11 minute read
My Pulpit Message Notes
from TT 146
by TIMES TODAY
The Power of a Dream
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Four simple thoughts
1. We need to dream big dreams.
2. Big dreams will cost you big time.
3. Big dreams are worth the big cost.
4. God has a dream
Definitions of a dream
A series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person’s mind during sleep. ‘I had a recurrent dream about falling from great heights.’ It could be a fantasy, nightmare, vision, hallucination.
There is another kind of a dream that I will talk about;, it is a cherished aspiration, ambition, or ideal. Someone could say I fulfilled a childhood dream when I became a champion. It is this second kind of dream and more so a God given dream/ aspiration, ambition or ideal.
1.We need to dream big dreams.
This year is the 50th anniversary of the last man landing on the moon and I thought of starting off with a clip J.f. Kennedy, sharing a dream at Rice University of landing on the moon in 1962 of ‘he chooses’, the American choose to go to the moon. It was a really amazing dream.
2 Samuel 7:1-2
Kind David had a dream. His dream was to build a wonderful temple for the LORD his God. Today I ask, what is your dream? JFK dreamt of going to the moon, something that had never been done. King David dreamt of building a temple for his God? What is your dream? How big is your dream? What kind of aspirations do you have?
Wangari Maathai had a dream of dealing with Karura forest and the Green Belt Movement and making Kenya green. That was a big dream.
Eliud Kipchoge had a dream of doing the marathon in under two hours. JFK had a dream to go to the moon. Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Ben Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel.
Whenever you see people who have made a difference in the world, all of them, what they have in common is each of them has a dream and I ask again what is your dream? It is still early in 2022 and you still have an opportunity to start dreaming and dreaming big dreams.
About 3000 years after King David another David became the leader of Israel. In 1948, David Ben Gurion became the first Prime Minister of Israel. He had a dream of making Israel self-sufficient but all the cards stacked/odds were against him.
Kitui in Kenya is 50 per cent bigger than Israel. If you have a dream and have excuses as to why you cannot achieve; a dream your mother dropped
you etc, but David Ben Gurion had a dream of becoming food self-sufficient, of making a nation out of something that was never a nation. But what did he have to work with?
He was given a country of Israel of which 50 per cent is a desert. Comparing the amount of rainfall in Israel and Kitui, in Israel you only get 31 mm of rain in southern Israel per year, in Kitui we get 900 mm of rain. Thus the amount of rain you get in Kitui in two weeks is what Israel gets in a whole year. Small land, desert, no water. And yet this man had a dream that basically he was going to turn around his country and make it food self-sufficient.
Has that been successful? Yes. His massive dream has come to pass. Israel has been turned into an agricultural miracle. Looking at the cows in Israel, they produce the most per capita milk in the whole world. On average an Israeli cow produces 13,000 litres of milk per year. And they need to talk to the Kenyan cows which produce only 3000 litres of milk per cow per year.
Just this past week I was reading an article from the chair or chief executive of the dairy board in Kenya saying that if it continues being dry, Kenya may need to start importing milk shortly. Israel has been dry the whole year, but they are still producing 13,000 litres of milk per cow, the most of any cow anywhere in the world
Tomatoes
The yield of tomatoes normally is 50 tonnes per hectare. Israel does six time that much, 300 tonnes per hectare.
Post harvest.
Most countries lose about 20 per cent of their crop meaning that if you have 200 bags of produce anywhere in the world, 40 bags goes to waste. In Israel out of 200 bags only one goes to waste. It is the best ratio in the whole world.
David Ben Gurion had a dream of turning around his country agriculturally and that dream has come to pass.
It goes beyond agriculture, looking at other things, southern Israel has become the first region in the world to have the entire energy day time being covered by solar. We are on the equator, but we still don’t have lights. But southern Israel, 100 per cent of their power covered by solar.
40 per cent of their water is desalinated from the sea. We have the ocean and basically we still don’t have water.
About 90 per cent of sewage water is reused for agriculture. It’s the best ratio anywhere in the world. No other country reaches even 50 per cent. USA is only nine per cent, Kenya is non-existent.
One leader, King David had a dream to build a temple, but David Ben Gurion also named after King David, came many years later and he decided he was going to have a dream to basically turn around his country. What is your dream? What is our dream collectively as a nation? What is your dream as a church? What is your dream as a family? What is your dream as a company? People who make a difference, must have a dream.
