Have you ever noticed when you start something new every one cheers for you?
You announce what college you are going to and everyone celebrates and mama cries.
You announce you’re engaged and your friends throw you a shower. You celebrate the beginning of your new life with the party of all parties…a wedding. You hope your mama is crying for all the right reasons.
You announce you’re pregnant and more parties with a cute cake and games that involve diapers and pudding. You dream about how your child will cure cancer, bring about world peace, and buy you your dream home.
You announce your new business venture and people like your new Facebook page. They ask you when you’re going to trade that minivan in for a Tesla.
The beginning of anything is very exciting! It’s full of possibilities. It’s the time we dream about what it will be like to cross that finish line and achieve our goals.
Everyone who has ever dreamed a dream eventually gets to the middle. The middle isn’t fun. You know you’re in the middle when you can’t see where you came from and you can’t see where you’re going. Everything around you looks the same. The scenery doesn’t seem to change no matter how hard you work or fast you go.
Where are all those people who cheered you on in the beginning?
You’re at college and no one is helping you finish the research project.
10 years have passed since your friends held sparklers and cheered as you and your spouse ran under them. Where are all those people now that I’m kissing boo-boos and picking up doggy doo doo. Mountains of laundry, dishes, bills are never ending. Life feels monotonous.
What about that child who was going to cure cancer and bring about world peace? Now they’re in middle school and you are wondering what happened to your sweet baby? Or your child who was going to buy you a house you’re thinking you might just buy them a house so they’ll leave.
Your new business…Why aren’t my friends shopping at my store? Why are they supporting my competitors or shopping at the big box store?
When you start having those feelings you are in a perfectly normal place. It’s called the middle.
Disillusioned
It’s easy to become disillusioned in the middle because we don’t realize how hard and how long it is. We want to jump right over the middle. We want to start and then finish.
No one escapes the middle, even if you start off like a rocket you’ll eventually hit the middle.
More dreams are ship wrecked in the middle than anywhere else. More people quit and make terrible life choices in the middle than any other time.
Not just with our dreams but also with our lives. We have a word for it in our culture. Do you know what it is? It has the word “middle” in it.
Mid(dle)-Life Crisis.
The middle represents the longest part of our life. Right in the middle we have a crisis.
We have a crisis about our career. People will give up everything they’ve worked for because the scenery isn’t changing.
We have a crisis about our identity. We’re not young and free anymore. We have gray hair and our music isn’t cool.
We have a crisis about our purpose, our meaning, even our relationships. Some choose to hit the eject button and bail on their families and dreams…right in the middle.
The middle doesn’t have the excitement like the beginning. The middle feels a whole lot like work. Any dream you’ll attempt for God will hit the messy middle.
So what do we do?
Would it surprise you to know a person in the Bible felt the same exact way we do?
They got stuck in the middle and what they were working for seemed like it would never happen. They became discouraged and even gave up, but God sent them a message to stick with it.
The guy’s name is Zerubbabel (Zer-rub-ba-veil)
We find his story in a book you might have never heard of. It’s a book in the Old Testament called Zechariah. At this point in Zerubbabel’s life Israel had been able to return to their homeland. They had been living as exiles and Zerubbabel has been appointed as the governor.
His countrymen are trying to rebuild homes, businesses, infrastructure, and provide food for their families in a war torn region. If that wasn’t difficult enough the country was suffering from a drought.
In the midst of all of this Zerubbabel had his own dream. He wanted to do something great for God. He has a big item on his spiritual bucket list. He wanted to rebuild the temple so they would have a place to worship God.
The first temple, the one Solomon built, had been destroyed earlier by the Babylonians. Zerubbabel felt a great burden for his people to have their own place to worship God.
Lots of excitement as he begins to work on this dream, but it took him 2 years to lay the foundation. People grew discouraged and quit. Progress wasn’t happening fast enough and they had their own dreams to focus on.
The dream stalled for 17 years. Nothing happened. Can you imagine how Zerubbabel must have felt walking past his dream every day and seeing grass growing on it? Then a few years later seeing shrubs popping up. By now trees, big trees, are growing on his dreams and giving witness to how much time has passed.
