Margin To Dream

So here's what we're going to do, everybody. We're going to kick off week number two of our series that we started last week called dreaming of a white Christmas. Okay, I told the story about when I was a kid, I loved a white Christmas. This week, I got a little nervous when there was snow in the forecast, though, because, as a grown man, number one, I don't like ice. Okay, you know, like, you just don't. I don't want to break a hip, you know what I mean? I don't want to, I don't want to go down at all, right? I'm like, get the salt out, man. I'm not dealing with ice. Also, I don't like moving snow as much as I used to, you know, especially now that I've got older, stronger kids, I'm like, wait till your kids get that age. It's super fun. It's super, super fun. Anyway, I talked about that last week, and I talked about, you know, where did those moments of dreaming go? Right? Where did they go? I feel like we actually don't dream as much as we used to. In fact, studies prove that the older we get, the less we dream, which I don't think the Bible shows us. The Bible shows us, the older we get, the more we should dream, the more by the Spirit of God, dreams should be ignited on the inside of us, and we should have greater dreams. The greater our hair gets, y'all hear what I'm saying, or the less hair we have, they should get greater and greater and greater. And I don't have time to re preach that message that I called meant to dream. So if you didn't hear it, go back and listen to it on YouTube. Or, of course, you can download the Mercy City Church app, and it's all right there as well. But today I want to preach a message called margin to dreams. Let me say margin to dream. Margin to dream. So for the sake of all being together, I want you to remember what the definition of dream that we're working with is, and it's a series of thoughts. Let me say thoughts, images. We say images and sensations. Say sensations occurring in a person's mind during sleep or a daydream in the mind. Remember, last week we talked about thoughts. We talked about images, we talked about the sensations. We talked about how in Romans, chapter number 12, verses one and two, Paul encourages the people of God not to copy the blueprint or behaviors of the world. So don't be a copycat of the world. But there is a heaven blueprint for you to live according to he said, I want you to exchange what was for what could be. I want you to dream, right? I want you to dream. But I not only do I think that we don't dream the the older we get, I think that we don't necessarily have the space to dream or the margin to dream. And so here's the definition of the word margin. Margin means the edge or the border of something. The edge or the border of something. Think about a notebook. Think about the book that you're writing in the book that you're looking at, think about around the page. There is a margin. What's the margin? The margin is some blank space. The margin is empty, typically, but I believe that it's in those places of margin where God can actually release to us the dreams that he wants us to experience. Now check this out. I just for the sake of illustration, I want you to see I like to read my Bible, and sometimes I like to write things in my Bible. And I had to get a new Bible because my old Bibles didn't have enough margin in them. I wanted some more margins, so I got the Bible that you could write in a little study Bible and and just show you what the margin looks like. But what happens is, when God begins to speak to you, when you have margin built into your world and God speaks to you, you have the ability to fill the margins with the Word of God, with the purposes of God, with the plans of God. This is God. This is God's word. This is God speaking to me. This is the life that I live. But this is the the the area that God has spoken to me, in the margin, or the blank space, I think to some of us, got margin, low margin, margin. Little you see what I'm saying. God can speak to us in the space as a margin. I think many of us don't dream often because we don't have the margin in our world to dream. We don't have dedicated blank space. But. In our Monday for God to speak to us. We don't have dedicated blank space in our Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday, even our Sunday for God to really speak to us. As Americans, we have become accustomed to filling every bit of blank space in our world with something, and we've worn busyness as a badge of honor. I believe that the vast majority of us don't dream anymore because we lack the margin to dream. We lack the margin to experience God's miraculous power. Think about this. Everybody does your life, the life that you live, the marriage that you have, the family that you're raising, the job that you work, does your life have the margin for God to show up to you and move miraculously? Does your life have the margin in it? Does it have the room for God to interrupt you or perhaps disrupt you, or maybe not even interrupt or disrupt, but just interject. Is there room in your world for God to speak to you, to interject a thought you have a plan that you've run to the edge of the page of your life, but is there room for God to interject in your plan? You know your five year plan, your 10 year plan. Come on, high school students, you know how your teachers are telling you to dream of who you're going to be and what you're going to do. College students, when you graduate, who are you going to become? What are you going to do? You got a plan? Is there room for God to interject His plan and your plan? Or are your plans to settle for being a cheap copy, copycat blueprint of the world?  