2. Big dreams will cost you big time.
Talk is cheap, but if you want to accomplish your dream you have to work for it. If you want to be a great doctor you have to spend some times doing the ward rounds and studying etc.
1 Chronicles 29:1-5
Often we see a passage like this and just keep going through it quickly. But checking how much is a talent of gold? A talent of gold is about 1000 ounces. So 3000 talents is about 3 million ounces of gold. The current spot rate of gold is almost 2000 dollars an ounce. i.e. 300,000 shillings an ounce. David contributed about 700 billion shillings just for the building of the temple and that was in the gold alone.
David had a big dream, it cost him big time. Doesn’t matter what your dream is. It could be a national dream where a nation needs to get disciplined.
Talking about the moon land and JFK having a dream in 1962 and that dream cost him a lot. A round trip to the moon is about 700,000 kilometres. And they needed to re-enter the earth at a speed of 30,000 kilometres per hour. They needed to create a rocket, something that could go up and down 700,000 kilometres and at its top speed be moving at 30,000 km/h. That was going to cost big time. They had to make metal alloys that could withstand that heat, something that had never been done in history.
The giant rocket was 300 feet tall, the same size as Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC) which was the tallest building in Kenya. The Americans put together 400,000 engineers, probably more than the entire civil service in Kenya, working to put man on the moon. These guys were from 20,000 universities in America and companies. One can go and on about the cost the Americans paid to meet JFK’s plan.
1960s we did not have cell phone technology, but the Americans created a phone that could communicate with man on moon. It was an amazing dream that cost big time.
When Apollo 11’s Eagle Lunar model landed on the moon on 20th July 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin were the first to land on the moon and they had to wait before they were given instructions to open the door. Aldrin was an elder at a Webster Presbyterian church and before he headed to the moon in 1969, he got special permission to carry the communion elements and serve himself. So as they waited to open the door or the door of Lunar model, Aldrin took Holy Communion. So the first food ever served on the moon was actually Holy Communion.
Any of the people who have dreamt big dreams, one of the things you will find in common is that they each had to pay a cost.
When you think about Wangari Maathai, she paid the cost. When you think about the kind of stuff she went through. When you think of Eliud Kipchoge who would run the equivalent of running to Naivasha every one or two days as a way of practicing. Martin Luther King. Nelson Mandela spent 37 years in prison. Big dreamers were people who were willing to pay a big cost.
3. Big dreams are worth the big cost.
It was worth what Wangari Maathai paid for as she got the Nobel prize. It was worth what Kennedy did as year laters, he was dead by then, as man landed on the moon. And Mandela became president of a free nation. Also David Ben Gurion.
One after the other one can see the price was worth the prize. People who have dreamt big dreams and are willing to pay the price are going to enjoy a big reward.
4. God has a dream
2 Peter 3:9
God’s dream is that everybody in the world would come to repentance. That is God’s dream. It’s a dream greater than getting to the moon. It’s a dream greater than doing a marathon in two hours. It’s a dream greater than becoming the wealthiest person in Kenya, or becoming the president. God has a dream and his dream is that we would all come to repentance.
Big dreams cost big time. God’s big dream cost Him His very life. In John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Big dreams cost big time. For the Americans, it cost so much money, Eliud Kipchoge, it cost so much discipline, for Wangari Maathai, for Nelson Mandela, 37 years in prison, but for us this big dream cost God His very life. It was His blood that was shed, and that’s basically what the Holy Communion is about. Just remembering His blood that was shed for us and that is a big cost. That big dream come with a big cost. That big cost has a big benefit and that big benefit is eternal life.
When God looks at all those people who turned to salvation as a result of accepting what God has done, when that happens, then God will say it was worth the cost.
When Eliud made it in under two hours, at 1:59 he looked back and thought it was worth the cost. When the American landed on the moon, they thought it was worth the cost.
The blood that Jesus shed was worth the cost when people turn their lives to the LORD Jesus Christ.
God paid a big price. God had a big dream that we would all make it to heaven. He paid the price and for all for us to accept that price it’s worth the price that Jesus paid because we shall then be able to meet again.
