July 17, 2007 - The Courage to Dream

*************************************Cliffnotes available at page bottom********************************************************************

Few things are more damaging to faith than the death of a dream. An unfulfilled desire. What happens when something that we hoped for, or even prayed for, is never realized? Whether we recognize it or not, those events mark us. And when recognized, only we have the power to decide if those marks will be events from which we grow, or something that will dehabilitate us.
The ability to dream is a very human characteristic. No one has to tell a child how to dream, or how to use their imagination. It is instinctual. Just ask a kid on the street what they want to be when they grow up. Certainly the answers will very, but I imagine the younger the child, the bigger their dream. So what happens along the way that makes us stop believing? In short...life. The aspiring NBA star, never grows over 6 feet, and can't jump to save his life. The movie star is told that she isn't pretty enough. And the kid that wants to save the world only learns of the world's complexity of problems and beurocratic mess. So what happens? Step by step we downsize our dreams, to things that seem more possible, that seem more probable. Untill finally we arrive at the point where our lives are consume by pursuing goals that are in our own thinking "attainable." And yet, in my thinking, the most inhibiting part of this whole process, is how it damages and stunts our faith. The Bible says that without faith, it is impossible to please God. In the Gospel accounts of Jesus's ministry how many times do we read "go in peace, your faith has healed you."? We ask ourselves where are the miricles in the modern day, and I ask where is the faith. But I'm not asking of society in general, I'm asking it of myself.
Like a lot of kids, I grew up not knowing exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up. Like many others, I was involved in a variety of sports, and loved the challange and the thrill of athletic competition. As I got older, it was easy to see that if I wanted to keep being involved in sports, I needed to train harder, I needed to become better. When I started high school and had to make the desicion between playing football and soccer (two sports that both played in the fall) I chose soccer, not because it was my favorite, but because I knew I'd never grow to the size needed to play college football. Then in 1994 the World Cup was played in America. The world's biggest soccer event, actually the biggest sports event in the world, was being played on our home soil. The TV stations carried the games, and I became entranced by the idea, the dream of one day playing in such an arena. At the time, I was in high school, I wasn't dumb. I knew that I'd never get to play in a game like that if I didn't get much, much better. I wasn't naiive enough to believe sheer will power would take me to my goal. So I started to dedicate myself to my task. I trained harder. I did drills on my own at home. I joined club teams. I beleived that if I tried hard enough, with a big enough heart, with enough sweat, one day, my moment would arrive. And in truth, I did improve. I did get better. As a sophmore I was selected to be on the varsity team, as a junior I recieved league honors, but my senior year, I began to realize I was off pace if I wanted to play soccer, I mean really play soccer. I just wasn't as good as some of the other guys in the league. I wasn't even as good as some of the younger guys on my team. So then, I downsized my dream. Oh just to get a college scholarship doing something I loved, that'd be cool. So I wanted to play soccer in college, and use that soccer to pay for at least part of my education. But the problem was, there wasn't any school looking at me as a potential player. I couldn't blame them, our team was always near the bottom of the league, and my senior year, the year that was supposed to be a great year, our team got a new coach, who decided we were going to have a "building year." Out with some of the good senior players and in with mostly underclassmen who had "potential." So my dream downsized again. Maybe if I couldn't attract a college team, I could play as a walk-on, and then at least get a mandatory athletic scholarship for my involvement with the team. So when I finally committed to a school, I decided to try out as a walk-on. Well, George Fox was a smaller school, but had an excellent soccer program. But unfortunatly they had just joined the NCAA division III, which meant no sports scholarships would be given...period. Well at least I could still play. So try outs started, and I did ok. Good enough to make the junior varisty squad (actually I don't think they cut hardly anyone). So as I played that year on the JV team, I began to realize my dream of playing on the world stage was never going to happen. But at least, I thought, I'd be a good player on the varsity team one day. So I dedicated myself to the task with equal vigor as I had before.
My soccer skill began improving, I was getting better. In actuality, I was playing the best soccer of my life, just months before my sophmore season was to begin, I began to sense God telling me to let it go. Determined not to give up, I dedicated myself even more, fooling myself with the "I'll play for your glory God," mentality as I only persued further that which God was calling me to let go. Finally one Sunday, just two weeks before our season was to begin, I was standing in church, when I knew for a fact that God was telling me not to play. In a prayer, I said "God if you don't want me to play, you'll have to hurt me." Just a word of caution....this was not a very smart prayer to pray. That very day, God did just that. I went bridge jumping (also not a very smart thing to do). A group of us drove an hour and a half south into a national forest where a bridge was that sat 60 feet above a deep mountain stream. Since 60 feet didn't seem high enough to impress my friends, and because I had already done it before I climbed the tresses of that bridge to a point and stood 90 feet above the surface of the water. Overcome with confidence, that I had already made this jump before, and completely forgetting that I had challanged God to hurt me just hours before, I jumped. A few seconds later I felt as if both of my legs had been broken at the knees. With my arms, I dragged myself onto the rocks on the bank of the river and just layed there for a few minutes. I did managed to make it to the top of the hill, but for the rest of the day, could not walk, and could barely stand. I recovered slowly, one month before I could really walk again, four months before I could jog, and six before I could sprint. And for the first time in my life, I watched the soccer season from the other side. The spectator side. And as that soccer season wore on, my dream finally and slowly died.