I don't know. I can't answer that for you. But I wonder what would look like for our lives to have a little wiggle room, a little flex space in our plan for God to do something supernatural, abnormal, miraculous, or maybe dream worthy. Here's what I believe with all my heart. I believe with all my heart, if tomorrow's miracles are to be born, they're going to require they're going to require some margin for conception today. They're going to require it. If your marriage is going to be what your marriage is called to be in six months, 12 months, 18 months, you're going to have to slow down today, allowing God to conceive something on the inside of you to be born for that, for that. Y'all hear what I'm saying. If your family, your workplace, your career, if it's going to be what God wants it to be, you're going to have to slow down and create space allowing God to speak to you today. Some of us are like, okay, Pastor, Matt, I hear what you say, but would you hurry up? Because I got to get the brunch.And we wonder why we don't dream. We wonder why we don't see the miracles of God. Let's take a look at some scripture from Matthew chapter number one about a dream fulfilled and margin made that we see in Scripture, specifically verse number 18, Matthew, chapter number one, says this. This is how Jesus, the Messiah, was born, the birth story of Jesus. This is where we find a dream fulfilled, a miracle taking place. This is where we see this as we well know as Christ's followers. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph, but before the marriage took place while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. Joseph, whom she was engaged to, was a righteous man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement off quietly. I want to call just a time out right here, if I can, for just a few minutes, because there's a ton taking place in this portion of Scripture that I don't want us just to gloss over. Now there's the promise of the Messiah, which we know is the miracle, right? We know that's the miracle. It's a miracle. Some might call it a dream come true. It's a word of prophecy fulfilled. It's a miracle moment that's taking place right here in Scripture. However, there was a bit of a mess in the midst of this season. There was a woman named Mary who was not married yet and she became pregnant. How many of y'all know that gets a little messy? You. Especially when you're engaged to somebody, and the brother that you're engaged to is not the daddy of the baby. Somebody say, I'm telling you, it gets messy in the middle of this situation. I love that the Bible calls Joseph A righteous man. He stepped back in the midst of the mess, and he decided, I gotta formulate a plan. I gotta come up with a plan. I gotta come up with an idea, which happens to many of us when we find ourselves in the middle of a mess too, doesn't we? We step back and we try to formulate or plot out a plan. But my question is this, do you create space for God to intervene in your plan? Can God bring his plan to your plan, or does your plan Trump his plan? It was a mess. It was a mess because Mary conceived before the marriage. It was a mess because Joseph was righteous, and he was attributed as such in Scripture, so people knew that he was righteous. What would people say? What would happen? What would culture think? You know, there's something about the miracles of Scripture that oftentimes seem to be more messy than they seem to be miraculous. You chronicle the miracles of Scripture, and it just seems like a mess. Just seems like a mess. Moses leading the children of Israel out of Egypt. It just got messy. It was miraculous. But there was mess after mess after mess. There was decision after decision after decision where Moses had to choose God's blueprint rather than the world's blueprint. And now here we are. We're seeing the same thing. This is the single most miraculous moment in Scripture, and it's a mess. Joseph had to decide, will I choose the blueprint of the world, or will I choose transformation and receive the blueprint of heaven? Verse number 20 says this is he considered this an angel of the Lord I love this appear to him in a dream. He stepped back to formulate a plan. But as he formulated the plan, creating space, God was able to show up to him. How in a dream, when's the last time you slowed down enough and gave enough room in your plan for God to deliver his plan too. Joseph, son of David, the angel said, Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and she will have a son, and you're the name of Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. So what's happening the Lord is showing up to Joseph, and he's dispelling the images that he most likely was wrestling with. Remember what a dream is. It's the thoughts, the images or sensations. It's a past thing that we're being reminded of. It's a trigger moment that feels familiar, that cause your thoughts to go in a certain direction, creating images that you would move forward with otherwise. The angel showing up to Joseph and he's saying, Hey, I don't want you to worry about the images that you've been thinking about. I don't want you to get bogged down in Did she cheat on me? Is she unfaithful? Is this worth it? I don't want you to get caught up in that. I don't want you to caught up in the old blueprint. I want you to receive this new word and new blueprint from me. He