my dreams

Everyone has dreams. Those hopes that saturate their thoughts during the day and haunt their dreams at night. Dreams often change, but I have found that the skeletal structure of dreams remains relatively unchanged. For example, my dream—which I will confess in a moment—has often been dressed in different clothing or given different masks, and the hope for this dream has manifested itself in various ways. The intrinsic details of my hopes have gone from being very specific my senior year of college to being relatively vague in the present; yet the root of the dream, that which thrives underneath the lace of its hoped-for manifestations, remains the same. So what is it, then, that I hope for? It is really quite simple:

1) To be a living example of the gospel message

2) To advance God’s kingdom somehow and in some way

3) To be a good husband and a good father

I want to be a representative of Christ in the world. I want his love, compassion, mercy, and justice to radiate from my being. I want to be in a state of continual transformation into a creature who embodies the gospel proclamation in word and deed. I want to be a sort of animal who lives a life that is pleasing to God. I want there to be such joy and hope and peace in my life that people have no response but to shake their heads in awe and say to themselves, “Is he serious?” I want to be called naïve and ignorant and foolish because of the life I live that is so contrary to the selfishness, greed, and indifference that is the foundation of our culture’s existence.

I want to serve God in such a way that in whatever capacity I am found I am advancing His kingdom. More specifically, I want to be directly involved in vocational ministry. I have a passion for preaching and teaching, a gift for these, and I believe that God wants me to use them for His glory. I have worked in large churches and small churches, and I am not really sure where I want to end up. Ultimately, whether it’s on American soil or working as a missionary somewhere, I want to be advancing God’s kingdom.

Call me old-school, but I am, at heart, a family man. I hope to one day have a wife whom I will love, cherish, and serve, and I want to be a father who raises his children up into the light of God’s kingdom. This desire—to be a good husband and a good father—is something that runs as thick as sap through my veins, something that cries out with each rhythmic pulse of my beating heart.