Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the leaders notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. Dr. Rutland is a world renowned leadership expert. He is a New York Times best selling author and he has served as the President of two universities. The Leaders Notebook is brought to you by Global Servants. For more information about Global Servants, please Visit our website, globalservants.org Here is your host, Dr. Mark Rutland.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: I'm taking part in a series that Pastor Mark is teaching called not for Sale. And but today I want to add into that series a tiny little mixture.
My Dreams Are not for Sale. My Dreams Are Not For Sale. In the light of that, if you'll turn to Genesis chapter 37 in your Bibles, Genesis 37. I'm going to begin reading at verse five.
And Joseph dreamed a dream and told it to his brethren, and they hated him yet the more.
And he said unto them, here, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed for behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and lo, my sheep arose and stood also upright. And behold, your sheaves stood round about and made obeisance to mine. Okay, let me pause a moment.
To bow.
Obeisance is to bow, but it's different, because to bow implies no emotional implications. It just is an action verb to bow. But to make obeisance, which is an older English word, means to bow reverentially, as in the presence of a high official.
So he says, your sheaves will bow to my sheaf, as though they are bowing to a king or a prince. Something like that.
And then to verse 8. And his brethren said unto him, shalt thou indeed reign over us, or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us? And they hated him yet the more for his dreams and for his words. And he dreamed yet another dream and told it to his brethren, and said, behold, I have dreamed a dream more. And behold, the sun and the moon and the 11 stars made obeisance to me. And he told it to his father and to his brethren, and his father rebuked him and said unto him, what is this that thou has dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee, to the earth? Now listen to this. On at that point, pause again.
Joseph does not interpret his dream, he just reports it. The sun and the moon and the 11 stars. His father interprets the dream, the son being him, the moon being his mother, and the 11 stars being his brothers. So just make a note of this.
Sometimes those who hate your dream will understand it and its implications before and even better than you do.
Verse 11.
And his brethren envied him, and his father Observed the saying, skip now if you will, to verse 18.
And when they saw him afar off, even before he came near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him.
And they said one to another, behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, therefore, and let us slay him and cast him into some pit, and we will say some evil beast hath devoured him. And then we shall see what will become of his dream.
Put your hands on your Bible, if you will, and let's pray. Father, in the next few moments, we pray that you will brush aside every barrier to divine communication, cultural, linguistic, generational, rush in over the threshold of our souls, and speak to us deep within that when we leave here today, we shall say, surely the Lord has spoken unto us.
In the mighty name of Jesus, the strong son of God. Amen. Amen. And amen.
More than 50 years ago now, a young Baptist preacher stood on the steps of an American landmark and preached a sermon that was to change the world that we live in.
All Dr. King said was, I have a dream.
And largely due to that dream, law, culture, even the complexion of this very church was changed, largely, largely because of the power of that dream.
Dreams have power, and they long to be expressed.
They long to find some way to get out, to speak, to dream about them, to talk about them.
I have a dream is one thing. To speak that dream out is another.
Now, you always have to remember this. Not everybody is gonna love your dream.
Dr. King's dream changed America. It also got him shot dead off of a balcony of a motel in Tennessee.
So not everybody is gonna love your dream. In fact, you. Even those people that are closest to you and that you might expect would be the most excited about your dream may be like Joseph's family. They may actually turn against your dream. They may be envious of it or jealous or whatever it is, they may turn against it. Your dream longs to find expression.
When I was the president of the university in the Midwest, I was walking through the.
And there was a young girl sitting at a table all by herself. She had a yellow legal pad there. And I looked at it. She was writing a name, just writing it. Line after line after line after line.
Same name. And I said, young lady, I'm filled with curiosity.
What are you doing here? She said, oh, Mr. President, this summer I'm getting married and I'm practicing writing my new name.
However, you have to be excited with her that she is excited about that dream and she's wanting to express it, to write about it, to think about it. That there is that dream which comes from God, which takes root in us, and we receive it. And we have to be willing to tell the world, the flesh, the devil, and all of the vicissitudes of life. My dream is from God, and my dream is not for sale.
Nothing is going to take it, nothing is going to steal it from me. Nothing's going to deprive me of it. I'm going to cling to my dream and hold my dream no matter what. And my dream will hold me.
Now, having said that, we must understand from Joseph's life that the pathway between the reception of the dream and the fulfillment of the dream may be unlike anything you ever dared to think of or imagine with God. The shortest distance between any two points is not necessarily a straight line.