was ministering transformation. All of this occurred to fulfill the Lord's message through through his prophet. Look, the virgin will conceive a child, and she will give birth to a son, and they'll call him Emmanuel, which means God is with us. When Joseph woke up, I love this. He did as the angel of the Lord commanded, and he took Mary as his wife. See, now, if I wake up from this dream, I'm like, Lord, that wasn't you. That must, that must have been the pizza. That must just be me. You ever experienced a time with the Lord where you feel like he's speaking to you and you get done and you're like, No, that that must have been me, that that must, that just must have been me. That's crazy. Why? Because it's counter culture, but that's how God tends to do things. So he took her as his wife, but he did not have sexual relations with her until her son was born. And Joseph named him Jesus. Joseph named him. To Jesus. So let me ask you a question here, because I don't know, sometimes we just don't think about this stuff in Scripture. Just overlook it. But what if? What if Mary didn't make the margin for Jesus? The The Bible says that the angel of the Lord showed up to Mary and said, Hey, I've chosen you to be the mother of this child. Now, scholars believe that she was, you know, somewhere late teens. You know, 15, 1617, years old. I don't know if you know any 15, 1617, year old girls, but I have a hard time. I got a 15 year old at home. I have a hard time getting her to lay her phone down long enough to clean her room, let alone lay her life down for the miracle of God. Do y'all hear what I'm saying? But I know many of y'all that are 2530 540-555-6530, you have a hard time laying down your wants or desires long What if Mary hadn't created the margin of the space to say, Okay, God, whatever you want. Yeah, what you say, Let it be. So, whatever you say, Let it be. So, how many times have we talked ourselves out of the miraculous power of God, of the dream that God was planting on the inside of us because we had a plan, and this is my plan, God, I know what the next three years of my life will look like, and you are interrupting my plan. See, this didn't just matter for her in the moment. It mattered for her future. It mattered for Joseph. It mattered for the world. It mattered what if Mary said no? She could have she could have said no. What if Joseph would have said no? Joseph could have said no. He was a righteous man. This was going to hinder his reputation. What were people going to think he had some social status? He could have said no. He could have said no. Now let me be clear here for everybody, there will never be another Mary and there will never be another Joseph. There will never be another Messiah born. Okay, you are not Mary and you are not Joseph, nor are you Jesus. However, I do believe that as New Testament believers, we're called to be carriers of Christ, just like Mary was a carrier of Christ. And I believe that we are called to be protectors of the righteousness of God, which Joseph did as well. I believe that we're called to be carriers. I believe that we're called to be protectors of righteousness. And all of us have a choice. Are we going to pick up the blueprint of the world? Are we going to pick up the blueprint of Christ? There will be miracles assigned to our lives. I'm telling you, there's going to be miraculous things assigned to your lives, there's going to be miraculous dreams, God given visions that are assigned to each of our lives as believers in Jesus. But will you create the margin to dream?Here's how we make margin to dream. I think that we see this in the Scripture number one, three things, three ways to make margin a dream. Number one, slow down in the messy moments. Slow down in the messy moments. I know this is not a popular one at all, because all of us hate messy moments. Now, all of us don't hate mess, but all of us hate messy moments, right? We don't all hate mess, but we all hate messy moments. We all hate moments that are going to make us look like we don't have it figured out, like we don't have it put together, like we don't have it going on, right? That's why we, you know, come to church at our Sunday best, because we want to put on and portray a certain image for people we don't like mess necessarily. Does that make sense? We do our best to help people see a projected image of ourselves. We don't like mess. And so what we've learned to do through the course of time is we've learned to plow through the mess. We're going to pretend the mess doesn't exist. We're going to pretend that the mess isn't there. We're going to pretend that the mess is not affecting us. We're just going to pretend like everything is a okay to see you at church on Sunday morning. How you doing? Well, I'm blessed, brother, highly favored of the Lord hallelujah. When reality is all hell is breaking loose in your life, you just don't want anybody else to know. And I think it's because we don't slow down enough in the mess that we don't have the margin to realize there might just be a miracle in the middle of the mess. We avoid the mess, and that might just be the place where God is wanting to perform a miracle and do something. Great in us. We gotta slow down in the middle of the mess. As Nebraskans, good folks, good, hard working folks, we want to plow through the mess. Made a horrible joke during first service. Imma, do it again. I don't need you to plow through the mess. I want you to push through the mess. Pray, brothers and sisters, until something happens. Y'all