Dreaming of Your Perfect World? Not in this life! 11-16-14 By Kelly Durant
A study of the life of Job, Elijah, John the Baptist Jesus said: Matthew 21:44 “And whoever falls on this stone will be broken; but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder.”
2. How many of you have sadly laughed when you have heard speakers, preachers, or read in books, that anyone with faith can speak into existence the dream reality they want! These erroneous ones claim that you can command God to give you the wealth and the material blessings you deserve! Just demand what’s yours from God! I pray the Holy Spirit protects you from such misguided ideas and theologies! Jesus had no place to lay His head and life here is not easy!
Our reward is in heaven, so why should any of us worry so much about what we have while on earth? Everyone who has read the Bible knows well that Jesus was not rich! He exposed the rich young ruler as loving riches more than God’s will. Many parables of Jesus express that in this life we will have no security, and while building bigger barns we may die in the night! In the end we are all just unjust, undeserving servants and the perfect world we dream of is only going to be in heaven! Many people communicate with God according to their own ideas, premises, and demise of how they want the world to function around them, but this is not how God’s plans come to be a reality in our lives. This is my warning to you, life may not always be as you want it to be!
People, even believers, often forget how easily their selfish sinful human condition often influences their dreams and they live by their illusions to avoid the reality of seeing who they really are or in accepting their lot in life: It all is because of our fallen world. Throughout the Holy Scriptures it is clear, not one of us controls God, and God does not even control us if we don’t want to let Him! Did you pray for His will to be done in your life today? We pray, ‘thy will be done’, right? If so then this implies you leaving behind your plans, and your expectations and yes, your dreams as well! God provides for you and me, giving us contentment despite our surrounding conditions, as long as we worship Him and are obedient. Luke 14:33 So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple. This includes what’s in our dreams in the future as well!
3. Jesus said: Matthew 21:44 “And whoever falls on this stone will be broken; but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder.” Jesus is the stone. It is God’s plan for you and me to die to ourselves, to become like a dead seed so that you and I may blossom back to live again. You and I are just worthless rocks, but if we willingly accept getting broken and smashed open, then the beauty of the crystals (like in the Brazilian stones) inside will show for others to awe and wonder at. Those who never want to accept God’s broken-ness through Jesus will one day be broken beyond recognition and usefulness; made powder in His judgment.
I am addressing this because too many people lately have a misconception of God, that God is there to serve you and me, and in their minds God should be providing for each of us our dream world. The ultimate dream world will only happen in heaven! In the meantime this world is headed for a crash course! God has us temporarily here in this terrible place to be learning how to love Him, His Son, and others, learning obedience by the things we suffer, just as Jesus learned. Hebrews 5:8 Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered;
Everyone must willingly fall on the rock (Jesus) and be broken apart and get humbled and remade and reshaped in life. Actually, just living out life’s circumstances as you wind on down the road will be enough to break you! But all the lessons and suffering will all be for nothing and wasted unless you capture the soul reshaping lessons God has in it for you.
4. Consider this, due to our mental blocks, due to our living in our own idea of what the world should be like influenced by media and culture, and due to our resisting of God’s breakings, many of us may actually be living in a bubble or in an artificial world. Ask yourself, am I honestly being sensitive and open to God letting His mysterious plans work in me? Have you signed a blank page for Him to fill in?
Here are 3 quick case studies of God’s servants in the Bible. These are 3 people of God that suffered tremendously and it cost them but they surrendered to accepting God’s will. These great men of God had to give up different things such as their position, wealth, health, freedom, and loved ones. They were glorious and superior to other men for a season but then they suffered some severe losses. The life of Jesus is paralleled in these lessons as well. He was glorious healing the sick and raising the dead, but look how He was hated and crucified in the end! How he suffered with only a lasting handful of followers when dying! But all of these and millions live eternally in glory because of Him being faithful!
5. What does everyone know about the Book of Job? That Job had incredible riches but lost them all suddenly, that the devil wanted to tempt Him to curse God and die, but in the end due to his faithfulness God, he got returned to Him double of what he lost! Not everyone in this life gets back the things they lose!
This is a great story with a great lesson on faithfulness but remember Job did not know how it was going to end: to him in the middle of the trial it was the very end! Job lived in his own perfect world where he loved God and God loved him back, and God permitted him to be superior to others. Everyone knew God favored him because he had great riches, and a big family and a perfect world!
Many people live in this type of modern illusive world where they think nothing will ever go wrong but when it does, what a faith crisis and dilemma it is! It can cause a complete nervous breakdown! Isn’t God supposed to provide and protect? He always does, God wins in the end but only if we are willing to give up our idea of what He should be doing and submit to learn humility and love.
6. Job’s friends could not console him in his extreme pain! He had boils all over his body, thieves had stolen all of his thousands of camels and animals, and the worst of it was it seemed God had abandoned him! He had done no sin, but he was put to the test. What poverty and horrible circumstances! His pain was unbearable!
Listen to this cruel statement, Job 2:9 Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die!” When your or my world is coming apart what happens? Instead of getting support from those closest to us, we quite often get criticism and cruelty, and as the saying goes ‘people make firewood from the fallen tree’. Jesus had compassion on the broken ones, we should too!
