Keeping the Dream Alive

During this challenging season, some are seeing their dreams start to die. On this podcast, I chat with my friend, Michael Ball, about the power of dreaming and the importance of keeping the dream alive. Hidden somewhere in your DNA are God-given dreams. Discovering those dreams should be your ultimate quest for they will unlock your destiny. God Himself is a dreaming God and needing outlets for His dreams, gave us His dreaming nature.

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Dutch Sheets:   0:11
Welcome to conversations with Dutch and today I have one of my young friends. I think he's a friend at  least, Michael Ball and he's gonna help me with this podcast. Michael, when we get together, he tries to pull from me the deep pools of wisdom that I have.

Michael Ball:   0:41
I try.

Dutch Sheets:   0:41
And, you know, Michael has read most of my books, I think.

Michael Ball:   0:47
Yeah.

Dutch Sheets:   0:47
There's one particular book that has impacted him, I guess. More than others.  

Michael Ball:   0:55
Yeah, for sure..

Dutch Sheets:   0:56
And it's a book entitled, "Dream." So, you know, we decided that the timing right now would be appropriate to talk about this because it's not a book about dreams in your sleep. It's not about night vision. It's a book about hopes and dreams plans. And it's almost like this virus that has come along in this lack of work and the trials that people are facing,  it's for some people, is trying to steal a dream, trying to shut that down. You know, some people have probably temporarily lost their dreams.  

Michael Ball:   1:39
Yeah.

Dutch Sheets:   1:40
You know, there are businesses that have gone under, there are restaurants that have closed, and you know, the enemy, life, not just Satan. Circumstances. They'll steal the dream if you're not careful. So we thought it might be a good time to just talk about this book. Perhaps even some folks who want to get it and read it. That's not a commercial. It's just, I believe this is one of the better books God has ever given me. So jump in a little bit and comment here. 

Michael Ball:   2:10
Now, when you asked me to come into the podcast with you on this book, I got pumped right away and I just thought again, the timing of it, um I think it's essential to keeping the dream alive. There are so many people out there who started dreams. Your grandfather could have been a great cook, and you just aspired to open up a restaurant with a lot of his different meals and you're forced to close your doors. I just wanted to encourage you to keep the doors open. You know, I look at countless examples of of great dreamers through history who've persevered, and we now have Disney World.  

Dutch Sheets:   2:53
Yeah, yeah.

Michael Ball:   2:54
I look at Walt, who just went through countless different things in life that just tried to detour him. And he just stayed focused. And so I think the biggest thing here is just staying encouraged. Encouraging people to not give up on your dreams. This is so important. This is so vital. Don't let the world in chaos keep you from dreaming big and dreaming God dreams And so I almost want to just dive in. I just want to dive in and start reading some of this. Is that cool? So the 1st one let's go with, this is right there in the introduction. I mean, this is the first good one. I mean again, the whole book is just packed full of stuff. But, "a life without dreams is like a GPS without a satellite. The GPS might operate, but it would lead nowhere. Likewise, without God given dreams to guide you, you will travel life's highway searching for a destination you'll never find." Again, i'm a dreamer. I've only honestly been dreaming for about two years. I've had a vivid imagination ever since I was a kid, but realistically, I've only been dreaming for about two years and I can't tell you how I lived life before these dreams. Before he awakened that thing on the inside of my heart where it was like, Oh, my goodness, this could be so much bigger than I could ever imagine. I don't know how I did it. I knew all these things about God, I knew he was great. I knew who I was. And this is fantastic. I go to church, lift my hands, great stuff.  But dreaming what he has placed on the inside of you to dream has ignited my life in a way...

Dutch Sheets:   4:49
I want to read the paragraph leading up to what you just read. You started by saying you read the paragraph, "a life without dreams is like a GPS without a  satellite."

Michael Ball:   4:58
Yeah.

Dutch Sheets:   5:00
So here's the way that thought starts. You may not be aware of it, but you have a dreaming nature and you know, by the way, and I'm just talking my way through this, most people don't know that. They think that guy's a dreamer or she's a dreamer. But God put that nature in every one of us. So you may not be aware of it, but you have a dreaming nature. You inherited this part of your disposition from your creator. He created us in his image and likeness so our hearts could relate to his and in order that his dreaming heart could find millions of expressions. You were designed to dream and you must dream, both for yourself and for God. In fact, if you don't dream with him, he can't experience all of his dreams and you will never achieve your destiny. It's the truth.    

