Dreaming the Dream of Jacob

I like to tell bible stories to my middle school youth (who created the lovely bulletin board decoration in the picture, by the way) on Wednesday nights and this week we were somewhere around Genesis 28 – Jacob’s Dream. You know the story. He’s fleeing from a bad situation at home and somewhere along his journey, he lays down, falls asleep and has a dream where God reassures him that He is with Jacob and that one day God will bring him back home and will make his descendants reach farther than Jacob could imagine. Jacob wakes up, and remembering his dream, he “…made a vow, saying ‘If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I’m taking and will give me enough food to eat and clothes to wear so that I can return safely to my father’s house, then the Lord will be my God . . . Then Jacob continued on his journey.” (Gen. 28:20 – 29:1)

When Jacob realized God’s promise – “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” (Gen. 28:15) – he put his exhaustion and worries aside enough to know he would be able to see promises fulfilled, meet his goals and even more simply, be ok. Then he picked himself up and “continued on his journey.”

As I was getting ready to tell this story to my kids, I started thinking about how I have dreams also, and sometimes I become afraid of trying to make them real. For example - what if I put all of my heart into teaching kids at school, and they don’t respond? Should I even try? With that one thought process, I have gone from changing the world to, well, not changing it at all. Jacob might have been going through a similar line of thought – “here I am, leaving my home, my family and my life, to flee to someplace I’ve never been, to find people I’ve never met, and I don’t know what’s going to happen next. Why not just stay right here?” So in exhaustion, he lays his head down. But then God comes to Jacob in that dream and says ‘Jacob, here I am, I’ve always been here and I will always be here. I’m going to make your efforts reach and spread and grow in every direction. I’m going to be with you no matter where you go or what you do, and I’m going to bring you back home’ and suddenly, Jacob saw a bigger picture. He might have thought, ‘well, gosh, if God is going to be with me, take care of me, make me successful, and bring me back here, then what am I waiting for?!’

Charles Swindoll once asked “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?” That is such a powerful sentence for me. Think about it. If you could see down the road and see that this child you are pouring your heart into today is going to grow to be strong and wise as a result, would you hesitate to love him now? If you knew that stepping out on a limb and giving your time and talent to researching a cure for Alzheimer’s disease would prevent millions of lives from being disrupted in the future, would you stop short of getting the right education because you aren’t sure of how you’ll pay for the tuition? If you knew that telling a coworker that you are praying for her in her time of need would give her new strength to make it through, would you be afraid of being scoffed at?

What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?


What dreams are you putting on the back burner because you’re afraid you will fail? Just imagine what could have happened had Jacob given in to his worries. The establishment of the entire line of David would have been halted, and without the line of David, there’s no one to give rise to a little boy destined to save all souls.

I think that both the story of Jacob’s dream and Swindoll’s statement carry the same message. Don’t let your fears and doubts be the difference between changing the world (or even your corner of the world) and not changing it. Dare to let yourself step out on a limb without calculating how many birds’ nests you might hit on your way down if you fall. Dream the dream of Jacob: God is with you. God will watch over you. Wherever you go. Whatever you do. He will make His plans successful through you. He will bring us all back home to Him and He won’t leave you. He will do what He has promised.

Jacob couldn’t argue with it, and neither can you. So go forth. Continue on your journey. Go out there and follow those dreams God put into your heart. He put them there for a reason.