remember the push bracelets. Pray Until Something Happens. Sorry, I thought I had to wear those when I first got saved. To be a Christian, we don't need to plow through the mess. We need to push through the mess. We need to pray until something happens. We need to pray until God shows us the way. We need to pray until God indicates the way to go. Philippians, chapter four says this in verse six, don't worry about anything. Instead, pray about everything. Don't worry or copy the ways of the world, but pray about everything. What does that tell us? It tells us that we're going to have an opportunity to worry and mess causes people to worry. I got a mess in my marriage. I'm worried about it. I wonder what would happen if you stop worrying about it and start praying about it. I gotta mess with my family. I wonder what would happen if you stop worrying about it, start praying about I gotta mess with my finances. What if you stop worrying about it and started praying about it? Worry, difficulty, mess is an indicator that you don't need to copy the ways of the world and worry, but you need to copy the ways of heaven and pray. Stop worrying about it. Start praying about it. Stop worrying about it. Start praying about it. Tell God what you need. I need help in my marriage. I need some clarity for my next step. I need some help in the way that I'm going God, I need you to show up, because I feel lost. I feel stuck in the midst of this mess. I need you God to show up. Tell him what you need, and thank him for all he's done. Maybe you're new to faith and you don't feel like God's ever done anything in you. What do you do? God? I'm encouraged by Pastor Matt, you've done some stuff in his life. Thank you for what you've done in his life. Thank you for the faithfulness that you've shown to my friends. Thank you for thank him for something that you can see, that he's done. Tell him what you need. Thank him for what he's done, God, thank you for the way that you came through in my marriage in the past. I know we're in the midst of a messy season, and you're going to move us forward. I trust that because of what you did back then. I believe that you're going to do it up here, too. God, you've shown up for me before, and I believe that you're going to do it again. You are faithful to your word. This is where I'm worried. This is what I need, and I'm thanking you for what you've done, but you gotta slow down in the midst of the mess. You can't overlook it. You can't move past it. What if that mess is the place where God wants to bring you the miracle? The second thing is, you gotta clear the mess. Now. The mess is not supposed to stay there forever. Okay? Well, Pastor, man, you said that's where the miracle was. It's not supposed to stay there forever. That's part of the miracle. Y'all hear what I'm saying. God will give you clarity. In the middle of the mess. You gotta determine what matters most in the midst of the mess, in the in the midst of the mess. Let me just say that while you might find the miracle in the mess, the miracle isn't the mess. So you gotta learn how to clear the mess, and the only way to determine what needs to stay and what needs to go is to weigh it. And you weigh eternal things, verse, temporary things, and that's the only way you can do it. Well, how do I do that? Pastor, Matt, you you pray, you pray, see even that you're like you started to worry like I'm worried about how do I do it? You pray about it. You tell God what you need. God, I need to know how to weigh these things. This seems very important, but it's temporary. This seems less important, but it's eternal. You pray about it, you ask God, you tell him what you need. To know what ways and what doesn't, what's going to last and what's not. Because sometimes we get trapped in to believe in things matter that don't really matter. No, no, I'm talking about, how do we know? This is how you know, take delight in the Lord. You pray you are in the presence. Of God, and He will give you the desires of your heart. You gotta weigh the eternal versus the temporary. What are the temporary things? And I don't know. I can't tell you. I can't give you a list of these are temporary. These are eternal, because some temporary things will make an eternal impact. Based on what God's doing in your life, uniquely from what he's doing in my life, I can tell you something that we wrestled with. Our kids were pretty great athletes, and it felt really good for them to be good athletes, because people started to take notice and were like, oh, I want your son on this team. I want your daughter on this team. I want this. I want that. And we started to feel good, like we did something good as parents. We taught them the work ethic to be able to succeed. And so we started getting calls from coaches all over the state, all over the region, asking, Hey, can your son come to this tournament? Can your daughter play in this tournament? And we were like, yes, no, yes, no. We don't know what to do. And coaches started telling us, Hey, if you want your kids to get this next opportunity, then you've got to commit them to this thing. So we're like, okay, we better do it. And we committed to it. We started traveling all over the place, doing all kinds of crazy stuff, and realized that what happened was, while we were putting them in position to succeed, our marriage was struggling as we were putting them in position to succeed. Our church began to struggle. And I know, I know, I know culturally, culturally, we would do anything for our kids. And you