heart regarding the birthing of a great nation. An incredible dream-marriage was born: “I will make from you a great nation” - Abraham’s dream. “And in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed” - God’s dream (Genesis 12). (The Messiah would come through this nation.) Having established the all-important fact that God was including Abraham in the dreaming process, two very important principles concerning dreaming are revealed in this inaugural meeting. The first of them is that when we become dreaming partners with God, He must always be the Senior Partner.
Yahweh was inviting Abram into His world, not vice versa. He is the Lord and Creator; we are the created. He’s the Leader; we follow His leading. Though promising a great blessing to Abraham, God was obviously the one offering the terms and conditions: “Go to the land I will show you…I will make you…I will bless you…I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse” (Genesis 12:1-3). Twice in the passage, Abraham is seen building altars and worshiping the Lord. This clearly demonstrates his devotion and submission to Yahweh. The order is clear: God, the Senior Partner, is offering a conditional partnership to Abraham, not the other way around. The rewards for Abraham were great, but only if he chose God’s terms and conditions.
So often we reverse this, acting as though we’re doing God a favor by allowing Him into our dreaming world, even going so far as to approach Him in a deal-making manner: At times, we offer God token pieces of our dreams, time, money, and desires, all the while acting as though we’re doing Him a favor. How preposterous!
The other important principle shown to us in Genesis 12 is that dreaming requires risk-taking. It required a huge risk and great faith on Abraham’s part to pursue the dream God was offering. Don’t forget, the Lord was requiring Abraham to relocate to an unknown place. Yahweh refused to give him many details up front, even refusing to reveal where He was leading him. “You just go, Abraham, and I’ll lead you along the way. Pack everything and follow Me.”
What a challenge! The faith this required was incredible, and for Abraham, the risks were monumental: What if I’m not hearing God correctly? Or, what if this isn’t actually God talking to me? To Abraham, however, the dream was worth the risk! He took the chance, and God never forgot the trust he demonstrated. Holy Spirit was still thinking about it hundreds of years later when He inspired the book of Hebrews.
“By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place where he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going.” (Hebrews 11:8)
Those who need the comfort of the familiar or the security of the known should forget about dreaming. The required leap of faith will always be a bit too unsettling. They’re like the African gazelle, which can jump fairly high and up to thirty feet in distance. In spite of this, they can be confined in zoos with only a three-foot wall. The reason: Gazelles won't jump if they can’t see where they will land. We are often like the gazelle, blessed with great ability and potential, yet imprisoned by the fear of the unknown.
Predictability and mapped-out routes are for nondreamers and Google Maps. Dreamers, on the other hand, will be found heading into the unknown…going out on a limb…and, at times, hanging by a thread. Pick your own risk cliché; just know you’ll have to do it. But when God is the source of the dream, that makes Him the limb, the thread, and the guide into the unknown. True faith is not reckless, but neither is it riskless.
Dreaming with God always requires the inconvenience of change and the unsettledness of risk. Abraham took this risk and, though he didn’t know it at the time, stepped into the greatest partnership imaginable: working with God to save the world. “In you,” the Lord told Abraham, “all the families of the earth will be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). Though I’m certain Abraham didn’t fully understand the phrase, in hindsight, it is clear. “If you’ll trust Me with your future, Abraham, I’ll let you in on Mine. You can be My partner in redeeming the world - the Messiah will come through you!”
Incredible! Dreaming with God to save the world!
In His quest to redeem the world back to Himself, God is still looking for partners. He places dreams in human hearts, and takes one of His in it. He always has a dream of His own hidden in the dreams He gives us.
God had a dream of another nation that would partner with Him to save the world. Any nation can do this, of course, if they so desire. But this one He birthed for that very purpose. That nation was America. When God placed the dream of religious liberty in the hearts of those who came to this land, He had a dream hidden in theirs: That the gospel would go forth from these shores to all the nations of the Earth.
America forgot God’s portion of the dream, and in doing so turned the American Dream into wealth and possessions. We also rejected God as the Senior Partner, going so far as to banish His influence from our government and anything publicly owned. But without the Dream Giver, dreams decay. The spiritual death and self-centered nature of fallen man destroys them. And now the American Dream is teetering on the edge of total destruction.
Can it live again? Yes, it can. It can be revived. That’s what revival does. God is going to restore America to His purposes. And perhaps the greatest surprise of this revival will be regarding a generation of young people Satan believes he has total and permanent control of. Their dreaming nature will be infused with God’s nature, and they’ll dream with Him of changing the world.
And they will.
Pray with me:
Father, You’re looking for those who will allow You to dream through them. We honor You as King and Lord, and desire to dream what You have planned for us, not generate our own dreams and ask You to bless them. We want You to be our Senior Partner. We also want to dream fearlessly. When You place dreams in us that require high levels of faith, help us to respond as Abraham did, being willing even to venture into the unknown.
We ask You to finish the task of restoring America to Your dream. We want the partnership restored, just as You have said would occur.
As we prepare for the coming season, we dream with You of a BIG harvest. We are dreaming of salvation and reformation to entire nations. We declare that we are free from earthbound dreams only and have been launched into Your world of eternal, heavenly dreams. We declare this and ask these things in the name of Christ, Your dreaming Son.
Our decree:
We declare that we are a people of faith, dreaming big dreams with and for God.
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Portions of today’s post were taken from my book Dream.