Quote from Forum Archives on March 3, 2003, 2:09 pm

Posted by: bhfbc <bhfbc@...>

DARING TO DREAM AGAIN #2/9
GETTING PAST OUR PAST
March 2, 2003

Text: Judges 6:11-24

Meredith Wilson’s musical comedy The Music Man is known for its memorable
music, but it also contains a number of perceptive lines. In one scene,
Professor Harold Hill, the fly-by-night con man, expresses genuine love
to Marian the librarian. She tries to put him off because of her own
uncertainties about herself. She is always looking to a vague future,
never quite living in today. The Professor tells her, “You pile up a lot
of tomorrows, and you’ll find a lot of empty yesterdays.” Professor Hill
may have been unscrupulous, but he understood how hanging onto the
disappointments of the past could damage the present and the future.
Edward Everett Hale, former U.S. Senate chaplain, said, “Never attempt to
bear more than one kind of trouble at once. Some people bear three kinds
- all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have.”
(Haddon W. Robinson, “Music Man,” Our Daily Bread, Grand Rapids: Radio
Bible Class, February 3, 1999)

We begin this morning the 50-Day Spiritual Adventure entitled Daring to
Dream Again: Overcoming Barriers that Hold You Back. I cannot imagine
anyone who has not ever had a dream. I’m not talking about the kinds of
dreams we have when we are asleep; I’m talking about the kinds of dreams
we have about and for ourselves. Dreams like our hopes, our goals, our
envisioned future. For Christians, we also talk about our dreams of
walking closer to God and of growing spiritually.

At the same time, I cannot imagine anyone who has not had an unfulfilled
dream. As a young boy, I remember many dreams that remain just that -
dreams. As a seventh grader, I developed a love for basketball. My dream
was to be a basketball star - maybe even a Harlem Globetrotter. Turns
out, it wasn’t skin color that kept me from fulfilling that dream; trying
out for the seventh grade basketball team did. During tryouts, while
dribbling the ball up the court - and watching the ball so I could
control it instead of watching where I was going - I ran smack into the
coach! I wasn’t surprised I didn’t make the team. Disappointed, but not
surprised. A little later, I developed an interest in golf. I was going
to be a great golfer like… you thought I was going to say Tiger Woods. He
wasn’t around then. No, like Arnold Palmer. He was my golf hero. Well, I
still manage to send my golf balls into the ponds and water holes on
those occasions I play as an adult. I still enjoy tennis the most, but I
have learned not to try to think that I’m going to play like somebody
else; I just consider myself successful if I survive a match and can
still make it out of bed the next morning with just a few aches and
pains.

Well, the topic of the Spiritual Adventure is Daring to Dream… Again. The
title implies that along the way we forget how to dream. See, the problem
we develop with dreaming is not that we run into disappointments and
maybe even failures. Those happen whether we dare to dream or not. What
becomes critical is what we do with those disappointments and failures.
For many of us - perhaps enough to say all of us - our failure to dream
is caused because we cannot let go of the past.

It was easy to tell in the skit that Stan had a problem. It was spelled
out rather clearly for us: Stan could not let go of his past. Past
relationships, past problems, past failures all continued to haunt him.
And he carried them around with him. Now on the verge of a new,
wonderful, significant relationship - he was getting married, after all -
Stan was still dragging his painful past around with him. What was that
going to do to his present, and even future, relationship? Probably
doomed, and he would have another failure to hang onto.

