Living the Dream

In March last year I was invited to join a few friends for a week of hiking in the mountains near Cape Town in South Africa, on a world famous trail that runs beside the Atlantic Ocean. One of my friends there had brought along his hammock and was planning to sleep in it each night. Well, I kinda ruined that plan by taking it for myself. Not gonna lie... that thing was comfy! It was so comfortable in fact, that from March up until November last year I refused, much to the dismay of my mother, to sleep on a mattress. As soon as I returned from the hike I bought a hammock, hung it up in my room, and slept in it every night.

Before you read on, look at the title again. As you read it, try to get an idea in your mind of what ‘living the dream’ looks like to you. For me, it was lying on a hammock tied between two Dr Seuss type trees in a valley somewhere very far away from a certain virus that currently dominates our planet. What I'm wondering is, is this popular paradigm of 'living the dream' in line with the biblical picture?

Check out this photograph I took a couple of days ago

This is where my friends and I live. It looks like we’re living the dream right? We are...

But not in the way you would think.

Last year, God gave a handful of us this crazy dream to plant a church in Lisbon Portugal in 2020. Now, just to check if we are all on the same page here, God is all-knowing... right? Do you think that when He sent us halfway across the world a couple of months ago He forgot the minor detail that is, a world-wide pandemic about to erupt at the same time? Maybe some sort of miscommunication went on upstairs and the wrong dreams were birthed at the wrong time. Or maybe, just maybe, building a community from the ground up at a time when community is illegal is – in fact – living the dream.

Consider this scripture that Steven Dollenberg shared in a sermon last year:

“Without oxen a stable stays clean, but you need strong oxen for a large harvest.”

What does your large harvest look like? Are you prepared to do daily, messy work now in order to reap this harvest in the future?

A large harvest might look different for you and for me, but for the Israelites it looked like the promised land. Guys, get this: when the Israelites finally made it into the promised land, there were battles to fight, and giants to face.

Maybe living the dream looks less like this

And more like this

Be honest, if we saw that second image on Instagram with the hashtag #livingthedream in the caption, we would think “sarcasm at its best”.

I don’t think that anymore...

Maybe, the biblical picture of living the dream is staying at home to look after the kids because their schools are closed, or going out to work because your boss (who sits in the safety of his home) asked you to, or finding something productive to do for the many hours that you are stuck at home because the president called for a lockdown, or falling on your knees and crying out to God because you just cannot do it anymore.

How is Freedom City living the dream? We are diving deep into scripture and spending time in prayer. We are asking God to plant His presence and trusting Him take care of our needs...

day by day.