Has God given you a dream? Maybe you’ve felt the call to foster care or pastoring a church or setting up a program to serve the homeless in your hometown. Whatever it is, you have a dream.

Genesis 37 records Joseph’s dreams. In his dreams, God told him that he was called to leadership. In fact, his leadership would be so powerful that even his own brothers and parents would bow down to him. You might imagine how this endeared him to his brothers when he told them.

His brothers were so enraged by Joseph’s dreams (and the fact that he was their father’s favorite) that, “they hated him and could not bring themselves to speak peaceably to him.” (vs. 4)

Not only that, but they plotted to kill him the very first chance that they had. “Come on, let’s kill him and throw him into one of the pits. We can say a vicious animal ate him. Then we’ll see what becomes of his dreams!” (vs.20)

When God gives us a dream, it will rarely be easy and the people around us may even be the supreme saboteurs of our Divine dreams.

What the brothers didn’t realize is that when God gives us a dream, no on else can stop it from coming true.

The brothers did everything to discourage Joseph. They were unkind to him, they threw him in a pit, they planned to kill him and they sold him into slavery. They thought that they had killed his dream. Maybe Joseph even believed they had killed his dream. But God’s plans were undeterred, despite their best efforts.

It would take many years, and more heartache than Joseph could have ever imagined, but there came a day when Joseph looked down at his brothers bowing face-down in front of him and realized that the dream that God had given him had come true exactly as God said.

If you have a God given dream, don’t give up. Do the hard work to prepare yourself for what God has called you to do no matter what you have to sacrifice. Do not internalize unwarranted criticism to your dream. Do not be discouraged when things look impossible. If God has said it, it will happen- no matter what.