{"id":496,"date":"2006-05-18T11:14:05","date_gmt":"2006-05-18T11:14:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2006\/05\/midweek_lesson.shtml"},"modified":"2021-05-29T02:46:45","modified_gmt":"2021-05-29T02:46:45","slug":"midweek_lesson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2006\/05\/midweek_lesson.shtml","title":{"rendered":"Midweek Lesson &#8211; Dreams &#038; Personal Vision"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><em>I&#8217;ve been leading our house church for a few months now.  I&#8217;ve meant to post my notes on our midweek lessons each week, but have forgotten to.  We have our midweek lessons in our house churches (just smaller groups, arranged mostly by geography) most weeks, meeting as a churhc once a month.  These are my notes, sometimes more readable than others and usually not delivered presicely in htis format, but close.<br \/>\nThis is from last night, I&#8217;ll post others from past weeks as time goes on.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m not talking about dreams you have at night like the ones interpreted by Daniel and Joseph or prophesy like visions of the future, but goals and passions.   What is it that drives you?  What get&#8217;s you excited, worked up, angry?<br \/>\n<em>Tell me about some of your past dreams.  Dreams that came true, didn&#8217;t come true or dreams that you still hope will come true.<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Becoming a Car designer<\/li>\n<li>Marriage<\/li>\n<li>Owning Grampa&#8217;s Thunderbird Thunderbird<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Dreaming is a habit of those who lead the way.<\/strong><br \/>\nMen of God in the past were dreamers &#038; visionaries.  They, through God, saw needs and sought to fulfill them.  Their dream propelled their ministry and their life.<br \/>\n<em>Can you name some Biblical leaders and the dreams they had?<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Noah \u2013 An ark to save his family<\/li>\n<li>Joseph \u2013 Leading his family<\/li>\n<li>Moses \u2013 A free nation<\/li>\n<li>Joshua \u2013 Conquest of Canaan<\/li>\n<li>David \u2013 A defeated Goliath<\/li>\n<li>Nehemiah \u2013 A rebuilt temple<\/li>\n<li>Jesus \u2013 A people reconciled to God<\/li>\n<li>Peter \u2013 Spread the gospel<\/li>\n<li>Paul \u2013 A unified church, particularly Jew and Gentile<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For none of these men were the dreams their idea.  It seems that in every case, God put the dream on their hearts.  For some, like David and Nehemiah, the dream grew naturally out of the relationship with God, for others like Moses and Paul, God had to be rather persuasive, but it was God putting it on their hearts.<br \/>\n<strong>Just as God put a dream on their hearts, I believe that God has a dream to put on your heart.<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: &#8220;Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It&#8217;s only nine in the morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:<br \/>\n&#8221; &#8216;In the last days, God says,<br \/>\nI will pour out my Spirit on all people.<br \/>\nYour sons and daughters will prophesy,<br \/>\nyour young men will see visions,<br \/>\nyour old men will dream dreams.<br \/>\nEven on my servants, both men and women,<br \/>\nI will pour out my Spirit in those days,<br \/>\nand they will prophesy.<\/p>\n<div align=\"right\">Acts 2:14-18<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Of all the scriptures of the OT, Peter used this one to launch the NT church.  Though we are not commanded to dream and plan, but God had said that we, in these &#8216;last days&#8217;, would be dreamers and visionaries.  Are we?  Patrick Mead <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/comment.g?blogID=9928836&#038;postID=114788640389032273\">posted<\/a> this thought provoking idea the yesterday:  &#8220;<em>When you die, as we all will, you can either fill a hole or leave it. Your choice.<\/em>&#8221;  If we live as dreamers, persuing God&#8217;s dream for us, when we leave this world, we will leave a hole behind that will not be easily filled.<br \/>\nI think one of our biggest mistakes in the past was letting men instead of God put dreams on our hearts.  We were told that everyone&#8217;s dream was to be to evangelize the world or the church leader would declare what dream the church members should adopt.  World evangelism is an important goal, and a corporate vision in the church is a good thing for us to be united on, but those may not align with the personal passion and vision that God has created for you.<br \/>\nThe flip side can be when we try to make our dreams God&#8217;s.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salguod.net\/weblog\/archive\/000253.shtml\">One night many months ago<\/a>, I was stressed over many things that were happening in the church, I felt overwhelmed with the burden of communicating with our ministerwhat should be done in all of these areas, to make sure that they were all handled correctly (as if I alone had the right answers).  As I was praying about these things, I asked God, what I was supposed to do?  His response was, nothing, just give yourself to my people.  These issues were real issues, &#038; I may have opinions, but they mostly weren&#8217;t my problem to handle.  I wanted to create my own dream and vision and adopt for myself all these grand plans and make a big difference.  God said no, I have different plans for you, a different dream.<br \/>\nWhile we participate in the dreams of our church and house church, we should also look to God and petition Him about His personal dream for us.  What is it that God is waiting for you to stop and listen to Him so He can place it on your heart?  Are you too busy to hear Him?<br \/>\nDon&#8217;t make the mistake of assuming that if a dream is from God, it must be grand, on the scale of world evangelism, eliminating hunger or a church planting.  It is more likely to be much smaller, but just important &#8211; for it is what God has called you to.  