Do you remember the dreams of your youth?
“And he remembered the dreams he’d had about them many years before...”” ~Genesis 42:9 NLT
Joseph, seeing his brothers bowing down before him, remembered a dream he had 20 years earlier. In fact, the same dream that stoked his brother’s jealousy and hatred - that one day he would be exalted above them, and they would bow in submission. (Context: Joseph’s brothers went to Egypt to buy food for their starving families and Joseph oversaw grain distribution. His brothers didn’t recognize him because it had been many years since they sold him into slavery as a boy. The powerful Egyptian ruler who stood before them looked nothing like their terrified 17-year-old kid brother.)
When God first gave that dream to Joseph, he was too immature and self-centered to understand and interpret it properly. He became excited by the success God would give him and boasted of his dream disrespectfully to his brothers. Of course, he had no idea the odyssey that lay before him and the years of suffering that would position him to be at the right place at the right time and that would shape his character and prepare him for God’s unfolding plan.
I recall a dream I had as a young Christian dating Sandi in high school. I dreamed of the two of us serving Christ together in a powerful way. In this dream we teamed up to share the Gospel to people far from God and equipped followers of Jesus to grow in their faith and serve God with everything they had to offer, no matter how little or how much.
That dream came to life the first 10 years of our marriage as we pastored students and planted a church together. But when I burned out and left the ministry and our marriage went into survival mode, that dream died. Our marriage survived and even got back on the path to health and vitality, but I left that dream in the past.
But God reminded me of something this weekend as Sandi and I trained 29 couples at a marriage retreat – our God is the God of resurrection! The dreams he gave us when we were young, inexperienced, and even naïve may indeed die along the way, but he can – and does – raise some of them from the dead.
What dreams did God give you in your youth that you weren’t ready for?
Has God brought anything into your life recently to stir your memory?
Are you now prepared to pursue that dream?