Joseph-Dreams Can Come True Series

Vanna White, the glamorous star who shows the letters

on Wheel of Fortune, was a leader in her church youth

group in North Myrtle Beach, North Carolina. Her pastor

wrote about how he asked her, when she was a senior, what

she was going to do after graduation. She responded that

her dream was to become a model, and so she was going to

modeling school in Atlanta.

This is how the pastor reacted: "Vanna, no!" I said.

"Don't do that! Those schools will do nothing but take your

money. Nobody ever gets a job at one of those places. You

have brains! Ability! You could be more than a model!"

She thanked me politely and said, "But I have this dream

of going to Hollywood and becoming an actress." "From

North Myrtle Beach?" I asked. "Vanna, that only happens

in movies. This is crazy!" He goes on to say he is not

surprised that her autobiography does not mention his

ministerial influence. He points out that Vanna makes more

in one week than he makes in a whole year of giving good

advice to aspiring teenagers. His point in telling this story is

to call attention to the fact that it is not wise to try and

interfere with other people's dreams.

A dream can be an escape from reality, but it can also be

an alternative to a present inadequate reality. A dream can

provide an ideal toward which we strive and thereby change

reality for the better. In his book, Finding The Goal Posts,

Lawrence Howe tells of such a dream in the life of Cecil

Rhodes. He was 22 years old when he conceived the idea of

an international scholarship fund. A plan that would bring

the keenest minds from around the world to study together,

and grow in their appreciation of the culture and learning of

other lands. Such a project would, of course, take millions of

dollars, but with no money and a dream, Cecil Rhodes made

out his will bequeathing millions of dollars to this noble

cause. Then he signed his name to his dream and went out

into the world to back it up.

He struggled against adversity; sometimes succeeding;

sometimes failing, but before long he came into possession of

the great Kimberly Diamond Mines in South Africa, and he

became world famous for his fabulous wealth. He was

comparatively young yet when her fell prey to tuberculosis

and he knew the end was near. He called for his will to have

it read. He did not need to add anything to it except a

paragraph of instructions to his lawyers advising them how

to make his wealth available to fulfill his dream. He did not

even need to sign it, for he had done that years before. As

Howe said, "He literally signed his name beneath his ideals.

He built great castles in the air, and then went out by hard

work to put foundations beneath them..." Here was a

dreamer who built his castle from the top down.

His dream was not an escape from the real, but an ideal

he sought to make a part of the real. This kind of dream

ought to be standard equipment in the mind of every Christian,

young and old alike. As Christians we are bound

to be realistic, but we are not bound by reality, for our ideals

are always to be far superior to the reality of what is, and

they are to drive us on to change the real till it conforms to

the ideal.

In an article titled "Dreams: Pathway to Potential," Kent

Hutcheson writes:

“A person who has dreams is filled with

expectation, and no obstacle seems insurmountable.

He had a positive attitude, is excited and is never bored.”

This means that dreams are practically the same thing as

faith. Listen to Heb.11:1, "What is faith? It is the confident

assurance that something we want is going to happen. It is the

certainty that what we hope for is waiting for us...." Faith

and dreams are one. It is a weak faith indeed that has no

dreams of being more of what God wants you to be in the

days ahead. Someone printed on a piece of stationary, "The

poorest of all men is not the man without a cent but the man

without a dream."

In the Congressional Library over one of the entrances

leading to the archives are these words: "They build to low

who build beneath the stars." Thank God we have ideal that

soars far beyond the furthest star into the very presence of

God where Jesus sits at His right hand. There is our ideal,

and our dream, if it is divine, is to be conformed to His image.

This morning I want you to consider with me a dreamer in the