The Dream Was Never Your Idea

It was June 2020. I was standing in this living room preaching to a camera, and I was smiling the whole time. And nobody watching knew that my wife had just moved out. Nobody knew the church that I was working for had just let me go a few weeks before, and I've been a pastor for about twenty years, and I thought my ministry, my life was over. Today, my family is strong. My kids are in church with me.

And maybe you're in that living room right now. Stop saying it's over. It is not over. I'm Erik Kingsley, and over the next 12 talks, I'm gonna tell you what happened to me, what God did with it, and what he wants to do in your life. And it's all coming out in my book, Dream Again, on December 1. But let's start where every comeback starts, with a dream.

Can I ask you a question? Before the break, what was the dream? Maybe it was a church or a business or a marriage where you're gonna get right, And maybe it was a message that you were sure you were born to carry. Maybe it's been so long, you can't even say it out loud anymore. It was real. You didn't make it up.

You just survived it. Today is stage one, dream. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. Jeremiah twenty nine eleven. Most of us meet that verse on a coffee mug or a graduation card.

You ever seen them? Or a little plaque in someone's house or in their kitchen right next to the live, laugh, love sign. Right? But Jeremiah didn't write it for a mug. He wrote it in a letter to exiles. These were people who had lost their homes.

They've lost their temple. They've lost their country, and they were living in Babylon with no way back. And God didn't send that promise to peoples whose lives were working. He sent it to peoples whose lives had been taken apart. Look at that word, have not had. I know the plans that I have for you, not I know the plans that I had for you.

He said it to people sitting in the wreckage. You ever been there? That's where we start. The dream was placed in you on purpose, and I felt mine at eight years old long before I had words for it. So let me start with with me. See, my parents were divorced when I was three years old.

And after that, I grew up in two homes with two very different ideas about God. My dad was Church of Christ. We sang in hymn books. They sang in acapella, and everything is in order. They believed in... That the miraculous gifts ended with the apostles.

And in the summers, I went to my mom's house. She was charismatic, hands raised, people crying, praying in tongues, people falling over, praying for the sick, and expecting them to get up. So the school year was hymns and acapella and summers were hands in the air, and I was the kid in the middle, and I took in both. When I was eight, I got the flu, a bad one. The flu is not bad until you have it. It doesn't sound bad, but it was bad.

And I just thrown up my applesauce. I still remember. And the only thing I wanted to do, I'm just laying in bed. I'm eight years old, and I'm sick, and I just wanna go out and play. That's all I wanna do. And my mom called this married couple from the church, and they came over.

They had anointing oil. They laid their hands on me and prayed over me, and they prayed in tongues. The very thing my dad's church taught against had stopped two thousand years ago, and I didn't care who was praying or what language it was. And I wasn't even thinking about theology. I was thinking about, I wanna go to the yard and play. And the minute that they finished, I was healed.

I just can't forget it. Not by the evening, not in a little time later. No. They finished praying, and I got out of bed, and I went outside to play, and the fever was gone. The flu was gone, and my body was the evidence that God was real. Now I couldn't have explained back then what had happened, but something was settled in me that day that God isn't a story about something that's happened two thousand years ago and then stopped.

No. He's alive, and he is still moving. And when the dream was planted in my heart, it would shape the rest of my life. Maybe you've had a moment like that. Maybe it wasn't a fever. Maybe it was in the hospital hallway, or maybe it was in a car, in a parking lot, or a night that you can't even explain to anybody and you knew and you knew that God spoke.

You knew he gives this dream, but you don't let anybody talk you out of it. You knew and that you know that it happened, and you know. At 16, I surrendered my life to God. Not to a career, not to a plan. I understood just to him. I told him, whatever you want, I'm in.

I don't know what that looks like, but I'm in. Whatever you want me to do, whatever it is, I'll do it. I surrender. I don't have a direction. All I had was a yes. Now here's the funny part.

The last thing I ever wanted was to ever be in ministry. Standing in front of people, doing a wedding, how stressful. A funeral? What do you say? Preaching? How do you talk for more than three minutes?

I was the shy kid. I was the one that would leave a room, and no one would even know that you were there. That was me. And I went to a Bible college, and I played on the basketball team on the court. And I was fine on the court, but off the court, I was invisible. I was so quiet that girls in my school thought I didn't even speak English.

They thought I was from a foreign country. And I'm not exaggerating exaggerating. They genuinely thought that I didn't speak English. And I wasn't mysterious. I was just terrified to talk to anybody. Now at 18, a friend from the college introduced me to a chiropractor, and he took me on a basketball missions trip to Managua, Nicaragua.

And I didn't have the money because I'm a broke college kid. I ain't got no money, but he paid the whole thing. And during the day, we had teach kids and orphan kids that were connected to the church how to play basketball. And at night, there'd be a service. One night, one of the speakers got sick. And you know what happened?

They turned to me. Hey, Eric. You're gonna have to speak tonight. You're all we have, and you're in a Bible college. And my worst fear, the one thing I never thought to do, ever wanted to do, and there was no way out of it, I had to get up in front of a 150 kids with a tin roof in Nicaragua heat sweating through my shirt, and I don't even remember what I said, but the kids went crazy. They loved it.