God may take you what seems to be further and further and further away from your dream until he fulfills it.
You'll never convince me in a million years that Joseph said to himself, the night he received that dream in his father's house, he you'll never convince me that he said, I know exactly how this is going to happen. My family's going to envy me. My brothers will throw me in a pit. They'll drag me out of the pit and sell me to Ishmaelite slave traders who will take me to Egypt and resell me like a used car. I'll become the head of the household for an Egyptian aristocrat whose wife will falsely accuse me of attempted rape. I'll spend years in prison for a crime I didn't commit. And then finally, I'll interpret the dream of one of my cellmates who will come before Pharaoh, and I'll tell him, when you get before Pharaoh, don't forget me. He promises me he will. He promptly forgets me. I spend two more years in prison until finally I interpret a dream for Pharaoh, and he makes me the second most powerful person in the entire Egyptian world. Meanwhile, there will be a famine in Canaan, and my family will come to plead for wheat in Egypt and not rest recognizing me because they think I'm dead.
They will make obeisance before the Prince of Egypt, and my dream will be fulfilled.
None of that ever occurred to Joseph.
Therefore, when we receive our dream, we must wait on the process of its fulfillment.
Now, along the way, you need dream encouragers.
You need people that will smile on your dream and encourage it.
I want to tell you about some of the problems that I've had with dreams in my own life and people either wanting to reign on my dream parade or Encourage it.
When I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, I was the associate pastor at a large United Methodist church in Atlanta, Georgia. When I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit just a few months later, I was no longer the associate pastor at a large United Methodist church in Atlanta. The bishop punished me by sending me to the Briar Patch, and there he sent me to a little, tiny country church in the foothills of Appalachia. And the people were just country folks. They were as good as gold, had no theological bias. I walked in the pulpit on the first Sunday and announced that the United Methodist Church was a Pentecostal denomination. And. And they said, you know, we thought so, and we just began to have a revival in that little church.
But something happened in me during that little church, and that was a dream for another kind of ministry came to my life. I was raised in the United Methodist Church. The only kind of ministry I knew was to be a pastor of a local United Methodist church.
So when this dream began to come into my life, I didn't even have vocabulary for it. I didn't know what to call it. I could just see myself traveling and speaking in. In the deep forest, in tiny little villages, in great churches worldwide. Now, I know it's called a missionary evangelist, but I. I'd never seen such a ministry, and I didn't know what to call it, but I shared it with my wife. We nurtured that dream in our spirits, but we never told anybody.
I got invited to be a part of a committee of Methodist preachers, and I went down to the committee. I was 29. The other people on the committee were real old guys, way up in their 30s and early 40s. And so we went through the committee, and then at the end, we got finished with the business a little earlier, and the chairman of the committee said, we're finished early. Does anybody have anything to share?
And I thought it was the propitious moment. I put my hot little hand in the air and said, I do. And I told them about my dream. And I learned why Jesus said, do not pour your pearls out before swine, because that room full of pigs turned on me.
And they began to rend my dream. And then they attacked me. They said, that is the stupidest thing we've ever heard of. They said, that kind of evangelism went out with Dwight L. Moody. Nobody cares about that anymore. You're going to ruin your career. You'll ruin your family. You're going to walk off into Africa. Nobody will ever hear from you again.
It shook me Deeply. Look, I. I was not so arrogant to think that at 29, I knew everything in the world. These were old dudes. Maybe they were supposed to know something I didn't know. Maybe they were right. What if I was about to make a horrible mistake?
I staggered out of that meeting. I went out to the parking lot, to my car and put my forearm up on the roof of the car and just laid my head over, when all of a sudden there was an audible voice behind me. I thought it was God. It nearly scared the liver out of me.
Said, forget them. I spun around, and the one man in that room that hadn't said anything was out there. He had followed me into the parking lot. He said, forget those guys. If God has given you a dream, you go for it.
I said, yes.
I said, what in the world is wrong with those guys? Well, what was that about? He said, they've all lost their dream and they hate you for reminding them of it.
He said, you know that big guy, the one that hammered you the hardest in there? He said, I went to elementary school with that guy. And I remember and he remembers and he knows. I remember the night at church camp. He said God had given him a vision of being a missionary evangelist. And he said he parked that dream. He never followed it, and he hates you for reminding him of it. He said, now forget them, forget me, forget this moment. And whatsoever he saith unto thee, do it. I have tried now for more than a half a century to do everything that man said to pursue that dream, to let God fulfill it, to forget those men. There's one thing he told me to do that I haven't done, and that was forget him.