Michael Ball:   0:00
Listen..  

Dutch Sheets:   6:13
Yeah, you know, let me just keep going here just let me keep going. This book was born in me on a week where I went away to a cabin just to spend time with the Lord,  just myself. I used to do that once or twice every year. Now I tend to do it more of a day here and a day there, rather than just in Colorado I had a place I could go and sometimes spend four or five days, but on one afternoon, the Lord and I knew it was the Lord. He said, "I want to talk to you about dreams." I thought Oh, but where is this going? You know, I mean, are you talk about night dreams? Are you talking about hopes and dreams? Where's it going? He said, "I want you to get your notebook out and I want you to write down your dreams. I want you to write down your dreams for your wife and yourself. You're marriage, your home. I want you to write down your dreams for your kids, your grandkids. I want you to write down your hopes and your dreams for America. You're called to this nation, to help turn this nation around. Did you write it down? I want you to write down some of your personal dreams. I just want you to dream and I want to inspire you. I want to help you dream." It was an interesting day. I just spent hours thinking Yeah, I'd like to see this. This would be something I'd really like to see or do or experience. And that was all good. And that was all inspirational. But then he said to me, "Now I want you to listen while I dream." I just thought, "what?". First, i've never thought of God as a dreamer. He's just a do-er. I mean, he just does stuff, he doesn't dream.

Michael Ball:   0:00
Yeah.

Dutch Sheets:   0:00
I just realized, you know, ah, dream is an unfulfilled hope or desire in the future. It's something you're thinking and imagining that you want that you don't have yet, you know? And then I thought, of course he dreams. He has lots of dreams. He said, "I want you to listen to some of my dreams." This is a kind of strange way to say it, but I felt like I started allowing the Lord to think through me. It's like thoughts would start bubbling up out of my heart. I realized that's not me. That's God telling me one of his dreams about the world, about the hurting, about the lost, about the hungry. It just went on and on and on. And I felt like that day I really entered into a new walk with the Lord because it's one thing to be saved, it's one thing to be considered to know you're his child. But I think when you move from from that to a place where he is willing to talk to you as a friend. To me, that's the highest level of relationship. But the concept of God being a dreamer so fascinated me that I began to meditate on it, pray on it, study. I realized as I begin to study that the word "dream",  is not translated dream, most of time. Most of the time it's "imagine". Think and the word create are the same word in Hebrew. Just a little different spelling, but same root word, and I thought you're kidding me. The word "dreaming" and "creating" are the same word. And then it began to occur to me, that's how we create. We dream and then we create.

Michael Ball:   0:00
Yeah, we imagine it and then we create.  

Dutch Sheets:   11:15
This is what hit me. He put the power of creation into the ability to dream. Then it hit me and I realized everything. Everything starts with a dream. Everything. Somebody imagined a toothpick.  

Michael Ball:   11:41
Yeah.

Dutch Sheets:   11:41
Somebody thought, Yeah, how can I get this out of my teeth? And they either found a pine needle or somebody thought, "I wish" and that wish, motivated action and then somebody dreamed of flying.  

Michael Ball:   12:01
Yep.

Dutch Sheets:   12:01
And we had the airplane. Then somebody had the audacity to dream,  "I wonder if we could go into space? We could walk on the moon!".  Of course, people thought they were crazy. But now we have rockets and spaceships. Somebody during the time of the telephone. "Oh, I wish I could talk to somebody in another place through this thing I could hold in my hand."

Michael Ball:   0:00
Yeah.  

Dutch Sheets:   12:39
People thought they were crazy, but because they were dreaming, creativity was released and the next thing you know, we had phones and I realize this is how God works. Isaiah 46:10 says, he declares the end from the beginning. He imagines and decides, this is what I'm going to do and this is what I'm gonna accomplish out there. And then he backs up and his creativity is released. And of course, it's simple, but it's profound to me. You know, I started looking around the room when this was happening in me. I can do it right now. There's a table, you know? I'm talking into a microphone. I pick up my glasses. I got a book, a bunch of paper with words on it. There's a window and a door. All of that came from the earth that God created for Adam. And then he says to Adam, in essence, i'm going to show you how to unlock the secrets of the universe. What I put in the minerals and the laws of physics and the dirt, trees and you don't know it, but from nothing more than what I put around you here. One day you'll fly. One day you'll have automobiles. God knew what they were, Adam didn't . Because I'm going to use your imagination, your ability to dream. And through that I'm going to unlock the secrets of the universe and anything is possible.  Nothing is impossible if you dream.   