Most of us can identify with having dreams that were never realized. As a
result, some of us have become resistant to the idea of allowing
ourselves the luxury of dreaming again. We don’t want to be set up for
another disappointment. But what if God wants to resurrect our past
dreams and put them in focus again? Sometimes former dreams must be
allowed to die so that new dreams can be birthed. It is still possible to
dream new dreams. This morning we’re beginning our Adventure by looking
at Gideon. Gideon lived during a very difficult era of Israel’s history.
It was the time of Israel’s history prior to the days when kings ruled.
It was a chaotic time, when “everyone did that which was right in their
own eyes.” But intermittently during this time, people sought God. When
they did, God punctuated the chaos by raising up judges. They were local
leaders who helped God’s people out of political and spiritual turmoil.
In the book of Judges, we see a spiritual cycle repeated over and over
again. The cycle began with sin, as people forgot God and carried out
their own agenda. “Everyone did that which was right in their own eyes”
is a phrase repeated in the book of Judges. Sin was followed by servitude
or bondage: As a consequence of sin, Israel experienced political
oppression from neighboring nations. Servitude was followed by prayer. As
the people experienced political oppression, they turned to God in prayer
and asked for His help. In response to Israel’s prayers, God brought
salvation through a leader or Judge who helped Israel win freedom from
their enemies.

Gideon is one of those Judges. Like many of us, Gideon had some obstacles
that kept him from dreaming again. Gideon had to overcome a painful past.
In Judges 6:1 we see a new cycle begin with sin. “Again the Israelites
did evil in the eyes of the Lord.” For seven years they went through a
period of bondage in the form of oppression from a coalition of three
nations: the Midianites, the Amalekites, and “other eastern people.”
These enemies would come and raid the Israelites after planting season.
They would destroy Israel’s crops and kill all of their livestock.
Because of this oppression, the Israelites prayed. God first sent them a
prophet who reminded them of God’s faithfulness and their own
disobedience. Following the announcement by the prophet, the angel of the
Lord called Gideon to a new dream.

When the angel of the Lord encounters Gideon under the oak in Ophrah,
Gideon is threshing wheat in a winepress. Now, a winepress is not where
one normally threshes wheat. The Bible says Gideon choose this particular
location “to keep it from the Midianites.” Fear of these foreign invaders
left the people of Israel hiding and cowering. Fear permeated their
lives, even causing them to harvest their crops in secret. So the angel
of the Lord came to Gideon to call him to a new dream of living in
freedom from Midianite oppression.

But Gideon was paralyzed by fear. Fear of foreign oppressors paralyzed
Gideon and his people from the dream of freedom and experiencing the
reality of God’s power. When the angel of the Lord makes his presence
known, note how Gideon responds. “If the Lord is with us, why has all
this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our fathers told us
about when they said, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?’ But
now the Lord has abandoned us and put us into the hand of Midian.” While
God was challenging Gideon to a new dream, Gideon focused on the past
pain of Midianite oppression. His painful past blinded him from living in
light of God’s faithfulness and power.

Past failure can blind us, too. But like I shared earlier, what we do
with past failures is more important than whether we have had past
failures. Unlike Stan, we don’t have to be stuck in the past! Listen to
this true-life testimony: When he was seven years old, his family was
forced out of their home on a legal technicality, and he had to work to
help support them. At age nine, his mother died. At twenty-two, he lost
his job as a store clerk. He wanted to go to law school, but his
education wasn’t good enough. At twenty-three, he went into debt to
become a partner in a small store. At twenty-six, his business partner
died, leaving him a huge debt that took years to repay. At twenty-eight,
after courting a girl for four years, he asked her to marry him. She said
no. At thirty-seven, on his third try, he was elected to Congress, but
two years later he failed to be reelected. At forty-one, his four
year-old son died. At forty-five, he ran for the Senate and lost. At
forty-seven, he failed as the vice-presidential candidate. At forty-nine,
he ran for the Senate again and lost. At fifty-one, he was elected
President of the United States. His name was Abraham Lincoln, and he was
the man the country needed then. Like this former President, we can move
beyond a painful past and dream again!

As Christians, we have to remember that there is another perspective at
work. It is God’s perspective: God saw Gideon differently than Gideon saw
himself. The angel of the Lord greeted Gideon in this manner: “The Lord
is with you, mighty warrior!” The irony is wonderful! Gideon is secretly
threshing his wheat so the enemy won’t see him. He is hiding behind
bushes and around corners. An angel of God shows up and calls him “mighty
warrior.”

