Message: Identifying God's Dream for You
Week of September 20, 2009

Thematic Focus
Learning the steps you can take to discover God's dream for your life.

Main Points
Dreams have a great impact upon a person's life:
· Dreams empower an ordinary person to live an extraordinary life.
· Dreams determine the destination of a person's life.
· Dreams define a person and give him or her dignity.

How to identify your God dream:
·  Offer yourself as a living sacrifice
·  Conform to His way of thinking
· Connect your dreaming to others
·  Discover your gifts of grace
· Make your dream public

Scriptural Lens:
·  Acts 2:17
· Romans 12:1-8
·  Jeremiah 29:11-13
· Ephesians 2:10
·  Hebrews 11:1

Pursuing clarity
Use the following structure to guide your personal reflection and/or discussion:

Opening Prayer
Take a moment to recognize Christ’s presence with you.

Opening Reflection
How might the ideas associated with the "American dream" conflict with God's dream for a person's life?

Scriptural Focus
Take time to read the suggested Scriptures.

Group Discussion
Use these questions to reflect further:

1. What does it mean for a person to offer him or herself as a sacrifice to God?
2. What patterns of thinking exist in our culture that would be different from how God thinks?
3. How can dreaming with others help a person gain a God dream for his or her life?
4. Identify your personality type, passions, abilities, training, and life experiences. How are these gifts of grace? How might God use these gifts for His purposes?
5. What are some of the dreams you have had? Are they God inspired?
6. What is the impact of making a dream public?

Adjusting Focus
Take some time to answer the following questions:

Have you genuinely offered your life to God as a living sacrifice? What area of your life are you holding back?

In order to conform to God's way of thinking, you need to get alone with Him. How can you take steps to do this?

Who can you begin to dream with? Who will encourage you to seek God's dream for you?

What are the "gifts of grace" that God has given you? Think about your personality, passions, abilities, training, and life experiences.

How do you need to make your dream public?

Maintaining Focus
How is God's Spirit prompting you to grow on the faith journey?

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Closing prayer
Take time at the close of your time together to pray for God’s assistance in the journey. Depending on how comfortable group members feel, here are some ways you could pray:

· Write out a personal prayer.
· Have the group facilitator or a designated member of the group pray.
· Have members of the group get into a smaller group to pray for one another.
· Have several members of the group pray aloud and then conclude.

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