From Dream to Destiny: The Ten Tests You Must Go Through to Fulfill God's Purpose for Your Life (2 page)

C
HAPTER
O
NE

It was Sunday morning, and things were beginning to quiet down at the prayer center for James Robison’s ministry. Phone volunteers were finishing their 5
A.M
. shifts and heading off to church. The only two people left to man the phones were myself and Terry Redman—a good friend, who also happens to be the son-in-law of James Robison.

It was an interesting series of events that had led me to the prayer center that day. Although still in my early 20s, I had already been involved in public ministry for several years. Things had happened pretty fast after I surrendered my life to Jesus Christ at the age of 19. Only 10 months after being saved, I met James Robison, and he asked me to start traveling with him, speaking to junior and senior high school assemblies. So I had not even been a Christian for a year when I began to travel and preach the gospel. Pretty heady stuff for someone so young (and even younger in the Lord!).

Though I started out speaking at public schools, it wasn’t long before I was preaching at crusades. Eventually, James was even gracious enough to give me a title: associate evangelist. Wow—I was only 20 years old, but because of my association with James, I was already involved in television, preaching to large crowds, and even had a title to prove that I was a bona-fide evangelist!

It seemed to me that the favor of God was on everything I touched. What a destiny lay before me! What could stop me now?

In retrospect, it’s clear that an enemy called pride had begun to creep into my life. Slowly, stealthily, thoughts of pride began to take up residence in my mind—thoughts that could not coexist with a proper reverence for a holy God.

By the time I was 25, I had become far too accustomed to hearing people tell me how gifted I was. I began to listen to this praise. Worse, I was beginning to
expect
it. People would say to me, “You are so gifted—you can do anything!” And with all the wisdom of my 25 years, I began to believe them. I started thinking,
Man, I’m something. I’m successful!

Deep down, I knew I was prideful, but I didn’t know what to do about it. The more that pride grew, the more it seemed to stand in my way. So I began to pray about it, asking God for help. I said, “God, I know I have pride. I know my insecurity makes me vulnerable to it. I need to be free of this, but I don’t know what to do!”

One day as I was praying along these lines, I asked the Lord, “What can I do about this? Is there anything I can do to deal with the pride in my life?”

His answer didn’t exactly thrill me. I sensed Him telling me, “Well, here’s a thought. You could step out of the ministry and just take a regular job.”

I suppose my response didn’t exactly thrill Him either. I said, “Yes, that is a thought, Lord. It’s a
bad
thought, but it
is
a thought.”

Seriously though, the religious part of me couldn’t imagine that it would be God’s will for me to leave the ministry. (After all, I was being used so mightily by Him!) But try as I might, I could not get rid of that thought. It got stronger and stronger until the Lord orchestrated the circumstances for me to step out of ministry. I finally did what the Lord suggested: I stepped out of the ministry and started looking for a job.

But I couldn’t find one!

I quickly discovered that I wasn’t as valuable as I had presumed. Think about it. When you’ve been an evangelist, what do you list as your skills on a job application? Strong preaching ability? Gives excellent altar calls? Exegetes well? From a practical standpoint, you simply don’t have a lot of qualifications for a regular job.

After much searching, I finally found a job—as a security guard at a Motel 6. That was the only job I could get. Now you must remember, people had told me that I was so gifted that I could do anything. But it didn’t take long for me to learn that wasn’t true. I learned that without God’s blessing, you can’t do anything. It is only the blessing of God that causes us to have true success. And so it was that I learned a very important lesson—a lesson I would never have learned without first stepping out of ministry.

After a month of working nights as a security guard at Motel 6, I felt I had made great strides toward humility. I decided that perhaps I was ready to return to ministry. So I checked back with James Robison’s ministry to see if they had any job openings. I was happy to discover that they needed a morning supervisor at their prayer center, from 5
A.M
. to 2
P.M
. That sure sounded better than the “graveyard shift” I had been working at the Motel 6. So I took the job.

Keep in mind, I previously had been an associate evangelist there. Now I was back at the ministry, but working as a prayer partner—and God was continuing to do His pride-killing work in my heart.

As I said, on that particular morning only Terry and I were left in the room, and I was busy on the phone, talking with a woman who had called for prayer. Before we got off the phone, she said to me, “You sound so familiar.” So I began to fill her in on exactly who I was. “Oh, you probably recognize me from one of the crusades,” I said. “I’m an associate evangelist here at the ministry, and I used to travel and preach crusades.”

The room seemed strangely quiet as I hung up the phone. My good friend Terry turned to me and I noticed that he had taken his phone off the hook.

“Can I talk to you a minute?” he asked.

“Robert,” he said gently, “I am so happy about what you are doing right now. I realize most people would not be willing to do what you are doing, and I’m so glad to see that you are allowing God to work in this area of your life. But I want to ask you something. Why did you tell that woman that you were an associate evangelist? You’re not anymore, and you know that. You know what you are—you’re a prayer partner.”

Feeling defensive, I said, “Well, I
used
to be an associate evangelist, and I just thought it would bless her to know that.” Bless
her!
My words seemed hollow and contrived, even to me.

I really wasn’t quite sure why I had told her that, so I asked Terry a question. “When you’re on the phone with someone, don’t you ever tell them that you’re James Robison’s son-in-law?”

“No.”

“Don’t you think it would bless someone who calls in, to know that they got to pray with James’s son-in-law?”

Terry drew a deep breath. “Well,” he replied, “if they are blessed by
that
, then they are being blessed for the wrong reason.”