Michael Ball:   14:45
Yeah.

Dutch Sheets:   14:45
I'm thinking about it. It's crazy!

Michael Ball:   14:47
Yeah, again, that's why the whole thing stirs me on because I always had an imagination as a kid. And I would always dream of just say imagine just these crazy things. But none of them really seemed real to me until about two years ago, and I had read this book a couple years back. That's so profound,  but for me, it was unlocking all these things that I always wanted to do, always had a desire to do. It was just going forward and realizing, Oh, I can do this. I really can do this. Like this morning, I was sitting and in my garden. Which is weird because I never thought I'd ever garden always was like, whoever. That's boring. It is some of the most fun I've ever had. Planting a seed in the ground and giving it time and watching it grow. And then you can imagine I can put my watermelons over here, my cucumbers over here. And then I had this thought this morning. Why did we ever leave the garden? I was having so much fun dreaming of what this garden could look like. I could put a bucket here, and I could turn it sideways and does some dirt in there and then have a bunch of flowers for my wife. I could take this old swing and put some stumps underneath it and have a shelf, even though that wasn't its original purpose. I could give it a new purpose, and I can place it here and I could move some around. Why did we ever leave the garden? Because it was so much fun creating in my garden. And it's having that power to go, I almost feel one with the father. When I'm sitting there dreaming of this.

Dutch Sheets:   16:34
Well you should, because it's his nature. He is a dreaming God  and he made us in his image. And part of that and his likeness was giving us his dreaming nature.  Animals don't have it. Let me quote. I don't know if you can turn to it if you could find it, But I mean, animals don't dream. Angels don't dream. The animals just instinct they do what Mom and Dad does and gather nuts for the winter, you know, and they don't know why they're doing it. But they don't stop and think, "you know, it's close to winter. I better get some food  in here." No, instinct kicks in and they do it. But we're  different., We're made in his image. So we dream and I say in the book, we're wired. Humans are wired to think about the future. That's what dreaming is. We can't help it. We're always thinking about the next meal we want to eat or let's go out, or I want to watch this movie or vacation. What are we gonna do tonight? We can't help it because we're wired to think about the future. That's what dreaming is and that's the way God made us. So we have a dream. We don't know it. We've never taught people this. We don't know it. We have a dreaming nature, a God given dreaming nature. But why? Because he wants us to create. He wants us to dream of family. He wants us to dream of accomplishing something. I say in the book, Earth should be different because you were born because God put something in you that we all need. He wants to bring that from you and get it into the earth through your dreaming nature.

Michael Ball:   18:24
Yeah.

Dutch Sheets:   18:24
You don't have to call it dreaming necessarily, but it's thinking with God. What do you want with me? What do you want to do? Well, every person  has that desire. They just don't know it. The number one question that people ask if they're told, if you could stand before God and you had permission and you knew he would answer, you had permission to ask him one question and one question only, What would it be? And when I heard this, the 1000 or so people, they asked this. I thought, you know well, what about the after life? Are my parents okay? Are they in heaven? Or you know, why is there suffering? This and that. But more than 2 to 1 over any other question that people said they would as God, what is my purpose? Why am I here? I think it goes right back to this thing. God put the nature in us. To want to make a difference to wanna accomplish, do something. I want to believe I'm here for a reason. And that is found through allowing God to awaken creativity. And that's one of the things that a wise teacher will do. They won't give all the answers. They'll teach the student how to dream, how to think, how to imagine, how to find answers. Because that awakens that creative thing in them. And so I think in this season of time, what the enemy wants to do is is he wants to bring fear. He wants to shut down. If you're going to dream and do something about it, you have to take a risk. You have to launch, you have to go out into the unknown. You have to say, "this is what I want to do." This is who I wanna be. This is what I think God wants to do with my life. But any time trauma comes or crisis one of the first things that happened, if we don't deal with it appropriately or the way he intends us to, it shuts down. Fear shuts down the ability to create, to risk faith. Faith is a belief in something I can't see yet, but I know it's there. And so the enemy wants to come in through this crisis, this plague. And he wanted to shut down people's dreaming. He wants to say you lost it.  