know what God told me, he said, Matt, you're making your kids God in your life. I would do anything for my kids, even give up my dream so that they can have theirs. So what am I telling my kids when you get to a certain age, you stop dreaming. So I had to go back to my kids and say, Hey, listen, we ain't doing this. It's temporary and eternal. This is our world. This is not your world. You apply it in your world. We had to decide our marriage, our church, what God was calling us to do, and our kids were supposed to be a part of that. And I had people when they got into high school saying, Hey, you didn't get them this opportunity, and so they're gonna get overlooked when it comes to the next level. And we just purpose in our hearts. Hey, if you're supposed to go to the next level, God will find a way to take you to the next level. We're not, we're not we don't have the money for it, we don't have the time for it, we don't what? We don't have the margin for it, right? So we had to pull back and create some margin for God to be able to speak to us. Guess what? God found them where they were and gave them the opportunities they were looking for. Turns out, here we are. What I'm saying is this, people will try to convince you, culture will try to convince you that something is an eternal matter or it matters the most when God's saying, Son, that's not what matters the most. What matters most for your family? I can't tell you what it is. I can't tell you that was our example. No shame, no shade on anybody that's choosing that that's not that's that's our situation. Y'all hear what I'm saying. But what we have to be able to do is weigh, is it eternal value, or is it temporary value? That's how we clear the mess. That's how we clear the mess. Third and final thing is this, take note of the mess. Take note of the mess. Today's mess might just be tomorrow's miracle. Today's mess might be tomorrow's miracle. The messy places in our lives are the ones that we avoid, that that we hide and that we overlook. You.But I've learned that those messy seasons get highlighted for a reason. I believe that they're the places that we're called to dream. I think things get messy sometimes because God wants us to slow down take note of them long enough to jot some thoughts down. Say, God, how can I dream in the midst of this? How can, how can I dream in the midst of this? See, most of us just keep pushing through. We were tempted in that season just to push through, because this is what you do for your kids. This is what you do for your family. This is what you do. This is the American dream, and these guys have the giftedness for it. And we were tempted to push through, to plow through. Thank God. Thank God, he stopped us. To say, Listen, that's great for these folks. This is not what you're called to. This could turn into something eternal for them, but it's not going to turn anything eternal for you. Oh, but God would be so much easier if life was just a cookie cutter and everybody did the same thing, be so much easier. If I could just watch Aaron and Haley and just copy whatever they do, be so much easier. If I could just copy my city group leader. Be so much easier if I could just but we're missing the home toy. God is calling us personally to himself. If I can live my life for Jesus just by watching you, then I don't need Jesus. If I can live my life for Jesus just by coming to church on Sunday, then I don't need Jesus. I can just go to church. I can just copy, Oh, what, cop. It's not this blueprint of that's how the world does it. It's not how God does it. God's got a unique blueprint for each and every one of us. And at the end of the day, we just have to be able to say, this is what I feel like the Lord's leading us into. We never condemn condemned one family. We've got so many families and relationships that were inter eternally impacted through that season where we were struggling to weigh what's temporary, what's internal. We thought sports were the thing. It wasn't. It was actually the relationships, and we were missing it just a little bit. Do you have margin to dream? Do you have blank space on the borders or the edge of your life, your marriage, the way that you parent right now? Do you? Do you have the space to dream, to hear from God? I don't know, you know, and I'd like to pray for you. Would you stand on your feet this morning? If that's you, you say pastor, Matt, that's me. I I've busied myself to the edge of the page. I've committed myself to the edge of the page, and I just don't have the room or the margin to dream anymore.The beauty of a life with Jesus is that when you run out of room in one season, he gives you another page to write on. See, there are seasons past where I fulfilled the dream that God gave me, but he wants to give me a new page in every new season. And you might be here today and say, Pastor, man, I need a new page. That's me. Would you just lift both hands to heaven? I'd like to pray over you for a new page. Father, you see every hand that is lifted. You see every heart that is open? You see the pages of life that are filled to the max? Father, I pray in the name of Jesus that as they exchange the copycat version of the world and culture for the new blueprint that you have, that you would release dreams, that you would release miracles, that you would release vision in the hearts and lives of people, new vision, new dreams, fresh hopes, doing in and through the hearts and lives of people, what only you Can in Jesus name, Amen, amen, amen, amen, amen. Come on.