Pastor Choco De Jesus

What do you do when God has given you a big dream and your current situation looks small? Keep looking up. God is bigger than your circumstances, so don't lower the vision to fit your reality. Bring your reality up to the vision, and trust the God who is both far above you and right here with you.

What does it mean to live with a God-sized dream?

It means keeping your eyes on God instead of on your circumstances. Pastor Choco De Jesus is a longtime Chicago pastor who now serves as executive director of U.S. Missions for the Assemblies of God. He preached at Calvary in English and Spanish during the Big God, Big Dreams series. On Beyond Sunday, he described it with a story.

The first time he walked into the Sistine Chapel in Rome, his eyes went straight up to Michelangelo's ceiling. He stood there with his mouth open for about fifteen minutes. If someone offered him a million dollars to describe the floor, he said, he couldn't do it. He never looked down.

He called that experience transcendent, and he says that is how to live when God gives you a dream: always looking up.

My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.

Psalm 121:2

What does it mean that God is transcendent?

God's transcendence means He is beyond all of creation: holy, limitless, and greater than anything that could contain Him. The word itself carries the idea of going beyond.

Beyond Sunday host Pastor Sean Sloan pointed to early church leaders who wrestled with this. Irenaeus described a God no single place can contain because He fills all things. Athanasius described God as beyond everything. The Psalms sing about it too.

Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom.

Psalm 145:3

A big God is the starting point for big dreams. If your view of God is small, your faith for what He can do will be small too.

Why is it so hard to move forward with God?

It is hard because we keep looking back. You can't look forward while you are staring at the past.

Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.

Isaiah 43:18 to 19

Pastor Choco pointed out that people have always been tempted to go back. Not long after God brought Israel out of Egypt, they were asking Moses to take them back. They couldn't see past the wilderness.

The God you serve is bigger than what you are facing right now. Don't let your current situation set the limits on what He can do. Ask Him what new thing He is doing, and look for it.

What should you do when your reality doesn't match your vision?

Keep the vision, and bring your current reality up to it. Never lower the vision to fit the situation in front of you.

Every leader lives in this tension. There is the vision God has given, and there are the realities of today. Pastor Choco knows it firsthand. For example, for ten years his Chicago church met in a high school. Every Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday they set up and tore down everything, down to the cribs in the nursery. The whole time, he carried a vision for a 1,400-seat auditorium in the Humboldt Park neighborhood.

His counsel, especially to pastors and leaders, is simple. Never drop your vision to meet your current realities. After ten years, the building was built, and he gives God the glory for it.

This applies far beyond church buildings. Maybe God has stirred something in you for your family, your work, or your neighborhood. Today it looks impossible. Living by faith means you keep doing the faithful work in front of you, like setting up and tearing down, while you keep looking up.

If God is so big, can He be close to me?

Yes. God is beyond you, and He is also with you. Maximus the Confessor put it in a short phrase that Pastor Sean quoted: God is beyond all and in all.

Pastor Sean admitted that God's greatness can leave you in awe and still feeling far away. You walk into a beautiful old chapel, sense the holiness, and wonder whether any of it can touch your life right now. He pointed to Blaise Pascal's answer: Jesus Christ is the one who bridges that gap. In Jesus, God brings His reality into your everyday reality.

"The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel" (which means "God with us").

Matthew 1:23

Pastor Choco agreed. If you only see God as far off, you miss Him. He is Immanuel, God with us. A big God and big dreams don't mean being so heavenly minded that you are no earthly good. They mean His greatness reaches into your ordinary days.

Is God still giving people dreams today?

Yes. God is still in the business of giving dreams to people, and if He has called you, He will also provide for you.

Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.

Jeremiah 33:3

We have a big God, and He has big things for you to see. Ask Him. Keep your eyes up. And trust that the God who called you is with you in the wilderness, the waiting, and the setup and teardown.

Common questions

What does it mean that God is transcendent?

It means God is beyond all creation: holy, limitless, and greater than anything that could contain Him. Early church leaders described Him as filling all things and being beyond everything.

If God is so great, can He be close to me?

Yes. Scripture shows God is both beyond all and present with us. Jesus is Immanuel, God with us, the one who brings God's reality into your everyday life.

What should I do when my circumstances don't match the vision God gave me?

Keep the vision and bring your current realities up to it, rather than lowering the vision to fit your situation. Keep looking up, keep doing the faithful work in front of you, and trust God to provide.

Who is Pastor Choco De Jesus?

Choco De Jesus is a longtime Chicago pastor who now serves as executive director of U.S. Missions for the Assemblies of God. He preached at Calvary in English and Spanish during the Big God, Big Dreams series.