Because he was the dream encourager that I needed right at that moment.
Let me tell you about the greatest dream encourager of my life. She changed my world.
I was raised in a very, very odd family. I see a lot of young people here. I prophesy to you, if you live to be my age, you'll realize how odd your family was.
My dad was a vagabond. He was a. He was just a rolling stone. We were never unemployed. We never lived out of the boot of a car. He was just frequently employed. And he would hear of a job in California, and we were gone. Then in Missouri, then Key west, then Maryland, then Texas. Just every. Everywhere. Just moved constantly. I've actually come home from school, found a moving van in our driveway, literally. And I've actually even been called out of class and said, please report to the office. The boy next to Me said, oh, you're in trouble. I said, nope, we're moving.
It did have one advantage academically. I never wrote a term paper.
Teacher would say, this will be due at the end of the semester. I said, I'm out of here.
When I was in the fifth grade, we moved for just a brief season to a really tough little school in a. In a tough little country town. It was K through 12 in one three story building. And it was. It was an alien culture to me. I was small for my age. I know as you look up here now at this massive and chiseled frame, rude to laugh at a speaker. And it's hard for you to imagine. In the fifth grade I was small for my age, frightened out of place culturally. But there was one bright spot. My fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Burkett, little fat lady without a great education.
She taught me a mispronunciation for Mesopotamia that was to haunt me later in life when I was an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland later on, and I referred to the Fertile Crescent in an open classroom as Mesopotamia.
It was an awkward moment, but one for which I have forgiven her in the light of her greater good.
Every first Monday she had an educational strategy that I wish every teacher in America would adopt. She would rub her chubby little fingers together and twinkle her blue eyes and she'd say, well, it's Dream Day. And we'd all cheer and pull our desk around to a semicircle. We loved Dream Day.
She had only two rules. One is everybody had to have a dream. You had to share your dream. It could change every month. A lot of kids did.
She said the other dream. The other rule was you couldn't laugh. You couldn't twitch an eyebrow at anybody else's dream. If you did the next month during Dream Day, you had to stand in the hall. And nobody wanted to miss Dream Day. She would process our dreams one by one, every child, if it took all day. She would talk with you and discuss it and process your dream no matter what it was.
And sometimes the dreams just sounded crazy.
She turned to Dalton Tull. He was a dangerous Hulk. He was 37 in the fifth grade.
We were all terrified of him. And she said, dalton, what's your dream? He said, oh, I want to be an astronaut. I can remember thinking, oh, yeah, that's going to happen. If Dalton Tull goes into space, it'll be with the chimpanzees.
But Mrs. Burkett acted like it made sense. She said, oh, Dalton, won't that be exciting for me? I'll be sitting on my couch in the living room watching tv. And it'll say, colonel Douthen told United States Air Force and NASA climbing into this nose cone of his spaceship. Wait a minute. He wants to make an announcement. And you'll lift the visor on your helmet and say, I dedicate this flight to Mrs. Burkett and all the students in 5A.
And we all cheered. And I remember thinking, this imbecile's going to do this.
Then she turned to little Maisie Blanchard, little dishwater blonde from a family so poor that she wore the same faded print dress every day of the fifth grade. The only pair of shoes he had was her big brother's cast off tennis shoes. She said, maisie, what's your dream? She said, I want to be a movie star.
Oh, Mrs. Burkhett, isn't that exciting? Think about how wonderful that'll be for me. I'll be sitting in a theater with my popcorn and my Coke. The Lionel roar. The credits will roll and it'll say, starring Maisie Blanchard. And she said, I'll turn to the other people in the theater and say, I taught Maisie Blanchard in the fifth grade. I don't know if Mrs. Burkett was a Christian. I wasn't. I wasn't really from a Christian family. I don't know what she believed about speaking faith into a situation.
But she changed the way we looked at each other.
She changed the way we looked at ourselves. I remember thinking, maisie Blanchard's going to be rich and famous someday. I'm going to be nice to her.
Then she said, now, here's the new boy. Let's ask him. Well, I knew who that was.
I was 14 before I knew my name. I thought my name was New Boy.