Right in this painful middle God sent the prophet Zechariah to encourage Zerubbabel to finish it.
Zechariah 4:9-10 (NLT)
Zerubbabel is the one who laid the foundation of this Temple, and he will complete it. Then you will know that the Lord of Heaven’s Armies has sent me. Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin, to see the plumb line in Zerubbabel’s hand.
The plumb line is used in construction to make sure each row of the brick wall remains straight. God rejoices to see him working…in the middle…brick by brick.
God also tells him, “Don’t despise the small beginnings” or don’t despise the work you have to do in the messy middle. Don’t despise the fact that it doesn’t seem like much is happening. Stick with it!
When it comes to the dreams God has placed in our hearts we can get to the middle and it looks completely different than what we imagined. We underestimated how long and how hard the middle was.
Maybe we thought it wouldn’t take as long, or our circumstances would be different, or we thought someone’s heart would change by now.
Zerubbabel had been staring at that foundation for 19 years!
Hating Our Dreams
Why does he have to be told not to “despise the small beginnings?”
For the same reason, we need to be told. We can begin to despise the dream God placed in our heart. We can begin to hate the very thing God asked us to do.
It can even turn into bitterness, resentment, or envy.
If you grow resentful toward your dream you will stop working on it. You’ll stop giving it the love it needs. You’ll stop trying to nurture and grow it. You’ll despise it.
The dreams God has placed in your heart are never just the exciting beginning with lots of cheering and then we cross the finish line to more cheering. Instead every dream has a middle and the only way through it is brick by brick.
How can you tell if you despise small things?
You dream of being discovered. You dream of someone knocking on your door and asking you to be their CEO or offering you a recording contract.
You dream of winning the lottery. Instead of saving for the future week by week, month by month, brick by brick.
You dream of skipping over the middle and getting on to something else.
Every person of faith had to get through a middle.
Joseph – God shared a literal dream with Joseph about his future, but he had to spend the next 13 years of his life as a slave and prisoner.
Abraham – God told Abraham he would make him a great nation. He had to wait 24 years for a child.
Moses – God told Moses he would use him to deliver his people from Egypt. Moses spent the next 40 years in a forgotten wilderness watching sheep.
If every person of faith had to go through a middle what do you think that means for us?
Why the middle?
Why does God take us through the messy middles and the small beginnings? I think it’s because we are a prideful people.
We tend to forget where our opportunities come from. We tend to forget where our health comes from. We tend to forget who we are doing all of this for in the first place.
I saw this shirt the other day…
I have a few friends on Instagram I want to send this shirt to.
We say we are doing it for God’s glory all while posting about it on Instagram.
The middle reminds us what it’s all about.
The middle helps us see what our motives really are.
The middle shows us how much we really need God.
That’s why before Zerubbabel was told that God was going to help him finish the dream. God told him this first…
Zechariah 4:6-7 NLT
This is what the Lord says to Zerubbabel: It is not by force nor by strength, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. Nothing, not even a mighty mountain, will stand in Zerubbabel’s way; it will become a level plain before him! And when Zerubbabel sets the final stone of the Temple in place, the people will shout: ‘May God bless it! May God bless it!’
People aren’t going to be shouting Zerubbabel’s name they are going to be praising God for what was accomplished.
Notice this…when you are doing what God wants you to do and it’s done in the power of God’s Spirit nothing can stop you.
4 years later the temple was finished.
500 years later this is the very same temple that Jesus the Messiah would enter and fulfill all the prophecies of Zechariah and the other prophets of the Old Testament.
I bet Zerubbabel had no idea how God would use this dream placed in his heart. God’s plans were bigger than what just Zerubbabel could imagine.
What if he had stayed defeated? What if he chose to never pick up a brick again?
The dreams God has placed on your heart are about so much more than you can even possibly know or see.
Maybe you’re thinking about quitting. Maybe you’ve already quit. I think the message for you would be to pick up the bricks and get back to work. Not in your strength, but in God’s strength.
What you are doing isn’t all there is or ever will be. Brick by brick you are accomplishing the dream. Today feel God’s pleasure as you work in the middle. He enjoys seeing you work at the dream he has placed in your heart. Don’t give up. The bigger the dream the longer the middle will be.
