By D.Brandt Berg
Download Audio (12.6MB)
I had this beautiful dream about faith. Maria and I were walking along hand in hand, but strangely enough we were out on a deserted highway that passed through barren, desolate, semi-desert country.
We seemed to be somewhat lost and searching for something, searching for our destination or at least some sign of civilization, and we were almost a little bit concerned, worried, fearful and apprehensive because we seemed to be so far out in the middle of nowhere and getting nowhere. We were walking along hoping to see some sign of life and traffic, but there was none.
Then suddenly we came upon this beautiful little white roadway, like white concrete, narrow and looking more like a private drive leading off to the left and down a slight slope. And there just a hundred meters away or so was a beautiful sort of ornamental gate which was a building in itself, somewhat like you would see a castle gate with the castle built around it and the gate passing through it like a tunnel.
Immediately I recognized that it was a clubhouse, sort of a country club. We had stumbled on to a beautiful country club with a lovely golf course, stretching, it seemed, almost as far as the eye could see. So we were very happy to find some sign of civilization, and we walked down the little white paved road toward the open gateway, finding yet no sign of life, no one around.
As we walked across the parking lot and onto the beautiful grassy green, we saw a long row of trees along this beautiful tree-lined roadway with all trees on each side leading off into the distance toward a beautiful little country town which looked as if it was only a couple of miles away.
But by this time I was very, very tired because we’d apparently walked a long way, and even a couple of kilometers or a mile-and-a-half or two just seemed like an awful long way to go. So I looked longingly at that beautiful distant little country town and looked at Maria rather wonderingly, like, “How are we going to still walk that much further and get there?”
Then for some reason it dawned on me that surely in a place this civilized and with a country club out here, they ought to have some kind of public transportation, and somehow drawn by that leading or faith, I looked around toward the clubhouse. Sure enough, just as I turned around and looked back, here came this bus, sort of a city or country bus, rural or interurban bus maybe, coming in from the same highway that we had been on, and driving down the pretty little white paved roadway into the arch of the club, and there it stopped to discharge and take on passengers.
Our hearts leaped with joy to think, “Thank God, a bus. Now we won’t have to walk all the way into town; we can catch that bus.” So we started to walk quickly toward the roadway along which it would drive toward the little city. But apparently we had not acted soon enough! We had stood there too long contemplating the bus and looking to see what the sign said on the front of the bus, to see where it was going. We had stood there studying it a little too long and the bus was picking up speed more rapidly than we had expected.
We began to run, but just as we were approaching the beautiful roadway to town, the bus suddenly disappeared out of sight down this slight grade behind a little green knoll of the fairways, and our hearts sank because we realized we had not started for it soon enough and it was getting away from us.
We thought about yelling and hailing it, but we were almost too late by the time we got to the roadway, and it had already gone by. We looked down the roadway and there it appeared again, going down the beautiful tree-lined roadway between the trees and disappearing off into the distance toward the little town.
Suddenly a voice seemed to say, “You didn’t have enough faith.”—Just like the Lord speaks in your heart, but so clearly sometimes it almost seems as though it’s out loud. “You should have had more faith.” We should have hailed the bus. We should have flagged it down. We should have reacted more quickly and had more faith that it was a bus that we could catch that was going into the little town.
By the time we made up our minds that the bus was going to come our way and go down the little country roadway toward the beautiful little country town, it was too late. We hadn’t made up our minds soon enough, we hadn’t run fast enough, and we hadn’t called loud enough to catch it, so it disappeared off down the little road toward the country town and our hearts sank.
Here we’d lost our golden opportunity to finally get some transportation so we wouldn’t have to walk any further when we were so weary and just virtually exhausted, and I was so disappointed about missing that bus I was ready to sink down onto the grass in tears. I was so, so sad, frustrated, and discouraged.
But suddenly I heard these voices sounding just like my father’s and mother’s, just the way they used to sing these two beautiful choruses together:
Keep on believing, God answers prayer,
Keep on believing, He’s still up there.
Troubles and sorrows will soon disappear.
Nothing can harm you when Jesus is near.
Keep on believing, the storm will pass,
Look for the rainbow, ’twill come at last.
Trust in His promise, ’twas written for you,
Keep on believing and praise your way through.1
And the other little chorus which begins with the very same words:
Keep on believing, Jesus is here,
Keep on believing, there’s nothing to fear.
Keep on believing, this is the way,
Faith in the night as well as the day.2
Well, if it hadn’t been for those two songs, I think I would have almost given up. But I was encouraged not to give up and not to be discouraged, that the Lord was still with us and He would help us even though we had been weak in faith and had not had enough faith to act quickly and seize our opportunity and God’s provision—that the Lord would still take care of us somehow. I recall my mother and father singing these songs together many times during my childhood to lift our spirits and encourage us.
