Dream On With Jesus by Greg Albrecht

I Have a Dream—given by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963—is one of the most well known, most studied and most quoted speeches in the history of our nation. In that historic speech Dr. King used the phrase “I have a dream” eight different times as he called for freedom and justice for all people.

Daring to dream can be dangerous—particularly when your dream does not march in lock step with the political and religious establishment.

They killed Martin Luther King Jr. because he dared to dream, but they didn’t kill his dream.

Throughout history dreamers who challenged government and religion have been viewed as nonconformists at best, sometimes as revolutionaries and even as enemies.

Dreamers are often made fun of and persecuted. Dreamers are often marginalized and discriminated against. They lose jobs. They have to move away from hostile neighborhoods, cities and sometimes even countries. Dreamers are often beaten, tortured and killed.

Jesus’ dream threatened the status quo because he invited the downtrodden to an entirely different kind of kingdom. Jesus was not satisfied with the first century world, nor can we, as his followers, be satisfied with the 21st century world.

They killed Jesus but his dream lives on, in and through our lives, and we are not satisfied with the status quo!

How can we be satisfied with empty dreams and promises when Christians all over this world are being tortured and killed in what clearly seems be to an ever increasing holy war to wipe out Christ-followers?

How can we be satisfied with short-sighted assurances that all is well in our world, when hundreds of thousands of little children are abused and beaten and sexually trafficked?

How can we be satisfied when our refrigerator and pantry may contain food for our meals today and tomorrow, yet hunger and thirst are the daily reality faced by many around this world?

How can we be satisfied when our world is filled with violence, animosity, hatred, bigotry, warfare, persecution, torture and bloodshed?

The good news, of course, is that our world will not stand forever. The good news is that our dream of the kingdom of heaven will come to pass. So dream on with Jesus.

Jesus offers you and me a dream—it’s his dream—it’s a dream of the
kingdom of heaven, a kingdom that is not from this world, a different
kind of a kingdom where the last are first, where the greatest is a
servant and where all of the standards and values of our world are turned upside-down.

Jesus never gave up on the dream. He never stopped serving and giving. He cared and took time with those who were considered to be the least and the lost. He loved the poor, the lepers, the unforgiven, the forgotten and the fatherless. And because he loved others, because he served, and because he rejected the religious establishment, they killed him.

They beat him, they tortured him, they humiliated him, they publicly shamed him and they mercilessly crucified him—heaping on him all their hatred, all their vengeance and all their hostilities.

And he accepted it—he soaked it in—he absorbed it—he ingested, he
assimilated and he received all human hostility and all human hatred.

Because for Jesus, the end of violence is not more violence—the end of violence is the love and grace of God.

Jesus invited us to receive him and live by God’s grace.

He did not promise those who obeyed all of his dictates their best life now. He offered them—and you and me—a cross which they could pick up and follow him.

If our dreams confirm all that society stands for and supports—if our dreams are satisfied with the vain promises of politicians and empty assurances of religion then our dreams are worthless.

Because of Jesus, we are given a bigger dream—we are given a Christ-centered hope—a dream that places Jesus and his kingdom on center stage. He is our dream—he is our hope—and by God’s grace we are invited to dream on with Jesus.

---