Dreams - Making, Breaking, and Taking
Genesis 39:20
And Joseph's master took him, and put him into the prison,a place where the king's prisoners were bound: and he was there in the prison.
Here I write on the biblical idea of God making a dream, breaking a dream, and taking a dream.
We all have dreams. A man who no longer dreams, dies--yet while he lives. Some men dream for wrong things. In God, we can dream aright. There are many biblical characters who God spoke to in a dream. One of my favorite characters, Joseph, dreamed. Yet, he had not a clue of how hard the dream was going to be. Do we ever? The Scripture is somewhat silent in terms of a lot of his heartache. But, it had to be there. Betrayal by family, betrayal by a Master. These betrayals lead to 13 long years of slavery and imprisonment. Wow, with dreams like this, who needs nightmares? The university of adversity. Joseph got his doctorate from U of A. Then, he was second-in-command in Egypt, forgave and fed his family and saved them from famine.
I had a dream in 1993 to help high school students transition to college. The source of the idea? My genius? No. My pain? Yes. My undergraduate years in college--when I became a Christian--were harrowing. When I became a believer, the storm of my life did not cease. Instead, God gave me the strength to hold onto the mast. How long, O' Lord, how long? I had sown to the wind of sin during my teens years and was reaping in the whirlwind in young adulthood. I found a strange comfort in the book of Job. It was the first book of the Scriptures that I read when I picked up my old Catholic Bible that I had been given in Sunday School when I was 11. Wished I had never been born or died at birth? I could relate.
When I went to grad school in 1989, I researched the college transition. In two years of study and Master's Research Project (like a Thesis) I had created a program called the College Transition Group which was a small group seminar to help high school students grasp the transition issues of college in terms of the personal, academic, and social. I did it as a school counselor at my high school with a nice degree of participation. My hope was that I could do some good for others...partially by helping them avoid some of my stupid mistakes and outright sins.
In 1997, I turned the idea into a business titled, of course, the College Transition Group. I had some really fantastic success early on with the seminar. I was hot and on the cutting edge. The local media was all over it. I was on TV, in the newspapers, on the radio. But, I lacked the maturity, wisdom, and experience to fan the flame to a fire. I did several things, nothing out and out sinful but still unwise, that caused the CTG fires to burn low.
By 2001, it became clear to me that I needed to delve more deeply into the college transition research. So, I put CTG on the back burner, started a Ph. D. program down at Temple University in Educational Psychology (took a half year off of full-time work), then for the last seven years continued to work full-time as a high school counselor...while doing my school work on Saturdays for 8-10 hours year-round (more over the summer).
Seven long years of sitting in the chair typing papers. Or, driving to Philly; starting at 5:00 in the morning, going to work, traveling to Temple (four hour round trip from Lancaster, some of it on the Surekill Expressway), and home at 10:00. What propelled me? A dream! But, more than once, it almost broke me. Two years ago I married, making school and work and marriage three entities needing attention and energy (my wife will tell you that she has felt in less than first more than once).
This last winter, it became clear to my wife (I was in denial), that the College Transition Group business and website was dead in the water. Even though I was not actively soliciting business, and had not done so on a large scale for the last 7 years despite one lame effort that got nowhere, I was always hoping that CTG would somehow get resurrected. I kept the website up in hopes that I would sell enough of the seminar materials to justify paying the web hosting fee. My wife, the crack CPA, in the Fall of 2008, reminded me that the outflow was like a brisk stream of cash going out with nary a trickle coming in. So, in January, I took down the site, licked my wounds. The CTG idea...DOA.
Two weeks ago, I heard a sermon by John Maxwell of "Putting My Dream To Test." (based on his new book). I decided to order the book. My wife, thrifty as she is, wanted me to wait until our local library had it. I decided to order it new anyway. Well, long story short, I got the book, and then noticed a sticker on the book about a "Dream Test" competition. Something stirred anew in me. God showed me that my dream was not dead in terms of helping students to transition to college. But, that the web needed to be the primary means of doing so rather than an adjunct. It sounds so simple but it was a complete reversal of the strategy that I had employed for years.
My wife went to work on a Business Plan and I fine-tuned it. The night before it was due I went to submit it, my computer did not work. Microsoft had one of those many hour download updates that puts my older computer in a coma while updating the software to Windows XP. The day that the Business Plan was due, the computer was still on the fritz. Then, as a final blow, the computer screen turned into a scary pink and green hued visage (it has been slowly dying for months and I am just too cheap to replace it). Frankly, I felt as if my computer was possessed. Like the Amityville Horror minus the flies on the window (but a deluge of bugs in Windows)
My wife was out of town with her laptop and my computer had picked the absolute worse time to not function. Stressed, I went to work. Fortunately, when I got back from school, my computer had worked out its bad karma and was operating again. Three hours before the midnight hour, I uploaded the Business Plan.
Here is the kicker! Found out a couple of days ago that we are national "Top Ten" finalists with the prospect of being down in Atlanta in a week as the winner of the "Dream Test!" I pray that God will take this dream and make it His. Like Joseph, "May what was meant for evil, be turned into good because God was in it."
Want to vote? Click the title above "Dreams - Making, Breaking, and Taking" and then click KNOWLEDGE TO COLLEGE. For those on Facebook, click this: http://www.scribd.com/dream
And Joseph's master took him, and put him into the prison,a place where the king's prisoners were bound: and he was there in the prison.