I got to thinking how like life that dream was and how many of us have gone through such desert experiences, wandering about in the wastes of this world, dry, rugged, rocky, and harsh, and long and lost, wandering out yonder over the hills seeking something, you knew not what, but feeling lost, knowing that you needed to find someplace, to go somewhere and not be wandering out there in the middle of this desert of a lonely life away from friends and loved ones and humanity and almost seeming separated from God Himself.—When suddenly there appears in view a beautiful little white road, which to me symbolized the road of salvation.
We stumbled down the right pathway and through the right gateway, through the door—which of course is only Jesus—and we were so saved, in a way, and so relieved and happy that we had found the way out into this beautiful new world of God’s gorgeous creation and that almost divine country roadway that led off between the trees toward the beautiful little distant country town, which looked almost like heaven to us at the time in the dream, and possibly did represent heaven.
But we were weary, very tired, and seeking the right way to go, hoping for some kind of a lift or transportation, and there it came! We were too slow to believe. Sometimes we can see the will of God and we can see His hand ready to help us, and yet we don’t catch on soon enough, we’re not prayerful enough, we don’t have enough faith, and that’s what the voice said to us as we missed the bus:
“You didn’t have enough faith. You should have had more faith.” We should have hailed him, flagged him down. The moment we saw that bus, we should have run to catch it and called out loudly to have him wait for us, because some opportunities knock but once and then they’re gone.
In a way, it seemed that the bus represented the will of God, the fastest way to get to our destination, the easiest way in the power of His Spirit and not the energy of our flesh.—Pulled along by the powerful motor of that bus, the will of God, instead of stumbling along on our own poor weary legs in our own pitiful weak strength of the flesh.
If we’d have had more faith, we could have run and called out for help and jumped on the bus of God’s will going in the direction He wanted us to go, and we could have caught the bus of the will of God and it would have whisked us away easily and powerfully to our heavenly destination of that little country town in the distance. It looked like the hills and the rolling grassy expanses of heaven itself, and this little country town in the distance a beautiful little city representing a heavenly destination.
So this dream certainly was teaching a lesson: that even though you have left the desert wastes of sin and your past life and passed through the beautiful open gate of salvation along the narrow white way of His way to salvation, and through that gate, the open door of Jesus, into the whole new heavenly world of our lives in Him, you can still miss God’s golden opportunities of service by not having the faith you should have to act quickly in time of opportunity to run and seize the golden opportunity of the open doors that He gives you, waiting too long, hesitating until it’s lost, standing there debating as to whether that really was the right thing to do and whether that was the right direction and whether you should act on it and run and seize the opportunity and climb aboard and go in that direction.
If you have somehow missed God’s will and you have somehow missed His highest and best and it seems that the golden opportunities that He’s offered you have all passed you by and disappeared into the distance and left you alone and lonely and sad and downhearted and discouraged and defeated and almost in despair at the end of your rope, don’t give up! Lift an ear to those heavenly voices that are singing to you to encourage you that all hope is not gone. There’s still hope. There’s still opportunity. Maybe God’s going to send alonganother bus and maybe you can still catch one that’s coming on a little later schedule.
Maybe you missed the first one and didn’t get there as soon as you should have, but maybe you haven’t missed the last one, thank God. He’s still going to be merciful to you and send along another one so that you can follow His direction to your destination in His service, carried along by the power and the love and the will of God to where He wants you to go with the ease of the power of His Spirit. Your Savior is the overcomer and will help you to overcome and triumph over the grave and over all. Perhaps you need to simply bury yourself more in the Word of God to encourage your faith. “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.”3
So keep on believing; don’t ever give up. Keep on believing; don’t be discouraged. Keep on believing; don’t quit. Keep on keeping on. Keep on holding on to His promises. Keep on standing on the promises, and whatever you do, keep on going on for Jesus. Don’t ever quit, don’t ever give up, don’t despair. Don’t lose faith just because you feel like you’ve missed the last bus. Keep on waiting on the Lord a little longer and He’s bound to send you another bus, another chance, another opportunity.
If you really want to find His will, He won’t fail to send along His bus of opportunity to pick you up and lift you up and lift your spirits and encourage you and inspire you and strengthen you and heal you and carry you along in the power of His Spirit to the glorious victory of your heavenly destination. Keep on believing! Hurry! Have faith. Catch the bus!
Originally published September 1982. Updated and republished June 2013.
Read by Jerry Paladino.
