Pastor Jon Burgess
July 3, 2016 - W1627

Have you ever had your dream shattered and felt that your life was falling apart? The Good News is that we serve a God who will take the shattered pieces of our dreams that we give Him and He will make something bigger and better than anything we could have ever imagined!  We saw this in Joseph’s life. 

Joseph’s brothers hated him because of their jealousy and decided to get rid of him by selling him to slave traders. After many years, the brothers are standing before Joseph and they realize that he is one of the most powerful men in the empire of Egypt, second only in command to Pharaoh.  The brothers realize that their lives are in Joseph’s hands and feeling pretty sure they are dead!

Genesis 50:18-23 NIV, “His brothers then came and threw themselves down before him. ‘We are your slaves,’ they said.  But Joseph said to them, ‘Don’t be afraid.  Am I in the place of God?  You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.  So then, don’t be afraid.  I will provide for you and your children.’  And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.  Joseph stayed in Egypt, along with all his father’s family.  He lived a hundred and ten years and saw the third generation of Ephraim’s children.  Also the children of Makir, son of Manasseh, were placed at birth on Joseph’s knees.” 

Before Joseph received the fulfillment of his dream, he had to go through a process. Your dream may be shattered on the floor and you’re wondering if it will ever come to pass.  Join me on this journey, “When Dreams Are Shattered,” and see how God moves in four amazing areas in our lives as He did in Joseph’s:  

1. The Promise:  The God-Given Dream

Every dream starts with a promise. It is a sketch on your soul, an outline in your mind.  You don’t have all the blanks filled in but there is a sense in your heart that God wants to do something bigger than yourself and you know it’s a promise from God and not something you are making up.  This is how it started in Joseph’s life. Notice that in Genesis 37: 2 Joseph was a young man of 17.  Keep in mind how long this journey took from the promise to the fulfillment.  Genesis 37:9-11, “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.”

When God gives you a promise or a dream, write it down, and make it clear.  Habakkuk 2:2 NASB, “Then the Lord answered me and said, ‘Record the vision and inscribe in on tablets, that the one who reads it may run.”  In preparing for this message, I looked through my Life Journals and came across a piece of paper that read, “January 2004, it’s finally here.  This is the year we’ll see all we had been praying and planning come to pass. (At that time, Cyndi and I were interim pastors in Kapaa, Kauai, and were about to plant New Hope Seattle.) New Hope Seattle will find its birthplace and shoreline and birthdate in the fall of this year.  New Hope Kapaa has chosen to be the mother church for this new plant.”

When we were in the school for Church Plant, they encouraged us that if we believe we received a promise from God, to write it down—so I wrote it down, put it away, and forgot about it. We didn’t know anybody in Seattle and this was long before we moved there and, yet, God was saying to us, “I’ve given you a promise and it will come to pass.”  I encourage you that if you have a God-given dream or a promise, take a risk and make a plan, get some prayer warriors around you and make that dream clear as it says in Habakkuk 2.  You need something to run towards.  Then comes the difficult part.  It usually follows right after the promise.

2. The Shattered Pieces:  The God-Driven Testing

Things are not coming together; they are falling apart! Joseph experienced this in Psalm 105:17-19 NASB, “He sent a man before them, Joseph, who was sold as a slave. They afflicted his feet with fetters, He himself was laid in irons; Until the time that His word came to pass, The word of the Lord tested him.” 

One year after we birthed the church in Seattle, everything began to fall to pieces! I had a mind-blowing experience of hopelessness in this moment as a number of key leaders who had helped me plant this church began leaving.  One couple that I had leaned on and put my trust in hurt me to the core of my being, and I felt betrayed and wounded.  That was on the church side.  On the personal side, Elijah was sick, Cyndi was sick, and on top of that in the same week I backed my car into another car!  When it rains, it pours.  It was not a good week!  

This is where Joseph was. You also may have had a promise from God and now it’s shattered in pieces.  You’re in pain, wondering where is God?  He said He would bring this promise to pass.  During this season of my life, I wrote a prayer poem to God:

I wonder what it is that you can do,

With all these broken pieces that I handed you.

Is there anything redeemable at all

From this latest fall?

Lord, you know I have sincerely tried to lift this load

Only to realize that all along,

I’ve been doing this without you.

So, I call out to you.

I’ve cut myself so many times

On these broken pieces that I call mine.

I seek your nail-pierced hands to take it all away,

Right now, today.

All you ask is that I stay true

That I simply trust and follow you

And never take this burden alone again.

It’s right here, that you call me Friend.

If you’re feeling as Joseph might have felt in prison wondering what happened to the dream God gave you, may I invite you to be honest—be as real as you can? If you’re angry, share it with God.  If you’re frustrated, go ahead tell God about it.  Until you do, you will be holding on to the shattered pieces, cutting yourselves and those around you.  When we are broken, we end up breaking others.  It’s essential in the process of Shattered Pieces to hand the pieces over to God as Joseph did when he was abandoned by his brothers and sold as a slave; when he was falsely accused and in prison for a crime he did not commit; when it seemed that his God-given dream would never come to pass.  The Shattered Pieces is a God-Driven Test. Bring the pieces to Jesus and see what He will do. Habakkuk 2:3 NASB, “The vision is for an appointed time. Though it tarries, wait for it; For it certainly will come and it will not delay.” If we are faithful in the process, God will be faithful in the promise.