The death of my dream of playing soccer, isn't unlike the death of so many other athletic dreams. You could probably just change a few names and details in that last narrative and describe the death of 10's of thousands dreams that die yearly and the athletes who started their quest so many years ago starry-eyed from some movie or TV program. But what was truely tragic about the death of this dream, wasn't the dream itself, but how it marked me. The ways that it changed me, ways that I am just now realizing. And what seemed to make it worse, was that it was God himself that was asking me to give up my dream. I had kept my dream alive longer than most people that I knew. I was no stranger to perseverance and persistance, so when that dream died so too died some of my ability to dream. A year and a half later it got even worse. After much prayer and searching I felt God calling me into some sort of "ministry," which was the absolute last thing that I wanted to do with my life. Confronted with the fact that God knows me better than I know myself, I conceded yet another defeat. I was empty, a blank sheet of paper, clay to molded, what ever metaphor you want to use, I was tired of trying, tired of chasing my own dreams...so in short...I stopped dreaming. I became ready to do the will of God, ready to go where he wanted me to go, do what he wanted me to do, but as far as a 5 year or 10 year plan... I had none. I had none because what if God showed up and changed it, or asked me to leave it, could I deal with seeing another dream die? Or what if just like playing professional soccer, what if my dream just proved to be too impossible. It was too expensive to watch another dream die.
It wasn't that I wasn't person that had forgotten how to dream. It's that I hadn't the courage to dream. You see dreaming takes courage. Courage of being rejected, courage to take the risk of having your hopes fall flat. So in looking at what I stood to loose, I chose not to dream. Not to have a will. Of course I could spiritualize this lack of courage. Words like, "my will is to do His will." "I must deny myself daily and pick up my cross." And in fact, that view is Biblical. But there has to be another side of the coin. As I've been finding out more and more with God, atributes that we want to acribe to God, characteristics, so often aren't one OR the other, but both at the same time. For example: is God love, or just? One not diminishing the other. It's a thing or minds have a hard thing getting around, or understanding. But isn't our God just that: hard to understand, hard to comprehend? The Bible says "as far as the heavens are aboth the earth are my ways above your ways, are my thoughts above yours." We must stop thinking that we have to completely understand God before we put all of our faith in Him, because it will never happen.
So in all of this, how did the loss of a dream effect my faith. Well, in short, I stopped asking God for the impossible. I started believing that God would provide through the probable. Sure God would still provide, still show Himself to be God, but just in smaller ways...in more normal ways. My courage to dream, was related to my courage to ask. To ask for the impossible. To ask for the miracle.
This correlation between the faith of asking and the realization of miracles has been emphasized again and again for me in our weekly Saturday night Bible studies. We are studying through the Gospel of Luke. Right now we are in the middle of a bunch of miracles that Jesus is doing. And you know what He says so much after preforming such miracles? You know what He says? "Go in peace, your faith has healed you." It was faith that brought them to Jesus in the first place. It was faith that put them in that place of vulnerability. That place where everybody was looking, where everybody was seeing clearly their need. Doubt could have entered in, they could have given in, they could have "downsized" their dream. But you know what...they didn't. They knew exactly what they wanted from the Master, and they didn't settle for asking for anything less, anything "more probable." And you know what? They saw miracles. What if the friends who carried the paralytic on the mat, who dug a hole in a roof to lower their buddy in stopped short by saying or thinking "Jesus is busy. What will the owner of the house think? The guy has been a paralytic for so long, can't he just get by a while longer?"
This was no more clear for me than this week in our study. We were reading Luke 8:40-56. This was the story of Jarius, the synagogue ruler, who had the sick daughter who was on the verge of death. So this guy Jarius goes and finds Jesus to see if Jesus will heal his little girl. Jesus agrees and is on His way to Jarius's house when a lady who had been suffering from a bleeding desease for the past 12 years reaches out and touches Jesus. At that very instant Jesus senses that some of His power has gone out from Him. So He askes "who touched me." This woman fessed up to it, Jesus says "your faith has healed you." Then what happens. Someone arrives from Jarius's house and says don't bother Jesus anymore, your daughter is already dead. Then Jesus says the most interesting thing. He says "Don't be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed."
It would seem that the miracle that Jarius was hoping for was dependant on his beleif. What do you suppose would have happened if Jarius doubted? Do you suppose he would have seen his little girl raise up in perfect health? He had to have enough faith ASK for the miracle. To BELIEVE for the miracle. But you know the truely beautiful part of this story? Look at the order in which it happened. Jarius was on his way home with Jesus, with the solution to his problems, and just before his faith (the faith needed for the miracle to happen) recieved it's biggest testing. Jarius witnessed a miracle. And when Jesus stopped the crowd and ask "who touched me." When Jesus stopped and recognized publicly the other miracle that had just happened, I wonder if at least part of it, was done for the benifit of Jarius. So that the faith of Jarius could be strenghtend. Jarius's faith was strenghtend, and he did see a miracle. Without faith we will never ask for a miracle. Without faith we will never believe for a miracle, and without faith we will never see a miracle.
