Schmidt Dream Chasers

Becoming Resilient in the Face of Hardship
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-3-9820432-1-0
Verlag: PublishDrive
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, Band 1, 132 Seiten

Reihe: Dream Chasers

Do you feel like you're destined for something greater, yet find yourself stuck in a season of disappointment, loss, or seemingly impossible obstacles? Dream Chasers reveals the hidden journey that transforms ordinary people into extraordinary leaders who change the world.

Most leadership books celebrate success, but few reveal the brutal truth about what it takes to actually fulfill your calling. Research shows that 80% of leaders never reach their ultimate life purpose-not because they lack vision, but because they don't understand how to navigate the dark seasons of setbacks, suffering, and contradictions that stand between dreams and destiny. Author Uta Schmidt, motivated by her own perfect storm of hardships, conducted exclusive interviews with nine globally influential leaders-including insights from Nelson Mandela, bestselling authors, humanitarian pioneers, and peace negotiators-to uncover what actually sustains people through impossible circumstances.

These aren't sanitized success stories; they're raw accounts of prison cells, cancer diagnoses, financial ruin, death threats, and devastating loss. Yet each leader emerged not just surviving, but transformed-their character refined, their faith deepened, their impact multiplied. Schmidt's expertise as an empathetic interviewer and transformative thinker, combined with rigorous research into leadership development, creates a roadmap through the refining process that every world-changer must endure. This isn't about avoiding hardship-it's about discovering how suffering, when navigated with faith and authenticity, becomes the very crucible that forges extraordinary destiny.

Dream Chasers bridges the critical gap in leadership literature by revealing the process-not just the outcomes-of navigating life's darkest seasons while pursuing your calling.

Through nine transformative stories spanning continents and crises, you'll discover that successful dream chasers aren't spared from contradictions; they learn to move through them with purpose, faith, and resilience. Your life will shift from feeling stuck in disappointment to understanding how your current struggles are refining you for extraordinary impact.

Endorsements:
'You can't help but be inspired as you read the stories of the trials and victories of some of my personal heroes'
Bill Johnson, author and pastor of Bethel Church
'Dream Chasers is an exploration of raw human experience, an invitation to look through the eyes of another's story and back at our own.'
William Paul Young, author of The Shack
'If you have a dream inside of you and want to know how to make your dream a reality, you must read this book.'
Les Brown, author of Live Your Dreams
'This is an encouraging book. As you chase the dream in your life and overcome the challenges on your way, you will be fulfilled.'
Loren Cunningham, founder of Youth With A Mission (YWAM)
'This is a book about getting up when life knocks you down. It is a book that must be read.'
Canon Andrew White, Vicar Emeritus of Baghdad

Autoren/Hrsg.

Schmidt, Uta

Leseproben

1

PRISONERS OF DESTINY

A Training for Reigning

Life only makes sense backward, but we have to live it forward.

Dag HammersjØrd

His father gave him the name Rolihlahla, which means troublemaker. For the first part of his adult life, this name would turn out to be rather prophetic. In fact, he stirred up strife and trouble throughout a whole nation to fight injustice. His Methodist teacher gave him the English name Nelson, which means son of a champion. In the latter part of his life, he would be known to the whole world as one of the greatest peacemakers of our times, and as a champion who chose reconciliation above justice and thus saved a whole nation from a massive genocide: Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.

Something happened between the first part and the latter part of his life, between owning the reputation of “troublemaker” and becoming a peacemaker: a transformation process that took 27 years.

This chapter explores the transformation process in the life of Nelson Mandela, as well as the lives of the two biblical leaders Moses and Joseph. All three examples show a similar pattern of development orchestrated by God to prepare them for the task they were ultimately called to fulfill. The biblical accounts offer valuable insights on the process of chasing a dream, and the more recent example of Nelson Mandela shows that God’s ways of shaping a leader and preparing him for his destiny have not changed. So let’s dig a little deeper into their story, which occurred before they made history.

From Troublemaker to Peacemaker

Nelson was born a Xhosa prince to the Thembu royal family. Although he was not eligible for succession to the Xhosa throne, members of his clan inherited the position of royal counselors, and as such a clear path was laid out for him with a promising future.

Nelson spent his childhood as a shepherd and herds boy. