Hey, this is John Ortberg. I don’t wanna ask you, what do you dream about? Everybody has a dream. What’s your dream. We can never stop dreaming no matter how old we become, we cannot must not stop dreaming. And what we dream about says a lot about who we are and who we will become. And that’s what I want to talk with you about dreams are such a strange thing. I was thinking about this, that I partly because myel Jim candy. Hey Jim, if you’re watching, um, texted me today and said he had a dream about me last night. He dreamed that he fixed me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And when he gave it to me, he was four inches taller than me. Yes, Jim, in your dreams. And then Nancy told me in a very poignant moment that for the first time, in two years, she had a good dream woke up in the morning and remembered a dream that was pleasant and good.
And that seemed like a wonderful thing. Seemed like maybe we don’t know, God knows God will lead, but maybe we could be moving into a little different kind of a season where good dreams might be a part of it. I had a dream last night, that’s kind of a occupational hazard. Um, when I was a student, I would sometimes have dreams that there was a test I’m finally in some class and I’d completely forgotten about it. Hadn’t studied for it. Didn’t even go to the class and I was totally unprepared. And then when I went into the church, when I became a preacher, sometimes I would have a dream that I was supposed to speak someplace and I had completely forgotten about it. And I had a version of that last night, I was supposed to speak at our old church back in Chicago. And there was a nine o’clock service and 11 o’clock service.
But I had forgotten about the nine o’clock service. And now it was 10 o’clock. And you may have dreams sometimes where you gotta get someplace it’s urgent, but everything is moving slow motion. You can’t get anywhere. It’s like molasses and it was miserable. It was awful. And I knew, I knew, I knew, I knew this really happened and there’s nothing that can save me from it. And I was miserable. And then I woke up and my first thought was so happy. Oh God, thank you that I was not miserably late. And then my next thought was kind of sad. Wanna get to do that anymore. I used to love doing that. And then I had a thought that was just wonderful. Actually I do what I get to do right now. I know this will sound strange to you, but is so deeply meaningful to me to think that I get to learn and think and reflect and try to describe and try to use words and, and try to touch hearts and minds. And then because there’s somebody on the other end of this phone, it’s not just me talking into a phone. There’s a little community that gets built, and this will sound strange. I know whoever you are, but I am so grateful for you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I was thinking, as we reflect on our dreams, that very often our dreams involve wanting to have certain kind of circumstances to enter into. And that often, if we think about the personal qualities that we have, our IQ or our grit or strength of will or so on, we think of our personal qualities as the raw material that can get us the circumstances we want, but to God, it’s just the other way around to God. Our circumstances are the raw material to be used in our becoming the persons that God wants us to become. And that’s actually what we are to dream about. That’s the best dream is to dream of God and his kingdom and what it would look like. If my little kingdom was fully aligned with part of alive to immersed in his kingdom, this is passage to wisdom. And I wanna read for you a bit out of CS. Lewis’s screw tape letters, old knuckle screw tape is running to young wormwood about, is it a good thing? If his patient, the human being is in love, falls in love, or is that a bad thing? Here’s what screw tape writes. Cuz often that kind of circumstance can I be in love? What can the house, what kind of job? How much money? What will I look like? Those are the things that we dream about.
You complain, screw tape rights. That my last letter does not make it clear. Whether I regard being in love as a desirable state for a human or not, but really wormwood. That is the sort of question. One expects them to ask, leave them to discuss whether love or patriotism or celibacy or candles on altars or T totalism or education are good or bad. Can’t you see there’s no answer, nothing matters at all. Except the tendency of a given state of mind in given circumstances to move a particular patient at a particular moment, nearer to the enemy or nearer to us. Let me read that one more time. Nothing matters at all. Except the tendency of a given state of mind in given circumstances to move a particular patient at a particular moment, nearer to the enemy or nearer to us. Am I in this moment? Moving nearer to God I can be. You can be right now. God help me. God guide me. God love me. God, forgive me, God. Be with me.
Thus screw tape goes on. It would be quite a good thing to make the patient decide that love is good or bad. If he’s an arrogant man with a contempt for the body, really based on delicacy, but mistaken by him for purity and one who takes pleasure in flouting. What most of his fellows approve by all means. Let him decide against love, instill into him and overweening a CISM. And then when you have separated his sexuality from all that might humanize it, weigh in on him with it in some much more brutal and cynical form. If on the other hand, he’s an emotional gullible man, feed him on minor poets and fifth rate novelists of the old school until you have made him believe that love is both irresistible and somehow intrinsically meritorious. This belief is not much help by grant producing casual on chastity, but it is an incomparable recipe for prolonged noble, romantic, tragic adultery ending.
If all goes well in murders and suicides and such things happen in people’s hearts, as well as in the external world, failing that it can be used to steer the patient into a useful marriage for marriage though, the enemy’s invention has its uses. There must be several young women in your patient’s neighborhood who, who would render the Christian life intensely difficult to him. If only you could persuade him to marry one of them. And by the way, if you’re thinking about marrying asking, if I spend my life with this person, will they move me toward God or away is a real good question to ask, please send me a report on this. When you next, write in the meantime, get it quite clear in your own mind that this state of falling in love is not in itself, necessarily favorable either to us or the other side. It is simply an occasion which we in the enemy are both trying to exploit. And then this remarkable statement, they may lead to pain, but also to enormous freedom and liberation on the other side, like most of the other things which humans are excited about, such as health and sickness, age, and youth or war in peace, it is from the point of view of the spiritual life. Mainly raw material.
I don’t wanna spend my life primarily dreaming about entering into circumstances that I think will be pleasant because I do not even know what, uh, impact that those circumstances are likely to have on me. Let alone on the people. I don’t know enough to know how will the circumstances of my life be used by God in my life. When you look at the Bible, hardly anybody who is called by God was ever called into circumstances. They wanted to have. And yet, and yet John puts it like this. Uh, how great the love the father has lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God for that is what we are beloved. We are even now the children of God and what we shall be. We do not yet know, but when we see him, we will be like him.
So now that’s worth dreaming about you’re in a dream about something, not circumstances, not youth or age, not being in love, not war peace, not sickness or health, but God and his goodness and his love and the possibility that one day I might be like him, that truth and courage and love and joy and faithfulness might radiate for me because of course, of course, of course, if all those things are inside me, then wherever my circumstances are, I will be bringing heaven to it. And if that is not inside me, if the kingdom is not dominating my mind and my thoughts and my emotions and my choices, there are not enough gold and pleasure in all the universe. What are you dreaming about today? Just take those words, how great the love the father has lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God. I’m a child of God. And so you, and what we shall be has not yet been made, known. So dream a little today about what you shall be, which nothing, not aging or death itself can interrupt dream about that. God may it be so move us in that direction. Thank you. Thank you.
I’ll see you next time.