Gwen Shaw的部落格

Behold, the Dreamer Cometh!  by Sister Gwen Shaw

But they saw him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him. "Here comes that dreamer!" they said to each other.  "Come now, let's kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him.  Then we'll see what comes of his dreams." (Genesis 37:18-20)

The world resents a "dreamer." They hated Joseph because he saw wonderful 有點ahead of him, and he had faith that God would make all his dreams come to pass.

It was Joseph's dreams that got him into trouble, and it was his understanding of dreams that got him out of trouble and elevated him to Viceroy of Egypt.

It takes courage to be a dreamer, because a dreamer has to go against the conventional, the status quo, the systems of man and the rules of society.  He has to believe for what no one else has ever even thought of.  He is a revolutionary, a rebel, a dissident, and because he is so different, the world sometimes thinks he is insane.

A dreamer doesn't give up easily.  In fact, he usually NEVER give up.  He keeps on trying and trying until he either succeeds, or dies in the attempt.  Only success or death can stop a real dreamer.

A dreamer sees things in the spirit which man cannot see in the natural.  But through seeing in the spirit he can, through faith, materialize it into the physical and natural.  You can have anything that you are capable of dreaming for.  All reality begins with a dream.

It was Joseph's dreams that made his brothers hate him.  If he had just been an ordinary lad like they were, or, if he had kept his dreams to himself, he wouldn't have made enemies.  But it was his dreams that made them hate him, because they were jealous. They couldn't dream, and they didn't want him to dream either.  So when they saw him coming, they said, "Here comes the master of the dreams!" (as one versions gives it).  They said this in contempt and mockery.  And of course, that is what you will receive from the "non-dreamers" also.  Nevertheless, dare to ask God to give you a dream!

EVERY REVIVALIST WILL HAVE PERSECUTION

Why do revivals make good men jealous? When God anoints someone's life and begins to use that person in a special way, we often see some of his best friends get jealous of him.  Anyone whom God is going to use to bring revival in these days will soon find some of the people he most highly esteemed are fighting against him in a quiet and subtle way.

At the turn of this century there was a young man by the name of Evan Roberts, who worked in the coal mines of Wales.  He had a dream that God would send a great revival to Wales, so great that God would bar the gates of hell to Wales for one year and 100,000 souls would find Christ.  By day, he worked in the mines, and at night he spent hours in prayer for that revival.  He prayed so hard that his whole bed shook with the shakings of the Holy Spirit, as in the day of Pentecost, when "all the house was shaken."  In a God-given vision he saw that God had answered his prayer.  He left his Bible school and went back home to Loughor.  When he reached his home, he told his mother, "There will be a great change in Loughor in less than a fortnight.  We are going to have the greatest revival that Wales has ever seen."

Roberts got permission from the elders of his church to minister to the young people.  He preached on Zechariah 4:6, "Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." Seventeen young people were seated in that Fellowship Hall of the Moriah Chapel.  The Holy Spirit fell upon them and there was weeping and shouting until midnight.  The town was shaken up by what was happening to their teenagers.

The following night they gathered together again.  That meeting never ended; it continued, day and night, until all of Wales was shaken by the power of God.  People came from all over the United Kingdom, Europe, Russia, United States, the British Empire and the rest of the world to experience this great revival and take it back home with them.  It was the flame that kindled the fires of Azusa Street, Los Angeles. 

God used that young man in such a mighty way, but some of his own country's clergy were jealous of him and turned against him with great persecution, breaking his heart, and causing him to have a breakdown that led him to give up his ministry. Why is it that when God uses someone who is chosen by God, and not by man, people get suspicious of him, like they were of Roberts and John the Baptist?  When God anointed John to preach and warn the people, the religious leaders gave him his greatest opposition.  They thought, "If God is going to do something big, He will do it here in our Temple in Jerusalem, and not down there on the banks of that muddy Jordan."

But John had paid the price.  He had seen the vision.  He knew his calling, and he was bold enough to preach the Gospel that cost him his life.  Anything worth living for is worth dying for. 

A TWO THOUSAND YEAR OLD DREAM

For two thousand years, ever since the dispersion in 70 A.D., the Jews have prayed for, and believed, that they would return to the land God gave their father, Abraham. Three times a day in their prayers, the Jews pray for Israel. And every year, at Passover Time, they repeated their dream, “Next year in Jerusalem!”

When the years went by and the dream seemed farther than ever away from being fulfilled, and the Jews of Europe began to assimilate with the Gentiles, their God raised up an Austrian Jew, and renewed this dream in his heart. His name was Theodor Herzl. He called out for his people to start dreaming again. They came together, and the struggle began. Righteous Gentiles caught his vision and tried to help the Jews make it come to pass. That is how Zionism was born. For a time, it seemed as though the dream could not be fulfilled. It was even suggested that the Jews accept Uganda as their homeland. But how could Uganda, Africa, ever become “The Land of Promise?” It had not been Uganda where Abraham had walked through the length and the breadth thereof, nor where Isaac dug his wells, nor where Jacob saw the ladder that reached to the sky.

Again the years passed by, and the dream of a Judenstaat was unfulfilled. Yet, some courageous ones came to The Land of Promise, and with their last coins bought up portions of the swamps which would later become the great orchards and farms of the State of Israel.

Then, one day in 1948, fifty years ago, David Ben Gurion stood up before the elders of the land and declared that Israel was a state. In that same hour, war began, as their enemies rose up against them with a force much greater than that of this infant state. But they did not succeed, nor will they ever, because God too has a dream. And His dream is to return Eretz Israel to His old friend, Abraham.