I will never forget the words that followed.

“Robert, I love you, man. But you are going to have to get to the place where you have your identity in Christ, and not in what you do or in who you are.”

The words that Terry spoke that day pierced my heart. Yet God took those words and began to use them in my life. In fact, He continues to use them to this day.

You see, although I didn’t know it at the time, I was in the very early stages of a journey toward my destiny in God. God had given me a glimpse of how He wanted to use me and of the destiny He had in mind for me. But now I was in the middle of an important test—and I would have to pass that test before I could move into the next phase along the path to destiny.

I’m so glad God doesn’t “flunk” any of us on our tests. If He did, He surely could have written F on the pages of my life many times! No, each time we fail, He graciously writes “Redo”—and allows us to keep retaking the test until we pass it. Why? Because it is only when we pass the test that we will be able to step into the destiny He has planned for us.

At that point I had yet to learn that great destiny carries with it great responsibilities—responsibilities that require strong character. It’s easy to get excited about God’s plans, without having any idea about the strengths we will need in order to fulfill them. But He knows. He knows everything about us. He knows the dreams He has
for us and what it will take to get the job done. And He wants us to be fully equipped.

Seasons of Testing

We may love God—and we may even have big dreams in our hearts that He Himself has placed there. All of that is wonderful. But without the character of God on the inside of us, we won’t get very far. First Corinthians 10:13 says God will never allow us “to be tempted beyond what [we] are able.” (In other words, He won’t allow us to get into a situation that we don’t have the strength to handle!) That’s why He allows us to go through tests on the way from the dream to the destiny—tests that prepare us to succeed when we get there.

I wasn’t the first young man to find myself seemingly sidetracked from a God-given dream. Thousands of years ago, a young man named Joseph also received a dream from God. And it wasn’t long before he also found himself in the middle of an unexpected test—a test that probably didn’t seem to line up at all with the dream God had given him.

That test was only the beginning of a long season of testing for Joseph. In fact, he went on to experience 10 distinct tests on the way to his destiny. But after passing those tests, he stepped into the glorious fulfillment of God’s dream. Walking out the fullness of that dream was not only a great blessing to Joseph, but also to hundreds of thousands of others who came after him.

I believe every one of us will encounter these same 10 tests on the way from our dreams to our destinies. And like Joseph, we will have to pass these tests in order to see the dream fulfilled.

The Pride Test: Revealing the Pride Within

Interestingly enough, Joseph’s first test was the same one I found myself facing as a young man that day at the prayer center. It’s what I call the Pride Test and it is a very important one. Joseph experienced it. I experienced it. And I’m convinced every one of us will have to pass this test before we can move from our dreams to our destinies.

Genesis 37 describes how Joseph first received his dream from God—and how he handled it when the dream came.

Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brothers. And the lad was with the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives; and Joseph brought a bad report of them to his father. Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age. Also he made him a tunic of many colors. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peaceably to him. Now Joseph had a dream, and he told it to his brothers; and they hated him even more. So he said to them, “Please hear this dream which I have dreamed: There we were, binding sheaves in the field. Then behold, my sheaf arose and also stood upright; and indeed your sheaves stood all around and bowed down to my sheaf.” And his brothers said to him, “Shall you indeed reign over us? Or shall you indeed have dominion over us?” So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words. Then he dreamed still another dream and told it to his brothers, and said, “Look, I have dreamed another dream. And this time, the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars bowed down to me.” So he told it to his father and his brothers; and his father rebuked him and said to him, “What is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall your mother and I and your brothers indeed come to bow down to the earth before you?” And his brothers envied him, but his father kept the matter in mind (Gen. 37:2-11).

First of all, we have to marvel at the fact that Joseph shared his dream so enthusiastically with older, bigger brothers—especially when the Bible tells us that his brothers already “hated him and could not speak peaceably to him” (Gen. 37:4). I guess it’s no surprise that their response was less than enthusiastic. Still, Joseph was pretty excited about the dream that God had given him. Regardless of the consequences, he just had to let everyone know about it!

Little did he know what lay between him and his dream: Although Joseph was 17 years old when he received his dreams from God, it wasn’t until he was 30 years old that he began to fulfill it (see Gen. 41:46). So we can see that 13 long years went by before Joseph began to walk in the first steps of his destiny. What could explain the long time lag between the dream and its fulfillment?

After all, it seemed obvious from the dream that Joseph was destined for great power and influence. Indeed, his brothers were envious after hearing the dream—although they had mocked the dream to his face. Joseph’s father didn’t discount the dream entirely either. The Bible says that his father rebuked him about it, but then he “kept the matter in mind” (Gen. 37:11).

But there was a test on the horizon for Joseph. Something was standing in the way of Joseph’s moving toward that destiny God had shown him. And Joseph was about to have an opportunity to face that obstacle and deal with it. The reason for that test was really quite simple: Joseph had pride in his heart.

It is important to notice that Joseph had pride in his heart
before
he ever got the dream from God. The Bible says that Joseph was keeping the flock with his brothers, and he “brought a bad report of them to his father” (Gen. 37:2). Never mind what the bad report was about. Perhaps Joseph’s brothers weren’t exactly perfect, and they may indeed have deserved some correction. But this verse reveals that Joseph thought of
himself
as someone qualified to make that type of judgment about them. He even took it upon himself to see that they were corrected, although they were older and more experienced. Any time we pass judgment on the behavior of others, it reveals a prideful attitude on our part. And it seems that Joseph had a prideful attitude.