Keep Dreaming (Part 1): A Dream That Never Comes True

TO START

This week, we started a 4-week series on the power, the necessity and the possibility of dreaming as children of the God who dreams & to close worship this week, we were invited to answer the first dream prompt for the series which is the question for y’all to encounter together to begin group.

  • What’s a dream that you’ve lost or a dream that may never come true?                                                        (If folks are willing, write these down)

TO DISCUSS

To start the message, Zane pointed us to the fact that for a couple reasons, we have stopped dreaming. Or in other words, we have lost our sense of possibility. We’ve experienced so many cancellations, postponements, pivots that we haven’t even noticed how it’s changed us. 

  • So, when was the last time you told someone a dream you had? If you don’t dream or share your dreams regularly, why is that? If you do share your dreams, who do you tend to share them with regularly? Why? 

  • And how do you think your life might be changed if you asked others regularly what they are dreaming of?

Before going further, let’s read about the God who dreams… Read Genesis 28:10-22

  • What struck you in Jacob’s dream? Did you know that God wants you to dream to draw you to God’s self? Have you witnessed God at work even when you weren’t aware of God’s activity? Did you know that God works even in the midst of our own inactivity, even when we aren’t aware?

Later, Zane mentioned that part of our distance from dreaming and our distance from believing that God wants us to think about future possibilities is an illusion called Christian Atheism which the priest, Steven Freeman talks about. It’s an illusion in which we are in a two-story house and God’s on one floor and we are on the other. And each floor operates separately. It convinces us that God isn’t close to us at all times. Zane argues that this illusion leads us to make “faith out to being a good person instead of forming yourself into the type of person who experiences a good God”

  • Do you find yourself living as if the two story house illusion is true? Do you find yourself trying to be a good person for the sake of being like Jesus rather than forming yourself so that you can experience the God who is not just upstairs but who is close?

Additionally, Zane points us to the God of dreams by acknowledging the fact that while Jacob dreams with God, his life hasn’t played out anything like a dream...He knows the difficulty of multiple marriages, family conflict, wrestling with God, loss and much more. Many of his dreams didn’t come true. But that’s not the end of the story. These unfulfilled dreams left other possibilities….

  • Do you believe that when we lose what should have been, if we know the God who dreams, we are given the gift of what could be? How could God possibly be with us in our lost or broken dreams? Do you believe that even in the midst of broken dreams, God is with us?

As we look forward to the possibilities of dreaming again in this series, we must be brave and genuine about the ways our ability or inability to dream has been shaped by the past...

  • So, how might offering what’s been your reality...how might offering what’s broken...how might admitting what could’ve been that may never be...transform you? 

TO CLOSE

We want to encourage you to pray over the dreams that have been lost in the life of your group (consider having different willing group members to pray over one another’s lost dreams)

And then close with this prayer:

Lord, may you illuminate our tired and weary hearts.

Show us what’s possible in a world where everything feels impossible right now

Empower us to dream together. 

In Jesus’ name. 

Amen. 

Matt DeLano