She said, here's the new boy, Mark, what's your dream? As far as I know, no one had ever asked me that. I had never even seriously considered it. So I was more shocked than anybody in the room when the answer erupted out of me. I said, I want to write books.
The minute I said it, I was so embarrassed. Compared to cop and rodeo and. And astronaut, it seemed like such a prissy dream. And I just glared at the other boys in the room and I said, just laugh. Dream this.
Mrs. Burkett took that up in her hands and she breathed the breath of life on it.
She said, oh, Mark, that's going to happen.
She said, someday I'll go in a bookstore and I'll buy a book by Mark Rutland, and I'm going to tell the lady at the cash register. I taught Mark Rutland in the fifth grade. I don't know what happened to anybody else in that room.
I don't know if Dalton went into space even after he got out of prison. I don't know.
I know what happened in me.
I felt an audible click. The tumblers lined up.
The safe door flew open. It was as though it had already happened.
In January of This year, my 20th book was published. I don't believe I ever would have written the first word of the first book if it hadn't been for a little fat lady that couldn't pronounce Mesopotamia.
I want to be that dream encourager.
Look, your.
Your children or your workers or somebody may have a dream that seems crazy to you. It doesn't seem practical or whatever. Don't. Don't kick people's dreams in the mouth.
I don't want to be that person. I don't want to be Joseph's family. I want to be the one who says, you can do it. You can make it.
Sometimes it was a challenge for me as a university president.
Every once in a while, some kid would come to me with some dream.
It was a little difficult.
Somebody stopped me on the quadrangle. Mr. President, you're always talking about dreams. Let me tell you my dream.
I want to play in the NBA. I want to be a professional basketball player.
And I'd want to say, look, son, you're 54 and you're white.
Have you thought about the debate team?
We got a killer theater club here.
But you know what? I decided that wasn't my job.
That wasn't my job. Let somebody else kick him in the mouth.
I'd say, oh, man, that's exciting. Go for it. Go for it and learn to jump, because you're going to need some serious altitude.
Now, why would I do that? Why would I do that in the first place? I don't know who he is.
What if he's the first 54 white kid to play in the NBA?
Or what if he becomes a billionaire and buys a basketball team? All he said is, I want to make it in professional basketball. He didn't say he was going to play.
Maybe he becomes a sports writer. Maybe he becomes a 54 referee who throws big tall guys out of the room.
What I want is when he writes his autobiography, I want it dedicated to me.
I don't want to be that guy that rained on his dream parade. I want to be the one that says, your dream is given from God. Your dream is powerful. Your dream is a gift from God, and it's not for sale. Hold on to your dream.
The second thing is this.
When your dream comes true, it may not look like what you thought when you received the dream.
Actually.
The sun and the moon and the 11 stars never bowed down to Joseph.
No sheaves of wheat out in a wheat field ever bowed down to Joseph. None of those things that he dreamed in his father's tent ever happened.
God has to speak to us in dreams in ways that we can understand now.
But the dream may. May come to pass in a way that. That we may not even recognize it at first. I'm telling you that there may be people in this very room whose dreams have already come true and they can't recognize it. And it's in the palm of their hand because it doesn't look exactly like what they thought back there.
When I was in the second grade, in another of our constant moves, we lived for just a few weeks in Arlington, Texas. And I attended an elementary school there for just those few weeks. Anybody else here ever move schools? A few times in your growing up? Then you know what I'm talking about. They don't rearrange the school because you're the new kid. You have to fit in with whatever they're doing, whatever's happening there. You just. And nobody bothers to explain it to you. Oh, here's the new boy. Have a seat.
Well, at that time, the first, second and third grade classes were preparing to sing some patriotic songs at a PTA meeting.
And so every morning the first thing we would do is go into the auditorium and sit together right here and we practice these songs. The other kids had been learning them for weeks and weeks. I was brand new.
And nobody explains songs to children.
Children don't hear what you hear. They just hear the phonetic sound of the words and they don't know what it. They don't know what it all means.
I'll give you an example.
Anybody, Anybody remember the Christmas song about the fat man? I never. I don't mean Santa Claus. I mean Round John.
I used to. We used to sing that song when I was in church. I never knew who Round John was. We sang about him every Christmas. Round John, Virgin, mother and child. I never knew who Round John was.
Why were we singing about Round John and what an odd name. Virgin. Round John, Virgin.
Or one of the hymns. I remember a hymn we sang when I was a kid in the Methodist church. Gladly. The cross eyed Bear. I thought, that makes no sense.