Maybe it&#8217;s as simple as representing God in your school or workplace, preparing your kids to live in the world and getting them to heaven or just being a light of encouragement to those around you.<br \/>\nLet&#8217;s spend this week in prayer that God would put his dream for us on our hearts.  And as we pray, let&#8217;s be listening for His direction more than we try to find answers.  Next Wednesday let&#8217;s be ready to share what we&#8217;ve learned about God&#8217;s dream for us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been leading our house church for a few months now. I&#8217;ve meant to post my notes on our midweek lessons each week, but have forgotten to. We have our<a href=\"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2006\/05\/midweek_lesson.shtml\" class=\"more-link\">Read More <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Midweek Lesson &#8211; Dreams &#038; Personal Vision<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,2],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.8.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Midweek Lesson - Dreams &amp; Personal Vision - salguod.net<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2006\/05\/midweek_lesson.shtml\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Midweek Lesson - Dreams &amp; Personal Vision - salguod.net\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I&#8217;ve been leading our house church for a few months now. 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I've been basking in the new car glow. I seem to be a pretty popular guy with new wheels. Went to lunch with co-workers the other day and they were fighting for a change to ride in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;God and Church&quot;","block_context":{"text":"God and Church","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/god-and-church"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":242,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2005\/01\/im_still_here_1.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":496,"position":1},"title":"I&#8217;m Still Here &#8230;","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"January 3, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Just wanted to let you know that I am still around, despite the lack of substantive posts for about 3 1\/2 weeks. The holidays were a particularly busy time, as usual, so I never got in any time to even post our holiday letter or even a note to say\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Salguod.net stuff&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Salguod.net stuff","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/salguod-net-stuff"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":572,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2006\/10\/midweek.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":496,"position":2},"title":"Midweek Lesson &#8211; 10\/25","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"October 26, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"In the past few months we've talked about identifying our spiritual gifts & having dreams for God. I want to expand on this from something I learned at a men's retreat with my Dad 2 weekends ago. I've come to believe even more strongly that God has a personal vision\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;God and Church&quot;","block_context":{"text":"God and Church","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/god-and-church"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":197,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2004\/09\/church_structur.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":496,"position":3},"title":"Church Structure vs. Freedom","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"September 15, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Justin at Radical Congruency had an interesting post about the tension between traditional church structures - any structure really - and the room to freely express, explore and expand our relationship with God. The Emergent Church (First time I've used that phrase here. If you're like me, you'll need some\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;God and Church&quot;","block_context":{"text":"God and Church","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/god-and-church"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":349,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2005\/06\/when_did_i_sit.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":496,"position":4},"title":"When Did I Sit Down?","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"June 22, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"When did I sit down? When did I decide that it was OK to rest, to take a break? When did I decide that the status quo was acceptable? When did keeping silent become the preferred thing to do? This is not what I signed up for, to let the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;God and Church&quot;","block_context":{"text":"God and Church","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/god-and-church"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":238,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2004\/12\/church_developm.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":496,"position":5},"title":"Church Developments","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"December 8, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"I've had this written for a few days now, but I've been hesitant to post it. I know at least two members of my church read this blog regularly, and I fear both hurting their faith and, to be honest, a potential backlash at me for publicizing these thoughts and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;God and Church&quot;","block_context":{"text":"God and Church","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/god-and-church"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1777,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions\/1777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}