Heart Tracks - When Dreams Die

"You seem to be in a deep discussion about something," He (Jesus) said. "What are you so concerned about?" They stopped short, sadness writtenacross their faces.Then one of them, Cleopas replied, "You must be the only person in Jerusalem who hasn't heard about all the things that have happened there the last few days."..."What things?" Jesus asked...."The things that happened to Jesus....our leading priests.....arrested Him and handed Him over to be condemned to death and they crucified Him. We had thought He was the Messiah who had come to rescue Israel."......."We too have thought our dreams were God's dreams and consequently prayed, believed, made plans, and worked hard. And then suddenly it was over, and we sat graveside by lifeless hopes as the doubting began. 'Did I miss something? Should I have prayed or done more? If this was not God's will, then I know nothing about hearing the voice of God." Alicia Britt Chole

What do we do when our dreams die? What do we do when the path we're on, the path we fully believed was His will for us, dead ends, and there is no other visible? What do we do when everything we thought would be, isn't, and we find ourselves like the two disciples. On the Emmaus Road, thinking everything lost, thinking about Jesus, the Father, their power and their promises in the past tense. We, like them, had hoped. Now, we wonder if we can ever hope again.

I have had a lot dreams in my walk with Him. Many of them have died. Sometimes, it was because the dream was mine alone. Much that we call dreaming or vision casting is nothing more than it being a case of our vision and our dream. God's role is to get on board with us and make it happen. If our central desire is to be in His will, those dreams at some point, will die, and He will show us why. But there have been other dreams. Dreams that I was sure came from Him. Dreams I have prayed over, surrendered to Him, and then set out upon with Him, that also died. Why? How? Calls heard and responded to. Ministries undertaken. Areas, both spiritual and physical, entered into in obedience. All embarked upon in full confidence in Him, with full assurance of His Presence. Yet somehow, they died. Or so it seemed. Again, why, how? Why was sorrow at the end of it all? How could He allow this to be? We ask, do we, do I, like Chole, know nothing about hearing His voice?

Part of it is more in what hear than what we know. The disciples were dumbfounded by His crucifixion and death. It was not how they saw the dream unfolding. They were full of hope, but their hope was fixed upon how they believed Jesus would lead. They had trusted Him to work according to their expectations. When He didn't, trust and hope were shattered. Yet, in the midst of the broken dream came the living Christ who was about to give new hope where their old had died. A.J. Swoboda asks, "Could it be that a legitimate stage of hope is hopelessness?" That sounds crazy, but isn't that where the two disciples found themselves? Chole writes, "Walking with the Savior, they eventually realized that their dream, though dead, had not perished.......When we dream with God, our dreams - even in burial, are not lost. They are planted. God never forgets the 'kernel of wheat that falls to the ground and dies.' " Here is where the deeper trust comes in. We begin to see that we live not in the here and now alone, but in eternity. We may bury dreams, but that does not mean they are dead. He has unending ways and infinite time to sow life out of what seems to be death. Chole says that "faith is not threatened by funerals." At the burial of our dream, there are tears. There is sorrow. But in deeper hope and trust, we go on. That particular dream may lie buried, but we leave it in His hands, and we go on....to know and discover new, even greater ones, and leave the unrealized dream with Him. The Jesus they thought they knew was gone. Jesus as He really was, and is, was now with them. The end of one dream was the doorway into a much greater and more beautiful One. Sometimes the dreams we thought so real and so right must die so that His best and truest dream for us can come to pass.

I know I've not answered the questions of why and how. I can't. But I can testify, because I know its true, that dead dreams do not mean a dead Christ. What seems to be must yield to He who is. And He who is will not leave or forsake us.....and He has roads yet to take us on. We may have to bury some of our dreams, but we will never have to bury Him. He Lives! Always, He Lives!

Blessings,
Pastor O