Still blinded by the prospect of a new dream, Gideon offers the angel of
the Lord an excuse why he has the wrong man. The Midianites are a
concern, but this time it’s not the circumstances of the Midianite
oppression. This time it’s his heritage and his own place in his family.
“But Lord, how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and
I am the least in my family” (v. 15). Gideon tells the Lord that he
doesn’t have the right credentials to be an instrument in God’s hand. He
is from an unimpressive tribe, Manasseh. His clan is the weakest of all
the clans in the lot. Not only that, Gideon is the least in his family.
In spite of God’s call to dream big, Gideon’s grasp on his past kept him
from getting onboard. But God is adamant in both His will and His
selection of the person to carry out His will. God again gives him
encouragement to proceed. “I will be with you, and you will strike down
all the Midianites together” (v. 16).

The message to Gideon still applies. It applies to believers who know
Jesus as their Savior. Lift your eyes to the heavens and let God touch
you in a manner that will leave you forever changed. If you have not
already read it, you will read in your adult journals: “Gideon certainly
never pictured himself as a mighty hero. He had heard accounts of God’s
working in earlier generations, but negative experiences had become a
barrier to Gideon’s ever dreaming such dreams for his day. Taking on a
healthy new identity required some healing and some getting used to, but
in the end, he performed his role admirably.

What negative experiences have brought you pain or shame and prompted you
to shelve the spiritual desires you once had? Whether the problem was of
your own making or the fault of others, it’s time to let God heal those
wounds. The following steps give you a good start. 1. Put a name to the
way you have been living. Is it Fearful Gideon, Resentful Mary, Wounded
Curtis, Angry Sally, Disillusioned (So-and-so), Negative (So-and-so), or
(Something So-and-so)? Don’t move on to step 2 until you have identified
the false name under which you have been living. 2. Now ask the Holy
Spirit to show you the new name he wants you to embrace. ‘Mighty hero,
the Lord is with you!’ is the healthy new identity the angel asked Gideon
to accept. What new identity might God want you to receive?” (Adult
Journal, Daring to Dream Again, Wheaton: Mainstay Ministries, 2003, p.
12) Working through your journal this week will remind you of the truths
I have underscored this morning.

The difficulty I had preparing this morning’s message was one of too much
material. I found way too many Scriptures and resources that I could
possibly share in one morning. The Bible, especially the New Testament,
is all about the letting go of our old past and accepting the new
promises and the new dreams God has for us. Jesus himself promises to all
believers his new covenant. We are a renewed, redeemed people. This means
that we step out of our old, failed, sinful, painful past and into the
new life promised by God. Sometimes the biggest trouble we have going
forward with God is getting past our past.

So read the guidebook this week. The first chapter, “Let God Heal Your
Painful Past,” addresses these issues. Read the Scriptures referred to in
your journal and reflect on the journal questions. There are also a few
other books that apply to the issue of letting God heal our painful
pasts. Three of them are mine, and one is the church’s; they are all
available for you to check out: When Your Rope Breaks by Stephen Brown;
The Bondage Breaker by Neil T. Anderson; Hooked on Life: From Stuck to
Starting Over by Tim Timmons and Stephen Arterburn; and Getting Past Your
Past: Finding Freedom from the Pain of Regret by Susan Wilkinson. If you
want to continue in this study of “letting God heal your painful past,”
these are just some readily available resources you can use. Included in
my e-mail version of this sermon will be a bibliography of other
resources that the developers of the 50-Day Spiritual Adventure believe
are helpful. If you don’t receive the sermons by e-mail, but would like
the list of additional resources, there are some printouts on the
Spiritual Adventure resource table.

Whose identity have you embraced for your life? The identity dictated by
a painful past, or by God’s identity for you? If you are a believer in
Christ, God sees you as His sons and daughters. He sees you as a mighty
warrior, a soldier of the cross. Which I.D. card are you going to use
when you show your credentials? The one filtered by a painful past or the
one given to you by God himself?

