My dreams or the dream of God?

We live surrounded by voices that tell us "pursue your dreams", "fight for your dreams", "take care of your dreams", others say "this is the year of fulfillment of your prophetic design", "there is a break for your plans to be comply "and so on.

Have we stopped to listen to this kind of statements? Does not it seem that the center of the Christian faith is man and not God? Of course! It is evident that this type of assertions put man as the protagonist and center of everything, and God as one who works so that our plans are fulfilled. Making a serious problem evident, we do not know the plan of redemption in the whole Bible, we do not do biblical theology, we focus on the stories separately and we do not see God's redemptive master plan for humanity.

Result? We make misinterpretations of the biblical stories and twist the Scriptures to support this type of postures, for example, the story of Joseph. Do you remember it?

Brief history

Joseph has the dream (which God showed him) and shares it with his brothers who were already jealous of him beforehand and who intended to kill him (Gen. 37:20). They sell him as a slave to a caravan of Ishmaelites who were on their way to Egypt (Gen. 37:25). Already in Egypt, Potiphar buys him as a slave to serve him as a personal servant and steward (Gen. 39: 4).

Already in the house of Potiphar, for rejecting the wife of his master, who recurrently insinuated himself, Joseph is falsely accused of sexual harassment and attempted rape (Gen. 39: 1-18). Potiphar sends him to prison and there interprets the dreams of the cupbearer and the baker and both dreams are fulfilled. The cupbearer is restored to his position before Pharaoh, just as he had predicted, (Gen. 40:21). Joseph asks the cupbearer to remember him, but he forgot him (Gen. 40:23).

After two years of the repose of the cupbearer, Pharaoh has a dream, but no one can interpret it and only Joseph manages to interpret Pharaoh's dreams (Gen. 41: 30-32). As a result of this, Pharaoh makes him governor of all Egypt to be steward of his estate and prepare the nation for the famine to come (Gen. 41: 40-41).

Hunger and lack of food goes to Jacob and his eleven brothers and they are forced to go to Egypt where the story finally unravels. Joseph welcomes them, proves them, forgives them, is reconciled, and rescues his family, moving them to Egypt.

It is at this moment (thirteen years later) when we see the fulfillment of the dream that God gave him Joseph (Gen. 42: 5). It is at this point in history where the Bible says that for the first time Joseph is reminded of the dream

• However, on many occasions we do not continue reading the story and we do not realize that José's dream was not "his dream", nor did he have a plan or strategy, there was no "break" for his prophetic design to be fulfilled .

He recognized and knew that it was God who had allowed all these difficulties to preserve the life of Jacob and his eleven brothers and that he had the plan to continue carrying out the Great Story of Redemption. "God sent me before you to preserve you a remnant on earth, and to keep you alive through a great liberation. Now therefore, it was not you who sent me here, but God "(Gen. 45: 7-8).

José recognizes that the dream he had was not his, nor that the brothers interrupted his dreams, but that this whole story was only a piece of the sovereign plan that God had orchestrated. In Genesis 50:20 Joseph says: "You thought to do me wrong, but God turned it into good so that it would happen as we see today, and the lives of many people will be preserved." In this translation it seems that God reacted to what happened, however, in Hebrew, the verbs you thought and turned are the same verb and are in the same time, perfect. What would be translated "you thought to do me wrong, but God thought for good."

God, from the moment he gives Joseph the dream, had his sovereign plan in action. So, it does not mean that God reacted and changed things, but that He had ordered things in advance. The Bible does not say that Joseph was pursuing his dream, or that he had in mind to see his family prostrate before him serving him, or that his brothers damaged his plans. What the Bible does say is that throughout this process God was with him (Gen 39: 2, 3, 21, 23).

In the end, we see that it is not about your plans, your dreams or your history, let's stop looking at ourselves, let's put it in Him. In our history of faith and in the Bible there is only one plan; the plan of redemption and salvation for the children of God through Jesus Christ, so that the earth may be full of His Glory and His name may be exalted for eternity.

The story of Joseph ends, our story will end, but not the story of God, the plan and purposes of God will be fulfilled. Proverbs 19:21 says: "You can make all the plans you want, but the purpose of the Lord will prevail."

Therefore, as God's purpose will always prevail over my plans, then let us humbly yield our plans and dreams to God's designs and will that the spirit of our prayer be as the Apostle James writes to us in his letter "However , you do not know how your life will be tomorrow. You are only a vapor that appears for a little while and then fades away. Rather, you should say: If the Lord wants, we will live and do this or that "(James 4:14 14).

May God help us to study and understand the history complements the redemption. In which we realize that we are not the center of our faith history. That I am not "José" pursuing my dreams and personal achievements, but that there is only one story, the story of redemption and salvation that has only one protagonist from the beginning to the end and His name is Jesus.