"What if we dared to follow our dreams?" (Part 2 of "What if...?" Series at FBCW)

Acts 16:6-15

6 They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. 7 When they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them; 8 so, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. 9 During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, "Come over to Macedonia and help us." 10 When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them. 11 We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, 12 and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days. 13 On the sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. 14 A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. 15 When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, "If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home." And she prevailed upon us.

            Dreams can be weird, can’t they? I know mine can be sometimes. I’ve had dreams where I’m a kid playing in the backyard of my grandma’s house with someone like Luke Skywalker only to wind up a few seconds later, as a grown adult, in the self-checkout line at Wal-Mart holding a loaf of bread and a can of tube of toothpaste—and somehow it all makes sense in the dream (I’m not quite sure what to make of those sorts of dreams)! One dream I have with some regularity involves me being back in college, and I’ve completely forgotten to attend a class all semester, and somehow it’s finals week, so if I can find the class and pass the exam, I’ll be fine, but time runs out or I don’t know where the class is, so I presumably have failed the class, gotten kicked out of college, and ruined my life. When I wake up from those sorts of dream I often have to remind myself that I’ve graduated with two degrees, working on a third, and I haven’t failed a class! Dreams can be weird, but they can also be powerful.

            They can be powerful as they show us something just beyond our present situation, as they call us into the mystery of the future, as they coax us out of our comfort and into something more. That’s how I see this dream Paul has in Acts 16. Paul is on his second missionary journey, and he and his company have tried to take their work north-east, into Asia (the region around modern-day Turkey), but they were “forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.” So, they tried to go to “Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.” So they wound up in Troas, which is much farther west, on the coast of the Aegean Sea, across from the region of Macedonia and the European continent—Paul wanted to go one way, but wound up going another.

            It’s while he’s in Troas that Paul has this dream—this dream about a man in Macedonia, the region across the sea, the region in Europe, where the Good News of Christ has yet to be proclaimed. Now, I suppose Paul could have woken up from this dream, nudged Luke (traditionally, his physician) and said, “Hey Doc, I think I must have ate something that disagreed with me last night. Got any tums or antacids?” He could have brushed the whole thing off as just some dream triggered by the sight of a road sign in Troas pointing the way to Macedonia and doubled-down on his efforts to move the gospel eastward. Of all the things Paul could have done after such a dream, the very thing he actually did was pursue it; he pursued the dream of the man in need over in Macedonia.

            Now, what’s interesting to me is that Paul’s pursuit of this dream doesn’t exactly go how it should—at least how I think it should. I mean, Paul and his crew set sail from Troas, sailing directly to Somathrace, staying a day before they carried on to Neapolis, then onto Philippi, “which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony.” Now, Paul has made it to Macedonia, so one would expect this man from Paul’s dream to manifest himself, that the need in Macedonia would become quickly apparent, or that Paul would set to preaching right away, with large crowds pressing in to hear him…but none of that happens. Instead, Paul and his crew just hang out for a few days. In fact, they’re in Philippi long enough to observe the Sabbath, and since there was likely no synagogue in Philippi, they went out to the river to find a place to pray. It’s there, by the river, outside the city, that Paul finds an attentive audience; it’s by the river outside of Philippi that Paul’s dream about the Macedonian man comes to fruition—in the form of a woman, “A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God…from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth.”

            Lydia listens to Paul. She’s baptized. Her entire household is baptized. She invites Paul and his folks to stay with her in her house. The rest of chapter sixteen speaks about Paul’s imprisonment there in Philippi after casting a demon out of a girl and costing her parents income and how he returned to Lydia’s house after being exonerated of his crimes because of his Roman citizenship. This isn’t really how I would have imagined this dream coming to reality, but you know, that doesn’t mean the dream wasn’t worth pursuing, that it wasn’t fulfilled. After all, imagine if Paul had chosen NOT to pursue the dream, if Paul had brushed it off and stubbornly pursued his eastward-moving ministry. If Paul had ignored the dream, a group of women would have gone down to the river outside of Philippi and gone home without much difference. Lydia would go back to selling her purple dye, her purple clothes, and her household would have remained unchanged. That’s not to mention that the gospel would have stayed in region of the Ancient Near East; the good news of Christ would have remained hemmed in by the lapping tides of the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas, waiting for someone else to carry it across to West. I mean, Lydia was the first European convert; she likely helped to fund and found the congregation at Philippi—arguably Paul’s favorite congregation. So, imagine if Paul has NOT followed his dream, if he had just stayed in Troas or tried to move east again…