Why are we singing about a bear? Why is he cross eyed? I Did.
I always thought whenever we'd sing, Gladly the Cross Eyed Bear had a cartoon image in my I'm Gladly the Cross Eyed Bear.
You know, kids don't hear what you hear.
Well, one of these songs we sang in this patriotic tableau had in it the phrase Purple Mountain Majesty. God, that phrase just electrified me.
I thought, what would a mountain look like that has the name Purple Mountain Majesty? Oh, I thought, I just want to see purple Mountain Majesty. One day I came home and my dad said, well, you're not going to school tomorrow. We're moving to California. I said, California?
I said, are we going through the mountains? He said, we sure are. I said, oh, dad, are we going to see Purple Mountain Majesty? He said, well, yeah, we are.
God, I was wired.
The next day we left Fort Worth, Arlington, about two hours west of Fort Worth. My dad pulled the car to the side of the road. He looked over at me in the backseat and he said, now listen to me. We're going to see Purple Mountain Majesty. But if you ask me about it again, you'll not live to see it.
Finally, one day we started up into the mountains and. And I said, dad, are we going to the top? He said, you bet we are. I said, daddy, please don't lie to me. Are we going to the Tip Top? He said, the Tip Top. I said, no, Daddy, are we going to the Tip Tip Top? He said, the Tip Tip Top.
I couldn't wait.
Finally, the car pulled into one of those overlooked things, you know what I'm saying? And he said, here it is. The beautiful mountains, the valleys below, all before me. I said, no, no, you said, the Tip Tip Top. This is not the Tip Tip Top. He said, this is the Tip Tip Top, and I'm going to throw you off.
I hurled myself into the backseat and dissolved in tears.
Because that little second grader could not explain to those grownups I had seen in the cartoons. Bugs Bunny drive his car to the Tip Tip Top.
And I had this cartoon image that our car would sit on the peak of a pyramid colored purple, so majestic. And our car would rock back and forth on the peak of purple mountain majesty.
You can't take that away from a second grader.
And I thought we'd wobble back and forth until my father would say, everybody in the front seat. And the car would shoot down the other side.
The dream that you receive may not look exactly like what you thought. Because what God may have shown you is actually a kind of cartoon image of what it will really look like. What if God gave You a dream that through you, hundreds of thousands of people will come to Christ.
And you live your life and you die. And you say that dream never happened.
And your son's son's son becomes the greatest evangelist since Billy Graham. And hundreds of thousands of people are won to Christ through him. Did the dream come to pass?
Yes, the dream came to pass.
It just may not look like what you thought.
So let's do a foreign example.
Here's a young girl who dreams of winning an Academy Award.
Then she goes to college, and she has the absolute misfortune to fall in love with a boy who wants to go into the ministry. Avoid this, if at all possible, girls.
But she puts her dream on the shelf and marries him. And they get their first little church over in Cut and Shoot, Texas.
And she puts her dream of the Academy Award on the shelf and engages in his dream. They ask her the first year to produce the Christmas pageant, and she does. And everything that can go wrong goes wrong. The scenery falls over, knocks over the manger. Little plastic Jesus rolls across it, but everybody in the church is thrilled.
After it's over, they all go in the fellowship hall to have hot chocolate. And she's sitting in the front row feeling sorry for herself.
This is my husband's dream. What about my dream? What about my dream when a little boy walks up wearing a bathrobe that's draping the ground?
He's got a yardstick in his hand that he used as a. As a shepherd's staff.
And he's got a towel around his head held in place with a rubber band. And he says to her, this is the greatest night of my life.
He says, I never thought I'd get to be in a play, and tonight I was a shepherd for Jesus. He says, I don't know how to thank you. And he produces a little dandelion. Looks like he's been chewing on it, and he gives it to her and he says, this is for you.
Now, she can despise that, feel sorry for herself, or she can clutch that dandelion to her breast and say, at last, my Academy Award.
God has a dream for your life, and it's not for sale.
It may go through false accusation and prison and a pit and everything else before it arrives at the palace of fulfillment. But the fact of the matter is, God will bring that dream to pass in his own time, by his own resources, in his own way. And it may not look like what you thought.
The deal is, don't give up on it. Don't let Go of it.
Don't despise the dream. Here's the thing. You don't know what's a big dream and what's a little dream.