1 From "Keep On Believing," by Frank C. Huston (1871–1959).
2 Adapted from "Keep On Believing," by Lucy Milward Booth and Mildred Duff, 1901.
3 Romans 10:17.
Download Audio (12.6MB)
I had this beautiful dream about faith. Maria and I were walking along hand in hand, but strangely enough we were out on a deserted highway that passed through barren, desolate, semi-desert country.
We seemed to be somewhat lost and searching for something, searching for our destination or at least some sign of civilization, and we were almost a little bit concerned, worried, fearful and apprehensive because we seemed to be so far out in the middle of nowhere and getting nowhere. We were walking along hoping to see some sign of life and traffic, but there was none.
Then suddenly we came upon this beautiful little white roadway, like white concrete, narrow and looking more like a private drive leading off to the left and down a slight slope. And there just a hundred meters away or so was a beautiful sort of ornamental gate which was a building in itself, somewhat like you would see a castle gate with the castle built around it and the gate passing through it like a tunnel.
Immediately I recognized that it was a clubhouse, sort of a country club. We had stumbled on to a beautiful country club with a lovely golf course, stretching, it seemed, almost as far as the eye could see. So we were very happy to find some sign of civilization, and we walked down the little white paved road toward the open gateway, finding yet no sign of life, no one around.
As we walked across the parking lot and onto the beautiful grassy green, we saw a long row of trees along this beautiful tree-lined roadway with all trees on each side leading off into the distance toward a beautiful little country town which looked as if it was only a couple of miles away.
But by this time I was very, very tired because we’d apparently walked a long way, and even a couple of kilometers or a mile-and-a-half or two just seemed like an awful long way to go. So I looked longingly at that beautiful distant little country town and looked at Maria rather wonderingly, like, “How are we going to still walk that much further and get there?”
Then for some reason it dawned on me that surely in a place this civilized and with a country club out here, they ought to have some kind of public transportation, and somehow drawn by that leading or faith, I looked around toward the clubhouse. Sure enough, just as I turned around and looked back, here came this bus, sort of a city or country bus, rural or interurban bus maybe, coming in from the same highway that we had been on, and driving down the pretty little white paved roadway into the arch of the club, and there it stopped to discharge and take on passengers.
Our hearts leaped with joy to think, “Thank God, a bus. Now we won’t have to walk all the way into town; we can catch that bus.” So we started to walk quickly toward the roadway along which it would drive toward the little city. But apparently we had not acted soon enough! We had stood there too long contemplating the bus and looking to see what the sign said on the front of the bus, to see where it was going. We had stood there studying it a little too long and the bus was picking up speed more rapidly than we had expected.
We began to run, but just as we were approaching the beautiful roadway to town, the bus suddenly disappeared out of sight down this slight grade behind a little green knoll of the fairways, and our hearts sank because we realized we had not started for it soon enough and it was getting away from us.
We thought about yelling and hailing it, but we were almost too late by the time we got to the roadway, and it had already gone by. We looked down the roadway and there it appeared again, going down the beautiful tree-lined roadway between the trees and disappearing off into the distance toward the little town.
Suddenly a voice seemed to say, “You didn’t have enough faith.”—Just like the Lord speaks in your heart, but so clearly sometimes it almost seems as though it’s out loud. “You should have had more faith.” We should have hailed the bus. We should have flagged it down. We should have reacted more quickly and had more faith that it was a bus that we could catch that was going into the little town.
By the time we made up our minds that the bus was going to come our way and go down the little country roadway toward the beautiful little country town, it was too late. We hadn’t made up our minds soon enough, we hadn’t run fast enough, and we hadn’t called loud enough to catch it, so it disappeared off down the little road toward the country town and our hearts sank.
Here we’d lost our golden opportunity to finally get some transportation so we wouldn’t have to walk any further when we were so weary and just virtually exhausted, and I was so disappointed about missing that bus I was ready to sink down onto the grass in tears. I was so, so sad, frustrated, and discouraged.
But suddenly I heard these voices sounding just like my father’s and mother’s, just the way they used to sing these two beautiful choruses together:
Keep on believing, God answers prayer,
Keep on believing, He’s still up there.
Troubles and sorrows will soon disappear.
Nothing can harm you when Jesus is near.
Keep on believing, the storm will pass,
Look for the rainbow, ’twill come at last.
Trust in His promise, ’twas written for you,
Keep on believing and praise your way through.1
And the other little chorus which begins with the very same words:
Keep on believing, Jesus is here,
Keep on believing, there’s nothing to fear.
Keep on believing, this is the way,
Faith in the night as well as the day.2
Well, if it hadn’t been for those two songs, I think I would have almost given up. But I was encouraged not to give up and not to be discouraged, that the Lord was still with us and He would help us even though we had been weak in faith and had not had enough faith to act quickly and seize our opportunity and God’s provision—that the Lord would still take care of us somehow. I recall my mother and father singing these songs together many times during my childhood to lift our spirits and encourage us.