Michael Ball:   21:02
Yeah.

Dutch Sheets:   21:02
You tried to do this and you lost your job because of this virus. Don't dream anymore. Don't go there, you will be setting yourself up for pain.

Michael Ball:   21:14
Yeah, you better be safe or sorry, and I look at I'm so glad and again I bring him up because he's such a awesome example. I'm so glad Walt didn't play it safe. I mean, a lot of people don't know his story. He almost sold the rights to Mickey Mouse early on in his career because he was going bankrupt in all this, and he thought, I can't let go of this thing that I've created. And so he starts to dream and he comes out with all these different ways to animate movies. And so Pinocchio comes out in the thirties, and it's considered to this day one of the greatest animated movies of all time, and I look at what happened when World War Two broke out from 1942 to 1950 almost eight years. Again, the war was over, but it took him so long to recover. There were eight years that we missed out on some incredible dreams of Walt Disney, and that's what I see almost in the chaos of the world right now. It's this, the world's in chaos, so I have to hang up my dreams. He ended up doing for eight years propaganda films for the war so that he could fund his animators and he could keep them, you know, afloat. And he broke even. How many dreams and how many masterpieces that we miss out on because he was forced to engage in a war of the world because he had to hang up his dreams. And I look at that. I go, oh, this is where we're at right now with a ton of dreamers in the world. And it's like you have these dreams and their God given dreams and they're birthed on the inside of you and you see a world in chaos and you go, I feel like I may have to hang this up for a little while. Keep going. I'll say it again because, Walt Disney World is right around the corner. You know, Walt Disney world wasn't even a thought yet when he was going through all this stuff and I go, what happens when a dreamer can't dream and he's not placed into an atmosphere to dream. It's the worst.

Dutch Sheets:   23:23
Sometimes I read some of the things I have said in this book and I find myself thinking, "Did I write that? 

Michael Ball:   23:35
When I walked in earlier, I said, "Did you write this book? Are you sure you wrote this book? I think Ceci wrote this book."

Dutch Sheets:   23:40
I feel like God sometimes just almost took over in my mind.  

Michael Ball:   23:46
Yeah.

Dutch Sheets:   23:47
But I just flipped while you were talking to this quote:  "Dreams happen, but they don't just happen. They're accomplished because dreaming unlocks creativity, innovation, action and originality. If you don't dream, you won't create. Period, end of story. But if you do dream, you must create. Necessity isn't the mother of invention. Dreams are." It's the truth isn't it? Just like Walt.

Michael Ball:   24:24
Yeah, and just like Walt, I look at everything we're doing right now and I see, these are dreams. Us talking on a microphone and recording our voices. Somebody probably had a dream where they went. I would love to hear my relatives voice, and I'd love to be able to hear it all the time, right? Or there's this song. Instead of me going to the opera and hearing this orchestra one time, what if we could record that and listen to it? If you look back over the years, everything we're engaging in right now was somebody else's dream where it was. Now, now this is This is the foundation of society. It's natural for us to sit and listen to each other's voices on a podcast or music. But 100 years ago?

Dutch Sheets:   25:13
Right.

Michael Ball:   25:14
It was unheard of. 200 years ago, it was, "I heard about these mountains on the other side of the world. Let's plan a trip. Well, it's  gonna take us six months to get there." Some dreamers went, it would be really cool if I could fly or we could travel. Now it's, "hey, I heard about these mountains. Okay, it'll take us about a day and a half to get there."