Isn’t that what happened to Jesus? How can you or I expect any better in our life? Prepare yourself, life is long and you and I have no clue of what sickness, or loss of home, freedom, and wealth is to come. Just praise God to know that like Job that if you are faithful you will be blessed in heaven and maybe on earth as well: Blessings will happen beyond your own imagination and dreams one day!
7. Now take into account a man that was so close to God he called fire down from heaven on Mt. Carmel! Elijah was not only a righteous man but he must have been quite strong as well because he killed 450 evil Baal worshippers in one day! The evil Baal worshippers sacrificed to false gods and Elijah wanted justice.
I Kings 18:22 Then Elijah said to the people, “I alone am left a prophet of the Lord; but Baal’s prophets are four hundred and fifty men. 1 Kings 18:40 And Elijah said to them, “Seize the prophets of Baal! Do not let one of them escape!” So they seized them; and Elijah brought them down to the Brook Kishon and executed them there. Never forget despite its unpopularity, we play a role in stopping evil!
After this great moment he had to escape evil queen Jezebel’s command to kill him! I Kings 19:4 But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he prayed that he might die, and said, “It is enough! Now, Lord, take my life, for I am no better than my fathers!”
8. God provided for him food by the ravens bringing it to him daily by the stream where he lived alone in the woods. In Elijah’s mind he was supposed to be the great new leader of Israel. He just proved how God is victorious so how did his world fall apart so quickly? Once again we see that God’s plans do not always happen within our ideas of expectations. God deals with all things His way.
Reflect on what we just read here in I Kings 19:4, a prophet of God is asking God to let him die! Have you ever felt that way that you want to just die?! I know I have about a half dozen times! I have prayed like Elijah on a few occasions when I have felt like life is enough already. I have complained, “Lord, these people in this place where you have me now are horrible and do not genuinely convert, they are two-faced, I have wasted my life, time, love and effort on so many unthankful abusers, I don’t want to live and keep on doing this anymore!”
But in the end God wins me back to the right compassionate attitude! Everything is a process and conquering evil takes much time so each of us must be patient when God has us in a time out. Jezebel was killed not long afterwards and Elijah lived to do more miracles! Encouragement comes, we have to pray and just wait!
9. Now the last person we will look at who reached the bottom and was disillusioned with reality and what should have been while rotting away in a shattered world was John the Baptist. He was truly brave and countered the corrupt system, even telling Herod it was unlawful for him to have his brother’s wife. In a time when the Romans would kill you for anything, he certainly had audacity to start up what would be considered a “holiness sect” today. He had a few faithful friends and followers in the desert who preached with him about repentance and holy living (as we Salvationists preach) and they water baptized as an expression of a desire to live for God with a clean spirit. Remember John made it known that Jesus would baptize His followers with ‘spirit and fire’!
He was God’s man for that hour but his mission was short lived. Jesus even said that he was one of the greatest! Matthew 11:11 “Assuredly, I say to you, among those born of women there has not risen one greater than John the Baptist; but he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”
But when John was in prison he was not living in the world he thought he should be living in! He asked himself, “Was Jesus real, was it all in vain?” Matt 11: 2 And when John had heard in prison about the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples. 3 and said to Him, “Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?” What an absurd question! John saw the heavens open and the Holy Ghost spoke, Matthew 3:17 And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
John was human and became confused and discouraged in the loneliness and isolation. It can happen to anyone of us! John had no clue he was going to lose his head over an exotic dance as a revenge on him from Herod’s wife. An early promotion to glory in heaven was what God knew was best for him! We must all be willing to accept God’s will, and actually we must accept God’s will as in Romans 14:8 For if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.
10. I get encouraged when I read these types of stories of the lives of the people of God! No person of faith has ever had life easy, and if your life is easy, and you are not suffering persecution for Christ’s sake as most have, just accept it as a blessing because may happen one day! John Wesley, the first Methodist who preached over 40,000 sermons in his lifetime came to the U. S. in Georgia for a time, but he failed to convert anyone after a few thousand sermons in America and be able to start a mission! How discouraging after being so successful in England! Only after his death did his Methodists churches really take root in Georgia and everywhere else in the USA. I am sure he dreamed to see America convert to Christ, but he suffered sadly to not see his dreams come true! I can relate to his suffering as a disillusioned dreamer who has frustratingly not seen enough people in the world follow Jesus and obey His mission of love & salvation!
The reality is the world will never be as you and I want it to be! All of us are subject to the will of God and often the evil ones in this world changes everyone’s plans! Having reviewed all this, don’t you agree that none of us should create in our minds dreams or plans for a perfect world, of a perfect Corps or church, of perfect leaders, or of a world getting better in general as it may not happen?
It is better to just not dream for anything! God will give you more than what you could ever dream of in heaven! Another reality on earth is that not all is suffering; there are happy fulfilling times as well! Many of them!
How much obedience do you and I have, how much of our dreams are the dreams of the Lord? Are you letting God break you open so you are useful? The dreams in your mind for the future need to be laid on the altar of sacrifice! Are you willing to give up your world in God’s hands today? Every person of God, even Jesus, had to give up all, and now He and mega millions live in eternal glory! Come, forget the past and don’t worry about the future, confess your weaknesses, fears, and dreams, let God’s will be done in you!
