Dreams begin in the imagination as perceptions and thoughts and become more as we meditate on them. Over time these perceptions become concepts eventually conceptions, a collection of organized ideas, ways of thinking. Given time and attention and they will consume us and produce the reality in which we will live. They are powerful. God made them that way. Our dreams define our potential as individuals and collectively as a society when we accept, unite and believe in them. According to the Scripture, God, when He created man, created him in His own image according to His likeness. In other words He created us to be like Him. And one of the most powerful divine qualities that He equipped man with was the power to think creatively, to use his imagination. As God’s agent on Earth, man was to use this “creative thinking” ability to accomplish God’s will and purposes. He was to establish His Kingdom in creative and innovative ways until the whole Earth was filled with the Glory of God. The imagination would be the window or corridor through which God would release Kingdom ideas into the minds of men in an attempt to define His heavenly reality on earth. Jesus in the giving of the Lord’s Prayer recorded in Matthew said “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” As natural fleshly beings our imagination would be our connection to see into the spiritual and supernatural realms where these directions would originate. These powerful spiritually sensitive imaginations were designed to work in an arena of faith. Faith was to quicken our thought process, germinate the seed of God and release the greatness that God had deposited within us by igniting God ideas and dreams in us.
Now people who are “imaginers” as Walt Disney called the talented people who worked for him, don’t create things out of nothing. Only God can do that. But rather they learn to think on this higher almost spiritual dimension. I call it the “possibility plane”. In this dimension they learn to create by experimenting in the thought laboratory; combining existing elements, ideas, experiences and needs, into concepts, forms, shapes and patterns that others have never combined in that exact way. In ministry as business, we value imagination but barely understand it. And our misunderstanding blocks our creativity.
We often consider creativity as a rare commodity that is handed out to a lucky few, when in fact we all posses the potential to become creative. That is the point. God has placed greatness in us all. But we have to learn to develop that creative ability by getting outside the box of traditional one-dimensional thinking and get out onto our Possibility Plane and experiment awhile. Dream a dream! Alfred Einstein once said, “You cannot solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that created it.”
I’m sure some of you are thinking, “but how do I develop that kind of thinking process, how do I stimulate that kind of creativity? I am glad you asked. Now, since creativity is usually an innovative way of thinking that combines existing elements, ideas, and possibilities in new ways. We must learn to be forever students in the classroom of life. We must learn to be always observing, noting, considering and challenging the status qoa. The more information we acquire in an area the more creative we can become in that area.
We fertilize our imaginations with learning. The most creative minds are well furnished. When we learn, we store up the building blocks of creativity for future use. Consequently, innovators are on a constant quest; a relentless pursuit for something new, something different. Therefore they travel. Their travel can be mental or physical, sometimes in their minds, sometimes to a new place, sometime to new people, why? To get information, inspiration and stimulation. They look for anything that can spawn a new idea. Then they experiment with that idea in their imaginations on the “possibility plane” until it makes sense or they discard it.
When God gives us a dream he is attempting to use us as a channel to fulfill his purpose in the earth. A dream is God’s seed of purpose and it contains greatness. As with all seed, before it can bear fruit it must be planted, then fertilized, watered and protected. There must be a moment of germination when it comes alive. Then it must grow until it is mature enough to bear fruit. The success of a seed, the degree of its fruitfulness, has everything to do with the soil in which it’s planted. We are the soil in which God has chosen to plant His dream seed. We are the sacred ground of His planting and his purpose. Jesus said that the kingdom of God is in us. Yes, your dream is His kingdom seed waiting to germinate, to come alive and begin to grow. While there is a process, fruit is the intent. And God as a master planter knows that you are just the right soil to grow the dream He has planted in you.
You may feel inadequate, but the soil does not judge itself, that is the planter’s responsibility. He must decide what seed should be planted where. And He does it with precision looking at both the soils potential as well as the seeds. He looks at what could be and should be, not what currently is. He carefully matches the soil’s potential with that of the seed. Then He begins to work the ground to ensure that it provides the seed its maximum growing potential. He plows, clears the stones from the soil, cultivates and puts the soil through process after process some even at great trauma, to get it ready for the planting of His seed, His dream.