Dutch Sheets:   25:34
Mhm, it's true. It all starts with a dream, and it's born of God's nature. And why did he give us this? Because he was  creating a family that could partner with him. You know, he didn't need any more angels. He wasn't satisfied with animals. He wanted sons and daughters that could think with him. Who could dream with him, who could take the earth and for lack of a better way to say it,  mine it of its riches, its wealth. It's ideas, it's hidden secrets. And and so he said, I'm gonna put my dreaming imaginative nature in you. I don't want just tell you all this I want you to find it. It is important that you find it, it is important that you dream. I was thinking about Abraham the other day when God was planning his, uh, working on his plan to save the world. So Okay,I gotta have a race for whom to bring Messiah. I'm gonna enter the human stage. I'm gonna become one of them, a person. So that's what Abraham's all about. He's raising up now a man in covenant with him. Who's gonna  spawn a race of people through whom messiah is going to come and so through this man, I'm gonna  save the world, basically. But it struck me as when God is working on his plan to recapture his dream of family. You know, the enemy came in trying to steal God's dream of family and God said: I will have my dream and my son. This is all by paraphrase. My son's gonna come, and he's gonna get the dream back. When God is doing that, he finds a man that he can work through. But he didn't just say, Abraham, you're going to do this. You're gonna do this. I want you to do that. Oh, I'm gonna tell you to live here and go here and do this and that. Just think about this,  He starts by giving a man a dream. He says, Look at the star. I want to give you a family of millions. He says, Look at the sand. I want to multiply you  like the sand on the beach and then he says:  just look at this land. I want to give you this. He plants a dream in  this guy's heart because God was basically saying, you know what? I put a dreaming nature in humans, and if I really want this guy to work for me and with me, it's never gonna work if I just tell him what he has to do. I put a nature in him to dream. The way I can really get this guy to help me is I need to give him a dream. If I give him a dream, he can help me get my dream. So God says, I'm going to do this, and this and this for you. Look, Look at the stars. Look, i'm gonna do this through you. Then he says,  and by the way, all of the world is gonna be blessed through you. In other words, the dreams not just for you. It's my dream too and we're gonna dream together. I'm gonna give you a dream, and through your dream, I'm gonna get mine dream. I think that's the way it is supposed to be. This partnership with God. It's like you want kids. Oh, you want kids? Yeah. God, maybe you want a son but God needs a prophet. Maybe you want a daughter. God needs an inventor. He's written something in their heart. He carved something in their DNA, because he knows what he needs. He says, Go ahead, dream. I need that child you give. I'm going to give you a child and you're going to give me this! It's like we dream with God, you know, and through our dreams we find our destiny. And I just think it's fascinating that God unlocks destiny through dreaming. Isn't that amazing?

Michael Ball:   30:05
I look at Abraham's great grandson because we fast forward to Joseph the dreamer.

Dutch Sheets:   30:10
The dreamer.

Michael Ball:   30:11
The dreamer. And he has this dream before he ever embarks, really it into life and all these things. Before he ever embarks on this dream that he had, he has this dream, right? He has this incredible dream where he pictured his brother's bowing, his dad bowing and all this stuff. And then he's taken through what would seem like the dream derailed. That's almost what it looked like. If there's anything, if you're Joseph and you're sitting in the middle of that situation and you know this dream that you've had and all of a sudden I'm tossed out by my brothers and then I'm taken here and I'm sitting in prison. It's like if there's ever a time to give up on the dream, Joseph, that would probably be it. But it was all part of the path. And that's what I want to say to anyone who's looking at this Coronavirus and is going, well, I had this dream, and now it's looking.... No, no, no. It's all part of the path.

Dutch Sheets:   31:11
You know, I'm thinking as you're saying that, yes, we make the dream. Yeah, he puts this dream in us and he's given us the ability to create. But not only do we make the dream, in a very real sense, he uses the dream to make us.  

Michael Ball:   31:31
Yeah.

Dutch Sheets:   31:32
And without Joseph, without the interruptions along the way and the challenges to the dream. When it looked like the dream was over, God used the interruption of the during to shape the man. Because the only way the man could be everything God wanted him to be, was God had to do some work in him. So I'm gonna have to let the dream or the seeming loss of the dream and make the man so I can give him the dream.

Michael Ball:   32:04
Yeah, because I mean, if we go to the beginning of the story, Joseph almost comes off as naive. Yeah, of course. There's no way in the world he could have been placed as as second in charge of Egypt had this not, but because of the journey and because of the path all of a sudden he stepped into everything that he was dreaming and was equipped to do it. It's incredible.

Dutch Sheets:   32:27
That's right.

