He interrupts normal service to bring you… DREAMS

“Jesus lived life with the clearest and highest purpose. Yet he veered and strayed from one interruption to the next, with no apparent plan in hand other than his single, overarching one: get to Jerusalem and die. Otherwise, his days, as far as we can figure, were a series of zigzags and detours, apparent whims and second thoughts, interruptions and delays, off the cuff plans, spur of the moment decisions, leisurely meals, and serendipitous rounds of storytelling.”

” ‘My whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted,’ Henri Nouwen said near the end of his life, ‘Until I discovered the interruptions were my work.’ “

These two quote are from Mark Buchanan’s book, “The Rest of God”. They blew me away when I read them on holiday and their rumblings continue to affect me now I’m back at home.

As I returned to my normal life, refreshed and relaxed, I needed to trust that God would give me all I needed to serve his purposes. I was feeling unprepared and ‘out of the groove’. The first ‘test’, was a meeting I usually have weekly. Having nothing ‘prepared earlier’ to offer, I listened and chatted a bit and got to the point where, really, there was nothing else to do but pray.

As I prayerfully picked my way through the highlights of the conversation we’d been having, God interrupted and turned up the volume considerably.

IT IS TIME FOR DREAMS

I found myself praying for all kinds of people, that their reality would be smashed open by breathtaking, large scale, consciousness altering dreams, and that the very structures, networks, social conditions and environments around us would be transformed as a result of God’s explosive dreamgiving over this summer.

Sometime last autumn, I blogged about hope and the sensation I was having that we were entering a season where the long held promises of God were to be fulfilled, prayers answered and dreams become reality.( If I were a proper blogger I’d insert a link here. I’m not, I can’t, so you’ll have to find it in the archives yourself. Autumn 2009.. that means September to November, Hope, and that’s all the clues you’re getting).

I have seen many of the long held, long wrestled with dreams and promises of my friends answered. Since those entries there have been announcements of pregnancies, births, new homes, engagements to be married, building extensions, restarting of lapsed regeneration projects and more. I’m praying for more during the rest of this year.

However, even the most dramatic and wonderful answers to prayer, even the most breathtaking fulfilments of long held promises are but seeds and signposts of the greater dreams coming.

For me, even the notion that God is about to do this has changed the way I see the next month. The small things have suddenly become infused with possibility, because I know God is up to something.

I’m praying for the courage to receive these new dreams-beyond-our-dreams. This summer is going to see an invasion of Kingdom-bringing dreams, vastly beyond those we have been living for during the last few years. The dreams we have been carrying are mere shadows of the reality God is beginning to shape this season.

Let’s be open to receive, first the small indicators, then the huge scale dreams that I believe God wants to send this summer.

May God give you rest, and into that rest, may he pour big dreams.

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