http://www.palau.org//articles/dreaming_great_dreams_ Article from Palau.org Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:30:44 -0800 © 2009 Luis Palau Association en-us webmaster@palau.org (Webmaster) http://www.palau.org//articles/dreaming_great_dreams_ http://www.palau.org//articles/dreaming_great_dreams_
Jesus Christ declares in that verse, "I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing" (John 14:12).

That is a fantastic, almost incredible promise, but there it is. It came from the lips of the Lord Jesus and has been proven many times. Have you proven it true in your own life?

As a teenager growing up in Argentina, I felt frustrated about evangelizing the unsaved. "Lord, there are millions of people in this country alone," I realized. "Yet here we sit, Sunday after Sunday, the same people doing the same thing. We have to reach out."

So several of us began to pray together, "Lord, get us out of here. Do something. Use us." Slowly, in my heart and in the hearts of the others, a vision began to grow - a vision of reaching millions of people.

Some of my dreams were so wild that I didn’t tell anyone except my mother about them, and I didn’t even tell her all of them. She encouraged us, saying, "Come on. You don’t need a special message from the Lord. He gave the order centuries ago to preach the good news to everyone. So go. Don’t keep waiting for more instructions."

So we began to evangelize - slowly, in a small way. Now I am constantly amazed how the Lord has fulfilled so many of our great dreams the past thirty years. "Praise the Lord!" we’ve said again and again. "It’s  happening!"

While Jesus Christ was here among us, He deliberately limited Himself to three years of ministry in Palestine - to a small area for a short time - before dying and rising from the dead to save us.

Today Christ is calling you and me, His ambassadors, to dream great dreams because anyone who believes in Him can do the great works He did. How is that possible? The key to this promise is twofold.

First, because Christ was going to the Father, He would send the Holy Spirit to indwell us. Now that the Spirit indwells us as believers, Christ does His works through us!

Second, Christ adds a condition to His promise: "Anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing" (italics added). The Lord challenges us to have faith - not necessarily to have more faith, but faith in Him. It is an ongoing faith. Another translation puts it this way: "He who continues to believe in me will also do the works that I do."

Have you stopped seeing great things happen in your life? Perhaps you have stopped believing that God can work in a mighty way even in our generation.

What limits the work of God here on earth? Is God somehow incapable of reviving the churches? Of turning the hearts of multiplied thousands to Himself? Of causing the fires of revival to spread throughout this country and beyond? Of course not!

In a sense, though, God has chosen to limit His works to those things we trust Him to do through us.
 ]]> info@palau.org (Luis Palau) Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:30:44 -0800