Dutch Sheets:   32:30
You know, you talk about Walt Disney. Anyone who has ever done anything significant, they've had more failures and setbacks usually than victories. And so that's what I would say to people right now. You can't let the this hard time steal a dream. You can't. You just can't. And sure, I mean, sometimes i've had to adjust my dream. There have even been times where I have had to lay things down because I realized it really wasn't a God given dream. It was ambition. It was a human thing. That, wow, Dutch is going to do this and you know, in my younger years as a kid but I hope I don't do that much anymore. God's worked enough humility to me, that it's not about me. But at the same time, you know, we do that. And we get in the way of the dream, and God is to come along and say, You know what? Let me use this failure to refine the dream. And sometimes he says that's not even my dream. Don't worry about that. You know, you lost it. I know it crumbled, but I let that happen so that you could learn some things. And now i'm going to give you the real dream, you know, you thought you were gonna have this little restaurant over here. No, I want you have a chain of restaurants, you know?

Michael Ball:   33:59
Yeah.  

Dutch Sheets:   33:59
He is going to use this time and even loss. He's going to use it. He doesn't waste anything. He is always trying to work that together for my good. This is the time you anchor to faith and you say, Hey, I'm just not gonna give up. I'm just not. I'm not going to give up. And I say to people that are struggling right now, you know, they're probably people listen to us, lost the house or a car or a job. And I say, don't you dare give up. Don't you dare give up. This is what the verse was for. For this time. The verse wasn't for yesterday when you had the job, the verse is for now when you've lost the job. That's when you have to believe he can work everything for your good. So you tap into that and let him awaken something in you that will become the answer. You'll say, Wow, I've never thought of that. I've never dreamed of that.  He will drop something in you and you'll find yourself thinking Wow, I can start. I could do this. Wow, This could work for my favor. That's what God wants to do right now.

Michael Ball:   35:16
Yeah, I'm reminded of a story. Just something me and Jess walked through. And I shared it with you. I know you're familiar with it, but when we were in this certain denomination, and I'm not against denominations, I love them all. I think they're for the most part cool, they've got some cool stuff. But we really felt like we were just placed in a spot. We were pursuing this American dream or at least what I thought was this American dream. And we're pursuing this thing and for some reason it just would never work out the way I just envisioned it. And then finally, we were at a spot where we had to let our house go. We had a nice three bedroom, two bath house. We had nice cars, but I was just trying to pursue this American dream. I was trying to keep up with the Joneses. It just wasn't me. And at the time, I honestly really didn't even know who I was. He hadn't even really revealed it to me yet. But all I knew is I heard his voice and I trusted him and we went on a vacation. We were invited to go to Destin for a week. It was already paid for and so we go to Destin. I remember we were on our way back and this is right when Rick came out with "leaning on my beloved".   

Dutch Sheets:   36:42
Rick Pino?

Michael Ball:   36:42
Yeah, it's such a good album. I was riding over this bridge, and I guess the water that we're riding over, one side was open to the ocean, the other side wasn't. That's the only thing that really makes sense to me. But one side was completely calm. The other side was in complete chaos, waves crashing against the rocks and I'm riding over and I hear Rick going: There's a harp in my heart and only you can play it." As soon as he sings these notes. I hear the father go, "Michael. Right now you're locked arms with the American dream and my dream for your life. And right now they're heading in the opposite direction. I'm gonna love you either way you go, but there's only one way that's really going to make you happy." I come up over that bridge. And I just had this peace. It's okay, Michael. Let the house go and let the cars go. My wife was seven months pregnant.   

Dutch Sheets:   37:41
Wow.

Michael Ball:   37:41
And I'm sitting there going, This does not look like success. This doesn't look like the right direction. Let the house go. We moved in with my dad. We had the whole upstairs ourselves. We lived with him for six months, then lived with my in laws for six months down in Dallas. And I worked for Dr Pepper. We knocked out every bit of debt that we had and from there he taught me how to steward the little bit that I had. By stewarding a little bit, I began to dream. Things I never thought were possible. And I inherited all this stuff that I never thought I would ever inherit. And now I'm at a spot where I'm going, Lord, we're about to invade Hollywood. We're about to do this. We're about to do that. We have all these dreams and nothing's impossible because I've seen time and time again. What's funny is I was pursuing what I'm actually doing now. But I was only pursuing that.