Do we in our day even want to see miracles, do we believe we will see miracles? Or do we downsize our dreams into the realm of "probable?" When we pray do we ask for the impossible? I could talk about evangelism teams that I met in India 4 years ago, who's main way of evangelizing is through preforming miracles. They ask people what they need, and they say "our God will do that, our God will heal you." And you know what? Often times God does preform the miracle. He does the impossible. They don't finish with the clause "if it's God's will." Oh, I know we should pray in the will of God, but if we truely know God, don't you think we'll also know His will. The problem of praying "if it's God's will" is that you're giving space for your doubt. You are afraid if something doesn't happen that God will look bad. If you know the will of God, let God worry about His own reputation, He's actually pretty good at it. In the book of acts, when the crippled begger asks Peter and John for money, they didn't say "silver and gold we have not, but what we have we give you, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazereth, walk.....if it's God's will." Peter said walk, and the crippled begger walked.
Have I stopped asking for a miracle? Have I settled for asking for the probable? Here I am, writting how the death of an athletic dream stunted my faith, and I know of so many that wrestle with the loss of so much more. The loss of the dream job, the death of a loved one, a long prolonged illness. But I beleive the effect was the same. I stopped asking for, I stopped believing for miracles. But you know something? I have resolved to start again. To dream the impossible dreams, and let God show himself once again, to be the God of not just the probable, but the impossible. I used to carry a quote in my wallet from a speech of Nelson Mandela that reads "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world...We are all meant to shine...We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us."
So where does this dream lead us from here? I don't know, but I love where we are. I wake up almost everyday thanking God for the opertunity to be here in Brazil. We get to see miracles happening, we get help lead an incredible new church. We get to pour ourselves into vibrant people who are hungry for God. And to top it all off, now I even get to play quality soccer 3 times a week. God has blessed and protected us here. We have been carried in a very real sense by the power of your prayers. Our family has grown, and we get to hold a beautiful baby girl everyday. I've even let my guard down and let Brazil into my heart. Before this was hard to do because what if God calls us to leave Brazil? What then? But with the courage to dream, comes the courage to invest and the courage to love.
Sure those thoughts, those doubts still come, and sometimes the fear of the "what if" starts to build. But I have resolved that the dreams of my life will not be dominated by this fear. That I still serve the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. I can still dream the impossible dream. But this time it isn't based on my own skills and talents but on God. And I will let him prove that He is the God of the impossible. And know that this is not naiive youth speaking. I have had the privilage of being around men in their 60's, 70's and 80's. Men who have have been dealt their share of hard times. But men who still believe in the God of the impossible And it is these men who still see miracles.
Wheew, that was a lot, what about us? What about Brazil? What about my sermon that I preached a little over a week ago that I had asked prayer about. The sermon went really, really well. I preached what was on my heart to preach. At the end the end there was an evegelistic appeal. There were many teenagers and young people in our church whom I had never seen before. There were others that came that I did know, that had never been to our church before. The seed of the Word was sown, and God says in His word that it never returns void. Thank you for your prayers. The visit with Marla's folks was excellent. Our friend Kim Grimes is currently visiting, and my parents arrive in a week and a half. We'll write more about their visits and impressions in an email to come. I would ask for prayer for our support account. Because the value of the US dollar has been falling dramatically, and because OMS isn't letting us opt out of taking retirement anymore, our monthly need has increased. (Oh yeah, we also had a baby, which has also increased the need). We have been so blessed by so many of you as we read down the monthly giving reports that OMS sends us, we truely feel privalged to be representing you down here in Brazil. Please pray for new financial supporters who would join with us.
Thank you all so much for your partnership in this shared ministry
in Him, for Him,
Micah and Marla
ps. Picture definitions. If you notice most the pictures have Samara in them, actually, I'm beginning to think the camera only takes pictures of her. And the only reason we are in them at all is because we are in them WITH her. The first picture is of Marla's parents with Samara. The second is her first time to the pool (which she loved). The third is of a biking trip we did in Foz do Iguacu. The final pictures are self explanitory

*******************Cliffnotes: Courage to dream**************************************************
This email starts with the phrase "Few things are as damaging to faith as a broken dream." I then spend some time explaining how my dream of playing soccer on the world stage was slowly "downsized" and downsized by in life (and the fact I wasn't all that great in the first place). Untill my dream was either lost or downsized so much it fell in the world of "probabel." The problem is when we translate this to faith, we stop asking God, stop believing for things that look impossible, and thus miss out on seeing miracles happen today. But believing God for the impossible takes courage, dreaming impossible dreams take courage, but without this courage we will never see miracle. Prayer requests and praise notes: just read the last paragraph of the email above. Thanks
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