God showed great patience with Gideon, who questioned the Lord’s care for
Israel in view of the nation experiencing such hardship. That’s good news
for us, because He will be patient with us, too. God signaled His love
and care for His people by raising up Gideon to be a “mighty warrior.”

Gideon doubted his ability to deliver the people from oppression. Gideon
was unable at first to grasp that the Lord’s presence would guarantee
victory. But as the historian Josephus relates, “the [Lord] promised him,
that God would supply what he was defective in, and would afford the
Israelites victory under his conduct (Antiquities, 5.6.2).” The eventual
defeat of the Midianites became a significant milestone in Hebrew
history. Gideon’s decision to take on a new identity by trusting the Lord
for healing, instead of nursing his negative past experiences, made the
difference. By overcoming the barriers that held him back, Gideon dared
to dream again. So can we.

[sermon topic adapted from “Pastor’s Manual,” Daring to Dream Again:
Overcoming Barriers That Hold You Back, Wheaton: Mainstay Ministries,
2003, pp. B27-B52]

Rev. Charles A. Layne, pastor, First Baptist Church, Bunker Hill, IN

Recommended Resources

>From the library of Pastor Charles Layne

The Bondage Breaker, Neil T. Anderson (Harvest House Publishers, 1990)

Hooked on Life: From Stuck to Starting Over, Tim Timmons and Stephen
Arterburn (Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1985) [248/T25]

When Your Rope Breaks, Stephen Brown (Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1988)
[248/BRO]

Compiled by: Karen Mains and John White

Books from the Religious Market

Beyond Identity: Finding Your Self in the Image and Character of God,
Dick Keyes (Eerdman’s Publishing)

Healing for Damaged Emotions, David Seamands (Chariot Victor Books)

Making Peace with Your Past, H. Norman Wright (Baker Book House)

Redeeming the Past: Recovering from the Memories that Cause Our Pain,
David Seamands, (Chariot Victor Books)

Shame and Grace: Healing the Shame We Don’t Deserve, Lewis Smedes (Harper
San Francisco)

Shattered Dreams: God’s Unexpected Pathway to Joy, Larry Crabb
(WaterBrook Press)

The Search for Significance, Robert S. McGee (Word Publishing)

Books from the Secular Market

The concept of overcoming a painful past is a powerful and popular theme
in classic literature and in contemporary popular culture, since the
longing for redemption lurks deep in every human soul. Resources are
plentiful!

A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John
Nash, Sylvia Nasar (Simon & Schuster). This biography of John Nash is
understandably less romanticized than the film, but it gives an
intriguing glimpse into the community of higher mathematicians that is
rarely understood by the average reader and, in its own way, is a more
remarkable story than that of the film.

Hans Christian Andersen: The Life of a Storyteller, Jackie Wullschlager
(Knopf)—or any other contemporary biography. Like Charles Dickens, a
contemporary of his, Anderson overcame impossible poverty but suffered
lifelong effects from his disadvantaged childhood. Much of his conflict
(if not all of it) was poured into his artistry, so we also recommend:

The Ugly Duckling (but many of Anderson’s fairy tales have the theme of
transformation; it might be fun to review a compiled edition of his
stories and discover a lesser known tale). Or, you might want to read
Dickens’s David Copperfield.

Personal History, Katharine Graham (Vintage Books). This Pulitzer
Prize–winning national best-seller tells the remarkable personal story of
a woman of privilege dominated by powerful and brilliant men (and a
brilliant, impossible mother) who comes into her own, forced to take on
the role of publisher of The Washington Post when her estranged husband
threatens a takeover of the paper, then commits suicide. Graham’s
personal tone is honest but charitable.

Films

Take your pick. The list is endless, and some of the best of films are in
this transformation category.

A Beautiful Mind (2001)

Les Miserables (1998)

My Fair Lady (1964)

Secrets & Lies (1996) is a remarkable British study about facing the
secrets in our past that cripple our present; it’s told with compassion,
humor, and a great deal of wisdom.

Shine (1996)

The Milagro Bean Field War (1988)

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