When I was the president at oru, we used to have a saying from Oral Roberts. They put it on the walls and things like that. No small dreams here.
Okay?
I'm okay with that. And God rest his soul, Oral Roberts was a genius. I'm not criticizing him. The thing is, I always used to say to the students, you don't know what a small dream is, that that can put somebody under conviction. Somebody else dreams, you know that they become as rich as Elon Musk. Oh, would to God, he would. And tithe to this church. But that's fine. Is that a big dream? Maybe it is.
Some somebody else dreams of being an elementary school teacher at an inner city school in downtown Chicago, which is where she wins the next Martin Luther King to Christ.
Is that a big dream?
The thing is we don't know what God is doing in our lives. And in the dreams we, we receive the dream and we wait on God. Wait, I say. Wait on the Lord.
Let me bring this to a conclusion. You've been very patient. I was in India one time and the many times I was there and I went to speak at a boys home, kind of out in a rural area.
There was an elderly lady there that ran the boys home and she had a horrible disfiguring scar on her face. It's like a big thick red hand kind of pulled her eyes and her face like this.
She told me that when she was 10 years old, she had jerked a Coleman lantern off of a high shelf and it exploded on the side of her face and it just burned the side of her face off.
From a family of limited means in rural India, there was nothing they could do. In fact, when I looked at the scar, I thought if they could have hired the finest plastic surgeon in the world, I don't think it would have helped much.
She said her mother, in poverty and hardship of life, was a wounded woman. She was hurt and hurt people. Hurt people.
So her mother used to say to her, you're ugly.
No man will ever have you. You better take care of yourself. You better get through school. You better be able to earn a living because no man will ever have you.
This girl used to dream. She said she would dream of babies, rocking babies and babies around her. She'd tell her mother about it. Her mother would rebuke her like Joseph's family.
That's not from God. That's Satan lying to you. No man will ever give you a baby. What are you talking about? Finally, her mother forbade her, said, do not ever mention that dream again in this house.
But she kept dreaming it.
Then she finished college with a straight A average. She got a scholarship to go to New Delhi, to the university. She finished an MBA with straight A's.
She came home the night she graduated to her mother's house. And that night she dreamed the dream again.
When she woke up the next morning while they were preparing breakfast, she told her mother, I dreamed that dream again.
I was rocking a baby and there were several babies on the floor around me. I know I'm going to be the mother of babies. And her mother spun around and slapped her.
Hurt people, hurt people, she said, standing there with my face stinging from the slap of my mother's hand. At that precise moment, the phone rang in the house phone. She picked it up and it was the bishop of the Madras Archdiocese of, of the Church of South India.
And he said, we have a boy's home out in the countryside and the old lady that ran it has passed away.
I know you've just finished your mba. I was wondering if you would go out with me tomorrow and take a look at it. Now. She was hurt and hurt people, hurt people. She said, bishop, I'm disgusted that you called me when I was working my way through college. You didn't call me when I was working on an mba. I never got a dime of scholarship money from the Church of South India.
Now you think I'm going to run your crummy little rundown boys home out in the woods? He said, oh, I'm sorry, I've miscommunicated. I'm not asking you to be the house mother. I want to hire you as a consultant. I want you to come out and look at the books, analyze the deferred maintenance and help us find the new house Mother, she said, oh, Bishop, I apologize. I'd love to have that contract.
She said, the next morning the bishop came with his chauffeur and picked her up and they drove out and to the boys home and pulled into the circle driveway in front of the main building and she stepped out of the, out of the car on the building side. And when she got out of that car, she said, that building vomited little boys, they poured out the doors and windows and they surrounded her and they were cheering and jumping up and down. And she said, a little four year old came and threw his arms around my hips and looked up into my face as if he couldn't even see my scar, as if he couldn't even see how ugly I was. And he looked at me and said, are you our new mother?
She said, I turned to look at the bishop and say, bishop, I've changed my mind. I would like to consider being the house mother.
And she said, when I turned, the bishop's car was driving out the main gate.
And she said, I've never seen him again.
And she said, I learned two things that day.
She said, the first thing I learned is when God gives you a dream, he will bring it to pass.
She said, it didn't look like what I thought, but she said, I'm the mother of a multitude. She said, I have rocked more baby boys than any woman in India. And she said that 4 year old is now a physician in Madras that treats my little boys for free.
She said, I am the mother of a multitude. God will bring your dream to pass.