Here I write on the biblical idea of God making a dream, breaking a dream, and taking a dream.
We all have dreams. A man who no longer dreams, dies--yet while he lives. Some men dream for wrong things. In God, we can dream aright. There are many biblical characters who God spoke to in a dream. One of my favorite characters, Joseph, dreamed. Yet, he had not a clue of how hard the dream was going to be. Do we ever? The Scripture is somewhat silent in terms of a lot of his heartache. But, it had to be there. Betrayal by family, betrayal by a Master. These betrayals lead to 13 long years of slavery and imprisonment. Wow, with dreams like this, who needs nightmares? The university of adversity. Joseph got his doctorate from U of A. Then, he was second-in-command in Egypt, forgave and fed his family and saved them from famine.
I had a dream in 1993 to help high school students transition to college. The source of the idea? My genius? No. My pain? Yes. My undergraduate years in college--when I became a Christian--were harrowing. When I became a believer, the storm of my life did not cease. Instead, God gave me the strength to hold onto the mast. How long, O' Lord, how long? I had sown to the wind of sin during my teens years and was reaping in the whirlwind in young adulthood. I found a strange comfort in the book of Job. It was the first book of the Scriptures that I read when I picked up my old Catholic Bible that I had been given in Sunday School when I was 11. Wished I had never been born or died at birth? I could relate.
When I went to grad school in 1989, I researched the college transition. In two years of study and Master's Research Project (like a Thesis) I had created a program called the College Transition Group which was a small group seminar to help high school students grasp the transition issues of college in terms of the personal, academic, and social. I did it as a school counselor at my high school with a nice degree of participation. My hope was that I could do some good for others...partially by helping them avoid some of my stupid mistakes and outright sins.
In 1997, I turned the idea into a business titled, of course, the College Transition Group. I had some really fantastic success early on with the seminar. I was hot and on the cutting edge. The local media was all over it. I was on TV, in the newspapers, on the radio. But, I lacked the maturity, wisdom, and experience to fan the flame to a fire. I did several things, nothing out and out sinful but still unwise, that caused the CTG fires to burn low.
By 2001, it became clear to me that I needed to delve more deeply into the college transition research. So, I put CTG on the back burner, started a Ph. D. program down at Temple University in Educational Psychology (took a half year off of full-time work), then for the last seven years continued to work full-time as a high school counselor...while doing my school work on Saturdays for 8-10 hours year-round (more over the summer).
Seven long years of sitting in the chair typing papers. Or, driving to Philly; starting at 5:00 in the morning, going to work, traveling to Temple (four hour round trip from Lancaster, some of it on the Surekill Expressway), and home at 10:00. What propelled me? A dream! But, more than once, it almost broke me. Two years ago I married, making school and work and marriage three entities needing attention and energy (my wife will tell you that she has felt in less than first more than once).
This last winter, it became clear to my wife (I was in denial), that the College Transition Group business and website was dead in the water. Even though I was not actively soliciting business, and had not done so on a large scale for the last 7 years despite one lame effort that got nowhere, I was always hoping that CTG would somehow get resurrected. I kept the website up in hopes that I would sell enough of the seminar materials to justify paying the web hosting fee. My wife, the crack CPA, in the Fall of 2008, reminded me that the outflow was like a brisk stream of cash going out with nary a trickle coming in. So, in January, I took down the site, licked my wounds. The CTG idea...DOA.
Two weeks ago, I heard a sermon by John Maxwell of "Putting My Dream To Test." (based on his new book). I decided to order the book. My wife, thrifty as she is, wanted me to wait until our local library had it. I decided to order it new anyway. Well, long story short, I got the book, and then noticed a sticker on the book about a "Dream Test" competition. Something stirred anew in me. God showed me that my dream was not dead in terms of helping students to transition to college. But, that the web needed to be the primary means of doing so rather than an adjunct. It sounds so simple but it was a complete reversal of the strategy that I had employed for years.
My wife went to work on a Business Plan and I fine-tuned it. The night before it was due I went to submit it, my computer did not work. Microsoft had one of those many hour download updates that puts my older computer in a coma while updating the software to Windows XP. The day that the Business Plan was due, the computer was still on the fritz. Then, as a final blow, the computer screen turned into a scary pink and green hued visage (it has been slowly dying for months and I am just too cheap to replace it). Frankly, I felt as if my computer was possessed. Like the Amityville Horror minus the flies on the window (but a deluge of bugs in Windows)
My wife was out of town with her laptop and my computer had picked the absolute worse time to not function. Stressed, I went to work. Fortunately, when I got back from school, my computer had worked out its bad karma and was operating again. Three hours before the midnight hour, I uploaded the Business Plan.
Here is the kicker! Found out a couple of days ago that we are national "Top Ten" finalists with the prospect of being down in Atlanta in a week as the winner of the "Dream Test!" I pray that God will take this dream and make it His. Like Joseph, "May what was meant for evil, be turned into good because God was in it."
Want to vote? Click the title above "Dreams - Making, Breaking, and Taking" and then click KNOWLEDGE TO COLLEGE. For those on Facebook, click this: http://www.scribd.com/dream
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