Some years ago, a pastor friend of mine had a man in his church with large, large financial means call him to come by his office. He was nervous, but when he got there, he received the stun of his life. The member said and I paraphrase, “I have multi-millions of dollars I want to give to your church, but I want to see if your vision is big enough.” Now, we’re talking! Unlimited dreaming! What would you write down if you were in this position? None of our dreams are large enough, because, we start pretty large and when some of them don’t happen, we settle. After we settle, we get comfortable. Think about the mentors that are in your life…..most of them used to dream big but got satisfied, fat, and full, and now they leave that kind of dreaming to someone else.
We are about to enter our 4th Sunday as a new church, Origin. I don’t want to ever stop dreaming! I did some God-size dreaming yesterday. I noticed a an empty and beautiful building on I-75 with 28,000 sq. ft. I pulled in, called, toured, and talked to the owner, and my creativity raced very quickly on what it could be transformed into for Origin Church. This is about a $6M dream! We’re only 3 Sundays old….we love where we meet…we can’t afford a building….God is moving…we don’t really need that kind of room yet….we hope and are believing that we’ll grow to need that kind of space…we couldn’t afford the electricity bill at current…etc. etc. etc. Here’s the comma: Unless the dream is so big that no one without God can truly reach it, dreams don’t normally come true! It costs you nothing to dream! It costs you everything not to dream!
I’ve seen God do some miraculous things. God could do it here and might want to…we have to test the water….He might want to work in the owner’s heart in some way…I’ve seen mere strangers give and pay for buildings….I’ve seen peoples’ lives get changed and they have something like this to give to make up for lost time…I’ve seen God move on someone’s heart around the world to give it…God owns us and it all! Our heavenly Father is very rich! Dr. Jerry Falwell was the best I’ve ever seen at dreaming! I heard him say one time: ” I don’t have any money but my friends do.” He knew the power of putting himself around people who could pay for his dream and he wasn’t afraid to ask them to do it.
When was the last time you invisibly thought through the above scenario? What would you write down on your list? Get busy!
