Dreams: Different, Harder, Longer, Better.
John Mark Comer.
Opening Reflections.
Where have you seen God at work in your life this week?
Share any brief examples and encouragements.
Was there anything from Sunday’s message (from John Mark Comer) which resonated with you or that you felt resistance to? Anything else you particularly noticed?
This is the account of Jacob’s family line. Joseph, a young man of seventeen, was tending the flocks with his brothers, the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives, and he brought their father a bad report about them.
Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, because he had been born to him in his old age; and he made an ornate robe for him. When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him. Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more. He said to them, ‘Listen to this dream I had: we were binding sheaves of corn out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright, while your sheaves gathered round mine and bowed down to it.’
His brothers said to him, ‘Do you intend to reign over us? Will you actually rule us?’ And they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said. Then he had another dream, and he told it to his brothers. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.’
When he told his father as well as his brothers, his father rebuked him and said, ‘What is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you?’ His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.
Genesis 37:2-10
Read Genesis 37:2-10
1. John Mark Comer suggests that, for the Church, the impact of Covid-19 has been to cause a stripping away of attachments, that it has been a process of pruning, an uprooting of idols, and, in the words of Eugene Peterson, “When you prune, you decrease the distance between the root and the heart”.
- In what ways has Covid-19 affected you? Has it felt like a ‘stripping away’ of things? What things in particular?
- In what ways do you find yourself feeling less secure, less certain, than you used to?
- How is your heart? I mean, how are you in your soul – the deepest part of you? Anxious? Tense? Stressed? Fearful? Or, contented?
- How do you feel now, knowing we are going back into lockdown? What are you missing right now?
2. This season hasn’t just been a stripping away, it has also been a season of re-seeding new life and creativity. John Mark Comer asked, “What does the Church look like on the other side (of Covid)?”. Because, “God”, he said, “is giving people dreams”. This is “a time, not just of desolation, but of new inner generativity. Lots of people are dreaming right now… I felt the Spirit of God saying, ‘Pay attention to your dreams.’”
- Where do you see seeds of new life springing up? In the church? In your family? Your business?
- Have you ever woken from a dream which felt significant – worth paying attention to?
- Do you have a dream – a sense of purpose for the future – even if it seems no more than “a signpost pointing into the fog”?
- What are some of the lessons we can learn from Joseph about how to live with dreams?
3. “God’s people have always been dreamers,” says John Mark Comer, “Dreams are the primary way by which God leads us into our calling and identity, into who we are meant to be and what we are called to do… Our desires are often God’s desires in us by the Spirit that point us in the direction of God’s will for our life and for our future. We have to dream. But dreams are tricky things to live with because there is always a gap between the dream and reality.” JMC went on to identify four differences that tend to exist between a dream and its fulfilment. The reality, he said, will beDifferent, Harder, Longer, and Better than the dream. He also suggested that “Joseph’s story is a paradigm for how we are to live between the dream and the reality.”
- Are you living the dream, mourning its death, or still minding the gap?
- How do you feel about the statement, “the larger the dream, the longer the wait”? Does that give you hope?
- What difference does it make if it really is true that “the point of a dream isn’t to tell you what is going to happen in the future, it is to tell you how to live in the present.”?
- What is your dream now? What are you trusting God for?
Closing Reflections.
What will you take away from this study and discussion?
What has stood out that you can take into your week ahead?
Pray together (in pairs or small groups) for each other, in response to your answers.
