Last night, I had a great conversation with Sam, Susan, Becca, and Jonathan about dreams. We talked about things like, do you dream in color or in black and white? Do you see things clearly in your dreams, or are they fuzzy? Do you even remember your dreams at all? And of course, we talked about how dreams are just kind of weird in general. You know, like how things make total sense while you're in the middle of a dream, but then you wake up and think to yourself, "What just happened?"

I want to talk about a different kind of dream, though - the ones you have about yourself, your future, your life. What do you dream about? What do you picture your life being like? What do you picture the world being like? These are important questions and important things to think about. And the cool thing is that God is in the business of dreams, too. He wants to shape the dreams you have about your life and your world, and make them reflect the things that he cares about.

I have a quote on the wall in my office from a pastor named Erwin Raphael McManus. Talking about his role as a leader in his church, he says:

My goal is not to cast a vision that everyone buys into, but to create a visional community where everyone who enters in begins to have wild and God-sized dreams and visions.

This is what I want for our group, too. I don't want to be the only one deciding where we go as a community. I'm not the only one that God speaks to. Every person who trusts in Jesus as their savior has the Holy Spirit - God himself! - living inside them. This means that God speaks his dreams into everyone who believes in him. So my question is: What dream has God given you? And how are you going to make that dream a reality?

If you've never seen the Jesus Videos from Vintage 21 church in Raleigh, you've got to check the out - they're hilarious!

Jesus Videos

Hoooooooow do you expect to get to heaven by playing board games?

What a great night we had last night! Sunday Night Youth is officially kicked off for 2009-2010, and it was exciting to see all the enthusiasm, new faces, and old faces too. Let's keep it up and make this the best year yet!

This morning I read a verse that really made me stop and think. It's in Luke chapter 11. Jesus is talking to a crowd of people about light. What does light do? It provides illumination so that we can see where we are going. He says, "Your eye is a lamp that provides light for your whole body." Ummm, what does that mean?

Our eyes take in a lot of information each day, and it's these things that we see that we use to guide ourselves. So, in a sense, these things become the "light" for our whole body. The things we look at and read, the opinions and worldviews that we subscribe to, these become the things that guide the direction of our lives.

So that brings me to this thing Jesus said. In verse 35, he says, "Make sure that the light you think you have is not actually darkness." In other words, take a step back and think about the things that are guiding your life. Are they really light? Or in other words, are they really true? Because, as Jesus tells us, if the things that are guiding your life are not really true, then you've got major problems.

So what is guiding your life? Is it a desire to fit in, to be popular, to experience "success" as this world defines it? Is it a certain philosophy? Do you just "do what feels good" or "follow your heart?" Step back and think about what guides you, and then carefully consider whether it is really true. I lovingly suggest to you that there is one man who claimed to be the Truth, who backed it up by rising from the dead, and who you can build your life upon and be confident that your "light" is really light. Know Him, and you can be sure that your light is leading you down the right path.