Stay focused on your God-given dreams

To think that your destiny will be reached without experiencing delays and denials is to be in denial. 

To deny your delays and denials the ability and opportunity to shape you along the way to accomplishing your God-given destiny is to deny God the opportunity to show forth His glory in the midst of it all. 

Christians, who have been chosen as massive change agents of their time, have an unusual ability to trust God in the most unfavourable of circumstances. 

They have the ability to believe what God told them during the time of light even though they experience darkness. 

That was Joseph. He was called and chosen to become great. He was chosen and called to go through testing situations and still hold on to the sure belief that his dreams would come true. 

Joseph dreamed impressive dreams while he was young. Those dreams were most certainly taken to heart by a young Joseph, because he did not allow the bitterness of his brothers to cause him to abort his dreams. 

Joseph the Dreamer! Why couldn’t that youngster just be like everyone else? Why did he have to be so different? Why could he not just chill and fade into the background and do as everyone else was doing?

Well, when you are a Nelson Mandela-type, when God has called you to bigger things than the ordinary person, the ordinary citizen, then you are different. 

Mindset

You do not think and make conclusions like other persons. You have a different mindset.

Here are a few quotes by the late former President of South Africa, Mr Nelson Mandela, which also could have easily been spoken by Joseph. 

“I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.”

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”

“No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

Nelson Mandela was a modern day Joseph who experienced delays and denials on his way to delivering the destiny of birthing freedom for a people.  

The mind of a reformist, a transformer, is simply wired differently. 

That’s who Joseph was. He was dreaming in spite of those who had no respect for him or his dreams.

9 And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me.

10 And he told it to his father, and to his brethren: and his father rebuked him, and said unto him, What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth?

11 And his brethren envied him; but his father observed the saying.

What I love about Joseph is his integrity. He was different from all of his brothers, which caused bitterness amongst the brothers. Not only were his brothers, from other mothers, challenged with his dreams, even his father was taken back by the power and dominance of young Joseph’s dreams.

Yet, here is the difference between how the brothers took the dream and how the father took the dream: The brothers envied while the father observed. The brothers envied Joseph. 

When one is envious, he does something about that envy. That is what they did. They sought to get rid of Joseph. 

They would get rid of the one that they envied. 

However, the father observed or watched over what Joseph had spoke. 

While the brothers were doing one thing, the father was doing something to counteract what they were doing. A true father will watch over the dreams in the heart of his children. 

God, our Heavenly Father, watches over you and me.  Just as Joseph and Nelson Mandela’s dreams came true, so will yours. 

Stay focused on your God-given dreams. RESPICE FINEM.