I said, that's wonderful. What's the other thing you learned? Oh, she said, the other thing is this. You can trust God, you cannot trust bishops.
Now we're going to pray. Now listen to me.
I came here to pray this prayer. I want to be honest with you.
The sermon is just a preparation for this prayer. This is why I came.
I want to pray with you about your dream or where it is right now in your life, or what's going on with you in dreams. This is why I'm here today, just to pray this prayer. But they required a sermon and so I gave it.
But now this is why I'm here. If you'll bow your heads and close your eyes all over the house, if you'll do that, please. Heavenly Father, I thank you for this precious church. I thank you for a church that dreams.
They dream of things. New campuses, new ideas, new ministry, new outreaches. God, what a dreaming church.
And Lord, there are people inside this church and I want to pray for them.
For those that are watching online, I want to pray for them, Lord, that their dream would be real to them. Now with your heads bowed and your eyes closed, if you will, please, I'm going to open my eyes, but you keep yours closed. If you'd say, Dr. Oatland, please pray for me. God has given me a dream. Will you pray that God will water and nurture and bring my dream to pass? If you will do that.
I would pray with you right now if you would just lift your hand and say, that's me. I have a dream. I know what it is. God has given me a dream. So many. So many. So many. Wow.
This is a dream factory in here today. Thank God. Thank God. Heavenly Father, you see these hands raised? Maybe some even that are timid to raise their hand, but they have received a dream, Lord. I'm praying that you will bring it to pass by your resources, in your way, in your timing. God. We're. We're not dictating to you how it ought to look.
We're submitted to you. We thank you for the dream.
Now, Lord, bring it to pass in your way, in your timing, by your power. I pray over every one of these dreams. Come, Holy Spirit. Come, Holy Spirit. I believe you for it. I thank you for it. Now you can take your hands down, but keep your eyes closed. The second question is this. If you say, Dr. Mark, I. Will you pray for me? I.
I'm like Joseph. My dream seems to be in the pit.
My dream seems to be in prison. I. I just feel like I'm getting further and further and further away from my dream, and I'm. I'm losing heart. Will you pray for me that God will restore my dream? If that's you, you lift your hand up right where you are. Yes, yes. Sure, sure. So many. Yes. That. That. That can have. Life can just. Life can just steal your dream.
Yes, yes.
Right now, I want you to say in your spirit, my dream is not for sale.
My dream is not for sale. It's not for giving away. It's not for abandoning. It's not for losing.
Heavenly Father, I thank you. I praise you for these people who are struggling, Lord. I pray that you will quicken their faith, give them a fresh vision, new, new expectation, and the faith to release that dream to you. You bring it to pass your way. We may not even see it the way you see it. Come, Holy Spirit, resurrect that dream up out of the pit, out of the prison, and bring it to pass. We'll wait patiently.
We'll believe you, God. But we thank you that this dream is from you and of you. And we will let you bring it to pass your way.
Your way.
Now your hands down and your eyes closed. And one last prayer. If you say, Dr. Oatland, will you please pray for me?
I don't know what my dream is.
Maybe you just say, I just don't think I've ever had a dream. I don't know what that. I don't know what it is. Will you pray that God will give me a dream? It could be a financial dream or. Or a business dream or a family dream or spiritual dream. Maybe it's just a dream of having a better prayer life than you have. But whatever it is, you just say, I. I want God to show me what his dream for my life is. I just don't know what it is. If that's you, you lift your hand up and I want to pray for you. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Oh, this is going to be an important day for you. Heavenly Father, I thank you and praise you that there is no person in here for whom you do not have a dream.
Lord, I pray that you will reveal your dream for their life.
Reveal it to them in a sleeping dream through the scripture, through an inspiration, whatever it is, God, that they will see what the dream of their life you have your dream for their life is. Is, and they receive it. We're not going to argue with you. We're not going to decide what's a big dream or a little dream.
You decide. Lord, we believe you and we trust you.
Now, for all these in here, I pray that your Holy Spirit is gives dreams and waters dreams and brings them forth to fulfillment for your honor and glory.
In Jesus name.
Amen. Now look right up here, if you will.
May God bless you. May God bless this church, and may all your dreams come true. God bless you.
[00:43:26] Speaker A: You've been listening to the leader's notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. You can follow Dr. Rutland on x@drmark rutland, or visit his website, Dr.markrutland.com where you can find information about his materials and his app. Join us next week for another episode of the Leader's Notebook.
