Drive Thru . . .
Seeing the Summer
Week of May 30th
As we move toward the summer we are getting ready to ramp up for a new church year. We have been traveling down a three year roadmap of transformation here at CCC. Year One our theme was BELIEVE. We dared to ask you if you believed that God had His best for you in the days ahead. We challenged you to believe that God’s plan was better than any plan you could create for yourself. Then of course we asked to you if you believed that the greatest moments that you were going to have for God were not in your past but your future! To get there we looked back and then looked forward.
Year Two the theme was DREAM. If you BELIEVE the best is yet to come then what DREAM does God have percolating within your spirit? We have spent the past year dreaming dreams, learning how to grow closer to God so those dreams become clearer. It has been a fun journey. There have been many folks here over the past year that began the year by saying, “You know, I don’t really have a God-dream…” as the year has gone by many have now been able to see that God has indeed placed a dream within their heart and they are seeing it in ways they never have before.
This upcoming year. Year Three, which will crank up in August, our theme is VISION. If you BELIEVE that God has something you were created to do you then begin to DREAM the dream that God has placed within you. The DREAM becomes clearer as you pursue the Father with passion and it becomes clearer. Seeing this dream with clarity becomes a VISION that compels you to follow. Now I don’t want to unpack this whole idea of VISION too much yet. We begin that later in the year.
I think there are two approaches to life: memory and imagination.
I think memory is an amazing gift from God. We live and learn. The lessons of the past help us navigate the future so thank God for memory! But here is the catch. I think too many people live “out of memory.” In other words, their future is dictated by their past. Their lives could be described as “been there and done that.” And I don’t think that is the way God designed us to live our lives. I think He wants us to live “out of imagination.” I’m absolutely convinced that our potential lies in imagination energized by God given dreams.
Acts 2:17 says, “I will pour out my spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams.” I think dreams and visions are the primary byproduct of being filled with the Spirit. You can’t be Spirit-filled and not dream God-sized dreams. The size of your dreams reveals how full you are of the Spirit. The more we allow the Spirit to fill us the bigger our imaginations become until we dream impossible dreams!
D.L. Moody said it this way a century ago. “Attempt something so great for God that it’s doomed to failure unless God be in it.”
God is getting you, me, and the ministry of CCC ready for something new, amazing, outstanding, and mind boggling! I can’t wait. Each day as we lean forward and keep following we begin to see it more clearly.
Keep believing, keep dreaming, keep following the vision that God has placed before you!
Leaning Forward on the Journey Together!
Jeff
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e-mail Jeff at jdixon@touchandchange.com