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When God’s dreams for you turn to reality www.biblicalleadership.com ||By David Bowman — Church Strategist, Texas Baptists| Image credit: istock appropriately. Listen to what God says through his word and through his daily direction of your steps. Where God is leading most often is closely connected to where you have been. What has he led you through to where you are? What are your top ten high points? What are your top ten hard times? What do they tell you about the path God has laid before you? If you were to draw six simple sketches of your life story that best declare God’s direction for your life to this How can you discern the difference between a God-giv- point, what stories would they tell? en dream and a fantasy? Here is a simple, maybe even simplistic, guideline: If it is all about you, it is a fantasy. If When God’s dreams for you begin to turn into reality, it honors God and serves others, it may be a God dream. make sure to keep them focused on others. There is always the temptation to make yourself a hero. Remember Think back to Joseph’s dreams and how he reported how God blessed Abraham to be a blessing to every peothem when he was seventeen years old. Read aloud Jo- ple group in the whole world (Genesis 12:1-3; 17:1-9)? seph’s simple statements and hear how they sounded like He wants to bless you to be a blessing as well. The more teenage fantasies (Genesis 37). Like many of God’s in- God blesses you and places in your hands, the more you structions to us from day to day, Joseph, his brothers, are to overflow with goodness and grace to others. and their father could not foresee all the details ahead that would turn those dreams into reality. My friend Dave Rhodes says, “The longer you are the hero, the harder it is to become a heromaker.” Joseph Joseph provides dream coaching for us. Look at his was infinitely blessed by God. He shared his blessings life from the perspective of his teenage years and flash with his brothers, his father, and the rest of the extendforward to his commanding position in Egypt without ed family. The family prospered and expanded greatly in pausing for what happened in between, and it appears the following years. as though everything happened just as Little Joe said it would. What dream do you think God has given you? Where are you in the story? Look at his life from his commanding position in Egypt Who can help you develop your dream? back to his teenage dreams, and you see how it took time How will you manage the blessings of your dreams by and challenges to develop those dreams. Reality is less serving others? like an iPhone snapshot and more like a Polaroid. How will you become a heromaker? If you have a dream you believe God has placed in your heart, listen to it carefully, develop it wisely, steward it
8 TT 138 | FEB 1st - 6th | 2022
