The second thing is, it can never be fulfilled without the Lord helping you. Now all the other dreams, many of them you can just do in your own ability if you have enough motivation, drive, a great goal setter. You can learn the techniques of fulfilling it, but the God given dreams cannot be fulfilled without God standing by you and helping you. They'll always have an overflow that advances the kingdom, so when people talk to you about dreams and visions, just run this thing by them - is it about personal fulfilment, or is it about the kingdom of God and the cause of Christ? If it's about personal fulfilment, the primary one that's going to be fulfilled and honoured and glorified in it is you. If it's a God given vision, the primary one that'll be honoured and glorified will be Christ. That's the difference.
So it helps if we are very clear between what I call dreams and desires, and things which are about personal fulfilment, and dreams and desires which originate in God, and have to do with our eternal destiny, reward in eternity, and making an impact with our life. They are different, and they come in different ways, so what I want to do is - dreams can be lost, so maybe you have a dream, or you don't have a dream. I want to talk over the next couple of weeks about what kills dreams, and there are a number of dream killers. I'm going to pick up one today which over the course of my ministry life I have observed without exception kills dreams, without exception. I can guarantee if God put a dream in your heart, and God's put some great thing in you to accomplish with your life, I guarantee if you miss this one it will cancel you out. It'll actually kill and destroy the dream, so dreams can be lost, dreams can be stolen, dreams can go in all kinds of ways, and we'll share some of those ways.
But dream killers are like a terrorist. You don't see them coming. You don't see them coming. You don't line up and there's the dream killer in front of you. Actually it sneaks up on you, and blows you up, and everyone around you if possible. You have a think about some of the great men in the world, who had great influence, and yet had a moral failure that literally shot down and destroyed their legacy. Think about that. Think about the men in the Bible, great men who had a major character failure, and it destroyed what they could have been and could have done, so the number one dream killer I want to pick up today is an undeveloped character. Most people don't realise that your character is incredibly important. Notice that verse in Ephesians 2:10. We looked at the last part of it, you know, you were His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before, you would walk in them. In other words we're focussed on doing something or fulfilling a purpose in God, but look at the first part. It says you're His workmanship. In other words God is wanting to build your life. God is wanting to develop you. God needs to build you, so you can be big enough to do the big thing He wants to do.
Here's a thing to understand, is your gift is bigger than your character. Your gift will open doors for you, but only your character will keep you there, and so you can have great giftings and talents - my observation over years is the most talented, gifted people I saw at high school were not the most successful people in life. My observation is over years in the church, and years working with Christians, is the most talented, most gifted people often are not successful, and there has to be a reason for it. We look at talent, we look at gifting, it's impressive. It dazzles. You think wow, we need that person! They've got such a gift on their life - but listen, what is their character? Because only the character can keep the person in the place and produce the fruit God intended, so if we're not committed to develop our character and understand God's process of developing character, no matter what your gift and dream is, at some point you'll derail because your character disqualified you from the dream, the thing you were trying to pursue. Very, very important this kind of thing.