I finished reading "Me, Myself and Bob" by Phil Vischer. One of the biggest things that hit me was how much Phil's journey was like Joseph's in the Bible. You see, God gave Joseph a big dream. It was a dream that he would one day lead his family. It was going on schedule. His father had already agreed that this would happen when he gave him the coat. His brothers knew it and hated him for it. Suddenly it was all ripped away from him.
Phil was much the same way. God gave him a dream of a media company. It was going along splendidly and then it was ripped away.
I think of Moses and there is a very interesting verse in the book of Acts. Stephen is talking to the Sanhedrin about to be executed. He goes through a systematic theology from Abraham to Jesus and this verse is part of his narrative on Moses: "He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand, but they did not understand." According to this, God gave Moses the vision to see that he would one day lead the people of Israel out of Egypt. And then he had to spend the next 40 years having his dream broken. Joseph spent 17 years having his dream torn asunder. Phil took about 10 years from the death of his Big Idea and Jellyfish really taking off.
I see it over and over in scripture and in life that God gives people dreams of what is to come but then they take those dreams and manipulate them to their own, take ownership and begin believing in the dream instead of the God who gave the dream. Then it takes God ripping the dream back away and refocusing the person back on God, forgetting the dream and becoming completely empty, humble beyond measure. It is at this point that God can use the dreamer again because it is not about the dream anymore.
A while back I talked about the song from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat about how any dream will do. It's not the dream. Any dream doesn't do -- it's the dreamgiver.