I got to thinking how like life that dream was and how many of us have gone through such desert experiences, wandering about in the wastes of this world, dry, rugged, rocky, and harsh, and long and lost, wandering out yonder over the hills seeking something, you knew not what, but feeling lost, knowing that you needed to find someplace, to go somewhere and not be wandering out there in the middle of this desert of a lonely life away from friends and loved ones and humanity and almost seeming separated from God Himself.—When suddenly there appears in view a beautiful little white road, which to me symbolized the road of salvation.
We stumbled down the right pathway and through the right gateway, through the door—which of course is only Jesus—and we were so saved, in a way, and so relieved and happy that we had found the way out into this beautiful new world of God’s gorgeous creation and that almost divine country roadway that led off between the trees toward the beautiful little distant country town, which looked almost like heaven to us at the time in the dream, and possibly did represent heaven.
But we were weary, very tired, and seeking the right way to go, hoping for some kind of a lift or transportation, and there it came! We were too slow to believe. Sometimes we can see the will of God and we can see His hand ready to help us, and yet we don’t catch on soon enough, we’re not prayerful enough, we don’t have enough faith, and that’s what the voice said to us as we missed the bus:
“You didn’t have enough faith. You should have had more faith.” We should have hailed him, flagged him down. The moment we saw that bus, we should have run to catch it and called out loudly to have him wait for us, because some opportunities knock but once and then they’re gone.
In a way, it seemed that the bus represented the will of God, the fastest way to get to our destination, the easiest way in the power of His Spirit and not the energy of our flesh.—Pulled along by the powerful motor of that bus, the will of God, instead of stumbling along on our own poor weary legs in our own pitiful weak strength of the flesh.
If we’d have had more faith, we could have run and called out for help and jumped on the bus of God’s will going in the direction He wanted us to go, and we could have caught the bus of the will of God and it would have whisked us away easily and powerfully to our heavenly destination of that little country town in the distance. It looked like the hills and the rolling grassy expanses of heaven itself, and this little country town in the distance a beautiful little city representing a heavenly destination.
So this dream certainly was teaching a lesson: that even though you have left the desert wastes of sin and your past life and passed through the beautiful open gate of salvation along the narrow white way of His way to salvation, and through that gate, the open door of Jesus, into the whole new heavenly world of our lives in Him, you can still miss God’s golden opportunities of service by not having the faith you should have to act quickly in time of opportunity to run and seize the golden opportunity of the open doors that He gives you, waiting too long, hesitating until it’s lost, standing there debating as to whether that really was the right thing to do and whether that was the right direction and whether you should act on it and run and seize the opportunity and climb aboard and go in that direction.
If you have somehow missed God’s will and you have somehow missed His highest and best and it seems that the golden opportunities that He’s offered you have all passed you by and disappeared into the distance and left you alone and lonely and sad and downhearted and discouraged and defeated and almost in despair at the end of your rope, don’t give up! Lift an ear to those heavenly voices that are singing to you to encourage you that all hope is not gone. There’s still hope. There’s still opportunity. Maybe God’s going to send alonganother bus and maybe you can still catch one that’s coming on a little later schedule.
Maybe you missed the first one and didn’t get there as soon as you should have, but maybe you haven’t missed the last one, thank God. He’s still going to be merciful to you and send along another one so that you can follow His direction to your destination in His service, carried along by the power and the love and the will of God to where He wants you to go with the ease of the power of His Spirit. Your Savior is the overcomer and will help you to overcome and triumph over the grave and over all. Perhaps you need to simply bury yourself more in the Word of God to encourage your faith. “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.”3
So keep on believing; don’t ever give up. Keep on believing; don’t be discouraged. Keep on believing; don’t quit. Keep on keeping on. Keep on holding on to His promises. Keep on standing on the promises, and whatever you do, keep on going on for Jesus. Don’t ever quit, don’t ever give up, don’t despair. Don’t lose faith just because you feel like you’ve missed the last bus. Keep on waiting on the Lord a little longer and He’s bound to send you another bus, another chance, another opportunity.
If you really want to find His will, He won’t fail to send along His bus of opportunity to pick you up and lift you up and lift your spirits and encourage you and inspire you and strengthen you and heal you and carry you along in the power of His Spirit to the glorious victory of your heavenly destination. Keep on believing! Hurry! Have faith. Catch the bus!
Originally published September 1982. Updated and republished June 2013.
Read by Jerry Paladino.
1 From "Keep On Believing," by Frank C. Huston (1871–1959).
2 Adapted from "Keep On Believing," by Lucy Milward Booth and Mildred Duff, 1901.
3 Romans 10:17.
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