            I wonder what would have happened if Zebulon and Emmaline Williams, Samuel and Elizabeth Boozer, James Milton and Barbara Waldon, Nathan and Nancy Roberts, Thomas and Mildred Johnston—I wonder what would have happened if those folks hadn’t followed their dream. You see, it was those folks who came together with the dream of a church near Ohatchee Creek. Where would we be if it wasn’t for the dream of those charter members of this congregation? Some of us might be members of another church; some of us might not be Christians; some of us might not be here at all. Think about it: they could have just decided to leave well-enough alone, to be content with an itinerant preacher and occasional gatherings in each other homes or on the bank of the creek; they could have decided that times were too tough for the sort of financial and personal commitment it would take to start a church; some of them could have decided that it wasn’t worth settling in a place where there wasn’t an established church and simply packed up and moved on down the road—but they didn’t. They pursued the dream they received from God, and Ohathcee Baptist Church [#2] was formed in 1850, 167 years ago. I’m grateful to those first, faithful folks who dared to follow the dream they received from God.

            Imagine, if in 1971, the folks of this congregation (some of you in this room this morning), rather than following the dream of a new building, a brick sanctuary to replace the aged, white-frame structure that had stood on this site since 1924, had instead decided to ignore it, to brush off the dream as one grounded in the pursuit of “a bigger building.” Where would we be this morning? Would we have boarded up the windows, strung caution tape across the doors, and posted a red notice on the clapboard that read “Condemned: unsafe for occupancy?” Would we be a handful of folks singing a cappella in a drafty, old building, wondering why no one wants to come to worship in the little white church on the corner of Nisbet Lake and Pleasant Valley Roads?

            Imagine if saints like Dean Norton and Peggy Hamby hadn’t pursued the call of serving as deacons in this church. Imagine if this church had decided then that women weren’t called or capable to serve in such roles, that they couldn’t preach, teach, or pastor because they were women and that’s what every other Baptist church around believed. What voices would have been silenced? How many of our sisters would have given up hope in ever serving Christ and his Church in the ways they believed they were being called?

            Imagine if this congregation had NOT “caught the vision” or pursued the dream in 1991, a vision of an expanded fellowship hall, preschool center, new educational space, and kitchen. Imagine if we had ignored the need to maintain and renovate an aging sanctuary. Where would we be? Many of you were dedicated as children in this room, baptized before family and friends in this room, married in the site of God and others in this room, mourned the passing of your loved ones in this room. You shared meals, laughter, and special occasions in what used to be the fellowship hall. What would those memories be like if we had NOT pursues the dream then? Would you have them at all?

            Imagine if we had NOT pursued the dream in 2005 of a Christian Ministry Center, a gymnasium, commercial kitchen, new bathrooms with showers, a parlor/senior suite, an expansive student suite upstairs, and other updates and renovations to the building. Where would this community have gone in 2011 after storms and tornadoes ripped through it? Where would our kids have come together after the devastating news of a friend’s death? Where would the hundreds of children who have passed through our daycare have found the kind of affordable care they receive on our campus? I could go on, but I don’t think I have to.
            As it was for Paul, pursing the dream God gives us isn’t always easy. It sometimes comes after we’ve tried our way only to fail time and time again. It sometimes calls us in an entirely different direction from the one we would want for ourselves. It often (mostly?) doesn’t turn out exactly the way we think it should, and it can be a pursuit filled with frustrations, delays, complications, times of high energy, and times where things seem to grind to a stop, but the pursuit of God’s dream is ALWAYS worth the effort.

            I am thankful that Paul pursued God’s dream to go to Macedonia, to take the gospel to Europe, for who knows what may have happened in the history of the Church if he hadn’t. I am thankful to those first, faithful few who gathered by Ohatchee Creek and pursued God’s dream of a church that would 167 years later be thriving and seeking the next step in that same dream. I am thankful for those who pursued God’s dream to make this room, this house of worship, this sanctuary, a reality, a place where we can come and worship the God who calls us to pursue God’s dreams. I am thankful that we are still pursuing the dreams we first dreamed in 1991 and in 2005. I am thankful that those dreams have not only lead to buildings and programs that have touched the lives of so many in and around our community, but that they have led us to places like Korsun, Ukraine, where a church was built with $13,544.00 of funds from this congregation in 1995, places like Port-Au-Prince, Haiti where seventeen members of this congregation served to feed hungry babies, build furniture and make repairs to a school in the heart of that too-often depressing city, places like the Rio Grande Valley where we’ve partnered with people who have become family to many of us, places like Perry County where we’ve gone to sow seeds of hope in the lives of those who may otherwise have none. I am thankful that we have pursued the dream of God all these years. What if we dared to continue to follow the dreams God gives us in spite of the perceived difficulties we may face? What if we dared to follow our dreams further into the future, further than we can ever imagine, further in bringing about the reality of God’s kingdom? What if we dared to follow our dreams that lead to God’s kingdom coming to earth as it is in heaven? Amen.