Something happened in that room. I can't explain it, and I didn't even expect it. The next morning, the chiropractor pulled me aside. He said, hey, Eric. While you're speaking, God gave me two scriptures for you, and he read them to me. And the only way that I can describe what happened that next moment, I felt like I was standing in front of concert speakers that bass waves were going through my whole body.

And it was eight in the morning. I was half asleep, and all of a sudden, I was wide awake because God was moving through me with a force that I could feel and I couldn't even explain. And I knew at 18 years old in Nicaragua, I knew God was calling me to something. I don't know what it was, but my best guess was it had to do with basketball. But pastor, preach, lead a church, that wasn't even on the list. And now I've done every one of those things that I was afraid of.

I've preached to 10 people, and I've preached to 8,000 people. I was afraid of every one of those things, and here's what I've learned. The calling doesn't shrink to fit your fear. You expand to fit the calling that God has given you. If you think God picked the wrong guy when he picked you, you're in good company. God shows up to Moses in a burning bush and basically says, hey, bro.

You're gonna lead my people out of Egypt. And Moses said, are you crazy? No way. I don't even speak wood. And in fact, he's standing there right in front of a burning bush that's not even burning. He's barefoot, and the bush is on fire.

And he's like, lord, I've never been a good talker, not before, not since. They used... And and he's talking to a burning bush, a grown man standing barefoot in front of a bush that doesn't burn. And his big objection is that he isn't a public speaker. See, that was me in Nicaragua. See, Paul wrote this to Timothy, a young pastor who had his own share of fear.

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. Look at that word given. The fear is real. Paul doesn't pretend it isn't there. He just tells Timothy where it didn't come from. God gave you a lot of things, and fear wasn't one of them.

So how do you know the difference between a dream that God gave you and a dream that you gave yourself? Here's what I've learned. Ambition is something that you choose, and a calling isn't something that chooses you. At 16, I didn't choose a career path. I surrendered to a man named Jesus. Ambition whispers about platforms and being seen and likes and Facebook and Instagram and TikTok, and and I know the whisper because I've heard it later.

But when I felt at 16 didn't line up with what would make me look good or feel comfortable, it didn't even make sense for who I was. That's the thing about a god dream. You can't talk yourself out of it. You can't ignore it. You can't run from it. You can try to live around it.

It'll still be there when you wake up. So let me ask you. What's the one thing you keep trying to talk yourself out of? What keeps showing up after you've told it to go away? I'll pray about it. Have you ever tried to walk away from something that God has already put in you?

Have you really tried? You know exactly what I mean. When you try to run from that calling, the gift, the thing that he's put on the inside of you, it follows you around like a shadow with a heartbeat. Not every dream survives the trip. I've learned that early. The first dream killer wasn't a person.

It was my own voice. The shy kid who couldn't talk to five people was supposedly called to something bigger than themselves, and I didn't need anybody to tell me I wasn't enough. I told myself that every day. You're quiet. You're not built for this. Nicaragua was one night.

That's not a calling. That's a fluke. Then there's fear. Fear that you'll fail. Fear that you're a fraud. Fear that you're you're not talented enough or special enough or chosen enough.

Fear is sneaky because it sounds like wisdom but realist... Be realistic. Protect yourself. Fear. And then there's shame. If you stumble like me, the lie is that that God has done with you.

Your past has already written your future, that people like you don't get to dream. Shame is a liar and it's just a lie with a straight face. So which one is the loudest voice in your life right now? Your own fear or shame? Most people let one of them win. They listen to the noise and they walk away from the dream.

See, the voices are loud, fear and shame, but the dream has to be louder. See, Habakkuk was frustrated with God. You ever been frustrated? He looked at everything going around him and basically said, how long, oh lord, are you even listening? And God's answer wasn't an explanation. It was an instruction.

Write the vision. Make it plain on tablets so that he may run who reads it. Habakkuk two two. That's why I tell people you have to write the dream down. When Israel crossed the Jordan, they stacked 12 stones up so that the kids would remember to do this in remembrance of what God had done. What do these stones mean?

You need a stone. You need a piece of paper that you can hold because there will come a day when you can't see the dream anymore. And there's come a day when you're gonna need proof that you once did. Written dreams survive the silence. Maybe you can feel it right now, that pool in your chest, that thing that you've been afraid to say out loud. What is it?

Who have you been waiting on to approve it? And what if they never do? You don't need anybody else to tell you what God's already put on the inside of you. God already put it there. It's time to dream again. Your comeback starts now.

The truth. Most people don't lose the dream. They stop believing it's still possible. The verse. Write the vision. Make it plain.

Here's the work. Today, write the dream on paper today. One sentence. Date it. Put it somewhere you can see it.

That's the one move this week. You need to write the dream. Write the sentence. And I wanna help you with the next step. I got the free...

I got a free reset guide. It pulls all seven stages on a few pages with one step for each. Just comment the word reset on Instagram or grab in the link below. And guys, I'll see you next week for stage two break. Your comeback starts now.