Keep Dreaming (Part 4): Crossing Over Into A New Dream

TO START

This week, we ended our 4-week series on the power, the necessity and the possibility of dreaming as children of the God who dreams. This week we broke the mold of asking a question to end service so instead we want you to start by focusing on the overarching question for the final message of the series.

  • What’s a dream outside of your own dreams that you have joined??

TO DISCUSS

To start the message, Zane identified that as human beings, we constantly want the most accurate directions in our life. But what we also come to realize overtime is that God doesn’t always go with our plans. 

  • Have you ever had plans go awry in a way that seemed terrible at the time but over time you realize the change in plans was not only necessary but better?

Before going further, let’s jump into a story that might begin to help us to sense what it looks like to join God’s dream. Read Acts 16:6-14

  • Why do you think the writer of Acts mentions the different routes Paul attempted to take in preaching the Gospel?

In the sermon, Zane points us to the reality that Paul’s story helps us to figure out that God’s mission is in no way defined by our preferences or our plans but rather it’s about letting the Holy Spirit guide us. We need to dream but with the weight of God’s Spirit guiding us because sometimes our own dreams can deceive us.

  • Have you ever seen God work through a dream in your lifetime?

  • Have you ever been deceived by a dream? Have your own subverted dreams ever led you to turn your back on God or what God has for you?

Additionally, Zane, leaning on the wisdom of Samuel Wells explained that in order to sense the dreams God has for us, we have to enter into God’s dreams by “crossing over”. This means we have to focus on being with people, not just for people. The Gospel of Jesus isn’t just doing something for us, it’s actually being with us!! 

  • Are you prone to opt for doing things for people rather than being with people? Why do you feel like that’s the case?

  • How do we live in a way that seems to imply to those we reach out to that we are bringing Jesus to them rather than Jesus is already among each and every one of us?

To close the series, Zane invited us to expect the unexpected when it comes to entering the dreams of God, this means that we cross into places and spaces that we’ve never been, often it means crossing social boundaries like Paul, like Lydia and like Jesus. 

  • What social boundary, what place do you need to cross over for the sake of God inviting you into a dream he has for you (the boundary of those in a higher or lower economic class, those of a different faith, those with different faith essentials, those across political party lines, those with different ethnic backgrounds or those of the same ethnicity but with different views on ethnicity, etc.)?

TO CLOSE

We want to encourage you to close this series of meetings by praying for God to enable us to cross over into places that will allow us to enter the dream of God with God. 

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

Help us to follow the lead of your Spirit 

That we might cross over difficulties 

Because God, you first crossed over all sorts of difficulties for us,

God, Empower us to keep dreaming together. 

In Jesus’ name. 

Amen. 

Matt DeLano