3. The Process:  The God-Led Timing.

God takes us through the process of His timing. If you’re in that place, there is good news for you.  You are in good company.  Job had everything in life he could desire and lost it all overnight! Abraham finally received the promise of a child after waiting 25 years and God says, “I want you to surrender him to me.  Put him on the altar.” David was anointed and promised to be king when he was a shepherd boy in the field.  Later, he was hiding in a cave, running for his life from King Saul, wondering if he would live through the day.  Moses was in the desert 40 years as a shepherd and must have wondered, “I thought I was going to be a leader but I guess I’ll just be a shepherd.”  Jeremiah was sinking in mud, left to die.  “God, I thought you told me that I would be a mouthpiece for you to your people and here I am left for dead.”  Every disciple of God will find himself in a place where the promise of God seems to be shattered to pieces; but the process will bring you into your destiny and you will receive your promise in God’s timing.

It’s like a mosaic. All the shattered pieces are covered with grout and it looks muddy.  Joseph thought the cupbearer would remember him to the Pharaoh after interpreting the cupbearer’s dream.  Genesis 40:23-41:1 NASB, “Yet the chief cupbearer, did not remember Joseph, but forgot him. Now it happened at the end of two full years that Pharaoh had a dream…” It was after two years in prison that Joseph walked in his God-given gifts. 

The sticky part of God’s Process of The God-Led Timing is that we cannot see the vision/dream of God clearly; however, this is when God is bringing together all the broken pieces. There are a three things God wants to do in this process:

First, we must choose God’s dream over the American dream of a new home, healthy family, etc. After ten years, God fulfilled the promise of the church plant—New Hope Seattle.  Then He said, “I want you to fulfill My Dream.”  He was asking me to let go of my title, my home, my church and move to Legacy New Hope in Kona.  I worked at Starbuck’s because the church is very small and I’m riding a moped.  I was so humbled!   I said, “God what are you doing to me?”  I then realized, in Him is life.  In Him is liberty.  In Him is my full pursuit of happiness.  My joy doesn’t come from my possessions, what people think of me, or my position.  Joseph was at a place where he had to wait two additional years before his dream was fulfilled. God wants us to come to the place spiritually where it would be enough if we have only Him!

Second, The God-Led Timing is that we don’t take matters into our own hands. When it seems that your dream will never come to pass, don’t try to make it happen. We are defined as son or daughter by our obedience to God’s Word.  Your dream needs to be placed back on the altar.  When your pursuit of happiness becomes God, watch Him bring your dream to pass in His timing.  This is when you come to grips with the difference between a God-dream and your personal wish.  Pastor Wayne Cordeiro put it this way:  A wish is a temporary aspiration; a dream from God is your overall assignment. God’s dream is worth it!

Third, keep your eyes on the Promiser. Make the Promiser the pursuit of your happiness and see Him bring the promise to pass.  If the Promiser is faithful to walk you through the process, He is faithful to bring your promise to pass.  The Burgess Family has a milestone coming up on July 5^th.  We have been at New Hope Oahu one year!  I look at the promise God gave me so many years ago when I was interning here.  I look at the pieces when it was falling apart.  I look at a time He made me release everything He had given me and start all over again in Kona.  To be standing here is a bigger dream than I ever even dared to have.  No matter what you give to God, He always gives back more. No matter what your dream is, God’s dream is bigger! We’re so glad God brought us to this Ohana.  This leads to the Big Picture.

4. The Big Picture:  The God-Fulfilled Miracle.

Start with a promise and allow God to bring all the shattered pieces together and He will show you the Big Picture—the God-Fulfilled Miracle. Genesis 41:41-42, 46 NIV, “So, Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘I hereby put you in charge of the whole land of Egypt.  Then Pharaoh took his signet ring from his finger and put it on Joseph’s finger.  He dressed him in robes of fine linen and put a gold chain around his neck…Joseph was thirty years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh king of Egypt.  And Joseph went out from Pharaoh’s presence and traveled throughout Egypt.” Because of Joseph’s position in the empire of Egypt, he was able to provide not only for the land of Egypt and Canaan, but also for all his family members when a severe famine hit throughout the land for seven years.  Joseph was 17 years old when he had the dream and at 30 (a 13-year journey between the Promise and the Big Picture) he received the fulfillment of his dream.  You may have been waiting even longer than that, but if it’s a God-given dream, He will bring it to pass!  Don’t be impatient and try to fulfill your dream with wrong things. If you are faithful in the process, God is faithful to bring you the promise.

The Big Picture when God promotes us is not about us getting what we want; it’s about God getting what He wants through us. God loved Joseph’s lousy brothers so much that He allowed Joseph to go through the process so that when he became second in command in Egypt, he would lead with maturity and wisdom, not with bitterness. Joseph was in a position to bring a miracle of provision that fed the people of Egypt and Canaan for seven years.

Let God birth the Big Picture in you!

STUDY QUESTIONS:

1. Do you have a God-given dream that was shattered? What happened?

2. What is the difference between a God dream and my personal wish?

3. How have you handled failure in the past? What were the results? What will you do from now on?

4. What three things God wants us do when we are going through the process of His timing?