I’m speaking right now in a series called “Everything Begins With A Dream.” It’s amazing how God can give people an idea, a thought, a desire, and that immaterial thing be turned into something amazing and beautiful. Over time I’ve observed great dreams and how they are accomplished. Here are the 10 stages of a dream.

Stage 1: A great need, or problem, or injustice moves someone. Something is missing, lacking, and you get upset. That’s the beginning; a holy burden, beautiful anger always starts there.

Stage 2: Someone moves God. Someone gets upset and they ask God to change things. They assault the throne of God with their prayer. They’re obsessed with it, they talk about it, they think about it, even argue with God over it.

Stage 3: God dares a dreamer. God challenges you to be the solution to the problem. Suddenly the problem becomes internalized. You bear it around constantly.

Stage 4: The dreamer becomes a vision-caster. All of a sudden you start talking about the solution, how things could be. You get a vision of what might happen if certain things were done; a need, a business, a song, a book, a poem, something that’s created.

Stage 5: The vision-caster becomes a risk-taker. You now go into action. You dare do something so great that you’re doomed to fail unless God is in it.

Stage 6: The risk-taker becomes a ground-breaker. You suddenly start doing things, no matter how small, to achieve greatness. One day at a time, you turn a spade of dirt, you plow the soil, and things begin to grow.

Stage 7: The ground-breaker becomes a rock-dodger. All of a sudden people start criticizing you because they see that this might indeed work. You have to be able to withstand criticism.

Stage 8: The rock-dodger becomes a seed-sower, which means that the dreamer continues to sow the seed into the ground that he has broken.

Stage 9: The seed-sower becomes a careful cultivator, which can become the hard part of the dream. Not much is happening on the surface, but you know that life works by the law of the farm, not the law of the factory.

Stage 10: The careful-cultivator becomes a happy harvester. The dream becomes real. It takes on a life of its own and begins to spawn other dreams in dreamers. And that’s how things change.

Which are you just a dreamer, a schemer, or someone who lives by fear? Dare to turn your dreams into deeds and God will join you.