the G sides

Today we wrapped up Broken Dreams and the series turned out to be much ‘heavier’ than any of us anticipated. I don’t think that is a bad thing, just an observation.

Abraham’s life is a study in 2 steps forward, 1 step back (sometimes more than 1 step) kind of faith. And God is both ruthless and patient with him. He’s patient in that He doesn’t choose to take away the promise. He’s ruthless in that He allows Abraham to deal with the full measure of his choices, Lot as well.

I think more of us can relate better to Abraham than any other character in the Bible for this reason. Most of our walks look exactly like this – trust, trust, not trust. Hear the voice of God then run ahead of Him to ‘help him out’ and end up messing the whole thing up worse than it was in the beginning. Having pockets in our life where we feel this huge sense of entitlement – I deserve this – only to later realize how immature and foolish that line of thinking is.

The thing about Abraham is that he finished well. The last few years of his life — from the birth of Isaac forward, we see a man who for the most part walks by faith with God. It may have took him over 100 years to get to that point – but he did.

We (Creative Team) picked up on the theme of Broken Dreams because the more we looked at Abraham’s life, we saw all these fragments of decisions in his life – Lot, his dad, his relationship with Sarah, Ishmael. These fragments were once whole pieces of a dream of a life that he and perhaps Sarah had envisioned for themselves. And like all of us – life happens and these dreams began to break.

Yet we noticed that when God was seen as a resource – the Source – something different happened. Redemption. Healing. Refocus. When they tried to fix the brokenness on their own with their own schemes, it always ended worse than when they started.

Until Isaac. By the time God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, all of that had changed. Abraham now trusted God no matter what the outcome or directive. He knew better. He had the scars to prove God’s character. So now what normal people would call broken dreams, Abraham would call opportunity for the holy.

It was a good series and one that I hope gave our congregation some insight in how to deal with the broken dreams in the own life.