Plowing the Ground

So, you have a dream, and you spend your whole life trying to see it fulfilled. You do this until you die, but the dream goes unfulfilled. Are you a failure? Did you fail, or did you succeed? That is an interesting question and how you answer it depends on whose perspective you are taking.

Most men would say that you were a failure. You didn’t accomplish what you set out to accomplish. What is worse, you might have given up great successes in other areas to press into this one dream. But what would God say?

In Hebrews 1, the “faith” chapter, most of the men and women that are talked about didn’t see their dreams realized, yet this is what scripture says about them: “these all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.”

So your level of faith has nothing to do with whether your dreams are fulfilled or not. Bill Johnson says it this way: “Many are discouraged because their dreams have failed. In their pain and frustration they oppose the message that a believer has a right to dream.” We all know that Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but we forget that desire fulfilled is the tree of life. He goes on to say that when people pursue dreams but fail to see them realized that they are preparing the way for others who are going after the same dream. In the Kingdom of God, some plow the ground, some water and others reap the harvest.

For most of us, all we think about is our problem. We don’t take the Kingdom perspective that will use one to build on another. Often a tragic loss here on earth is viewed quite differently in heaven. We fail to realize that one person’s loss becomes the soil of another’s victory. We forget that there is more to the Kingdom of God than our dream. We must realize that we are part of a larger whole. Just as new recruits learn in basic training that their ultimate goal is the victory of their squad, not their own victory, we as believers must realize that the Kingdom will advance on our defeats as well as our victories.

Once we realize this, then we can begin to realize that there really is no “defeat” for those in the Kingdom of God. Every time we push out we win, whether it seems like it or not. We all have an important role to play in the Kingdom. There really are no failures. Some plow, some water and other’s harvest. The pay is the same in the Kingdom. We all succeed in the end.