Dutch Sheets:   38:42
He refines the dream.

Michael Ball:   38:44
I locked arms with him and he went, here, let me take you this way.

Dutch Sheets:   38:50
He does, he refines the dream. He had to do it with Joseph. He had to do it with David. He just has to do that. And we took the American dream. We took God's dream for America, sometimes I say. Because God's dream for America wasn't that he had to give us wealth and power as a nation but was so that we could do good things in the Earth. To spread the gospel around the world, to be a power a voice  and a force of freedom and liberty and good things around the world. Typical of human nature, you know, the fallen nature, which is basically a selfish nature that wants for me and itself. The "I want more". So often we pervert the dream.   

Michael Ball:   39:33
Yeah.

Dutch Sheets:   39:33
And so we took God's dream for America and we turned it into the American dream. Which is about things, money, possessions and God's saying, you know, you mean basically, Michael? Yeah, I want you to have a house. Of course, I want you to have possessions, but you gotta see, son. It's so much bigger than that. That's not the dream. That's just a small part of the dream. Every God given dream, some way somehow will always have an element in it of blessing other people, always. Any dream that a person allows or that comes forth in their life, their thinking or dreaming; Anything that comes that is truly born of God and his nature giving us those dreams, it will always have an element of it. That is his dream. That is a part of helping others,  serving others. Your story is so normal for lack of a better word. Because, you know, typically there is a season where he has to refine the dreaming nature and it doesn't mean, you know, if we went back and we could analyze your heart then and who you were, we probably wouldn't say that you and your wife were these bad people. Selfish and just, you know, didn't care about anybody but no. Still, there were parts of it that he wanted to do something with so that he could do far far more than just give you a nice house.

Michael Ball:   41:26
Yes.

Dutch Sheets:   41:26
And a nice house for your kids. And it doesn't mean that you're gonna do anything bad with it. It's just that he wanted something more. He wants you to think what? Whoa, Maybe I could give you enough to where one day you will be giving other people houses. Maybe you will be building houses for poor people in some other country or in some part of a city. You know where If you just let me, I'll give you one hundred thousand dollars to buy a house or a quarter of a million or I can give you 250 million dollars or a billion dollars. Then you and I can build a lot of houses back home! I try to get people to the point where they will dream with God. You know, you got to say this about more than just me. Write your dreams down, Dutch. Okay, Now let me dream a little bit. Whoa. Well, I thought about the two of us dreaming together. I think I keep coming back to the virus thing.  

Michael Ball:   42:31
Yeah.  

Dutch Sheets:   42:32
You know, for people that are struggling right now. God's not the mercy of this thing. His ability to provide for people is not limited to to the job they may have had or lost. Of course it hurts. I'm not trying to suggest that they should just laugh and say no big deal. You know, some of you are probably scrambling to pay bills and feed their kids, and I get it. But even through all of that, there's a way to anchor ourselves to him and say, I know you're going to come through for us and when there is no way and it's a cliche, but it's true, you'll make away. You'll create something. You'll bring me somebody into my life or I will find the right add or whatever. Give me an idea. So I say to people, Don't give up on dreaming. You've got to keep hoping, praying, dreaming. You lose the house? Okay. He's going to show me how to get another one. Yep, that's what he did. It's what he did for you,

Michael Ball:   43:45
I'm telling you. I stepped into what we call our dream home. And there's no I mean again for me to go through the whole story. It doesn't even make sense. All I will say is, be faithful with the seed. Listen, I know you want the garden, right? I know you want the big luscious garden full of fruit. Be faithful with the handful of seeds you're given and don't grow weary in well doing.  

Dutch Sheets:   44:16
Yeah.

Michael Ball:   44:16
 Plant those seeds. Be faithful. I'm telling you, it's the same thing again. I can't wait for the years to come where we can actually talk about a lot of the things that we've talked about multiple times. But if it's an idea for a movie or an idea for a book, be faithful with the little bit. Just be faithful to put forth the time and the effort just to do it. I almost picture a person now who you've dreamed of writing books, right? And you've been working this 9 to 5 job trying to keep your head afloat. And now all of a sudden everything is gone into chaos and they're telling you to stay home and you can look at it as, well I have to stay home Or you can look at it as, God, You've given me the opportunity to write this book that I've been dreaming about. I now have the time to put forth a little bit. This could be the small seed that you plant. And it could be this dream coming true that you believe. I had the time last year to where I could really sit and I never dreamed of writing a book. I never thought I ever would write a book. I was terrible at reading, and the last thing you want me to do is read anything out loud because I'm just terrible reader. But I never thought I'd ever write a book. And last year the Lord went, I think I've given you some books there. No, I don't think I've given you some books. I'm pretty sure i've given  you some books, and it's about time that you dove into it. It's okay to fail and it's OK to mess up. It's OK, that's all a part of the process. I look at Joseph and I look at his process and I go, you know what, if he can run Egypt,  then surely surely I can write a book.

Dutch Sheets:   46:09
Listen, I tell people when I first started thinking maybe God wanted me to write a book, people would say to me prophetically, you're gonna write and you're going to write books. It was just kind of laughable because and I've said this many times. I've never gotten above a C or D on any paper that I have ever wrote in college or high school. So, it's fair to say I wasn't a writer and I couldn't write. But at the right time, God either gave me a gift or awakened something in me that he wouldn't allow to come to the surface, a gift, because it wasn't time. And so it's like for you, when he came and said, Hey, I got some books in you. Well, maybe you couldn't. It's very likely that you weren't late, that he wasn't saying You should have done this 10 years ago, but that he would say, It's time, it's time and where you couldn't do this yesterday, you can do it now. So I just encourage people that your idea may not even have surfaced yet. And your breakthrough. Maybe it hasn't happened because you wanted to do something else in you first, or if he had given you what you wanted back then, you would have done the wrong thing with it, and so just be patient. And then the other thing I want to say before we end this is coming back to this these hard times that Joseph and David who became king. But first he's hiding in the caves of a doom. An outcast, you know, because so many times the dream is tested and God uses that to refine. And so many times a dream has to come through struggle and hard time. It's like Martin Luther King And what's he known for more than any? His famous "I have a dream" speech and it looked like the dream was over. You can't drive through a major city in America now and where you don't find a Martin Luther King Boulevard and walls and movements that are because of this guy's dream. So the dream didn't die, but the greatest example is God  himself, you know, to get his dream back. He had to go through the cross, but he knew on the other side of the cross was the recapturing of his dream of sons and daughters. Family. I just want to say to people right now it may look like you're not gonna recover, But for a person that really follows God, there is no such thing as not gonna recover even if even if a person sick and dies, God can use their life even after they're gone, just like Martin Luther King. So I'll say, Don't let the death of the dream, don't let the struggle, don't let the hard times shut down your dream. Just realize, God's gonna refine me and he's gonna do what he needs to do in me so that he can do with my life what he plans to do..

Michael Ball:   49:41
I just want to say, I greatly appreciate you writing this book. To anyone who has any downtime, anything like that. Get this book, give it a read or two and I promise you it will stir something on the inside of you. It will awaken something. Everyone has a dream. Every person has a dream..

Dutch Sheets:   50:05
You can get it through Dutch Sheets Ministries and go to our website dutchsheets.org or go to Amazon. Most Christian bookstores would carry it but also you can order it online. That's the easiest thing to do. I'll say also, even though I wrote the book, this book will inspire you to go for it,  to dream and to never give up. It will. And it will help you learn the ways of God where you come to a point where you're dreaming with him. You're not just dreaming of wealth or riches. You're dreaming with him. And maybe that your dream is about wealth. But God's heart, where that money is concerned will be in there someplace and this book will help you do that. So thanks for the encouragement. And  I also encourage people, you know, all of the money that the money I make on  all of my books anyways goes right back into the ministry to help do what we do around the country. That is not something to help me out. It's something to further what God's doing. So pick it up. I think you'd be blessed. People be blessed.

Michael Ball:   51:11
For sure 100%.

Dutch Sheets:   51:12
All right, man. Thanks, Michael.  

Michael Ball:   51:14
Thank you, Dutch.

Outro:   51:14
Thank you for listening to this podcast from Dutch Sheets Ministries, if you would like more information about us or if you've been impacted by this podcast and would like to sow into the ministry, please visit our website at Dutchsheets.org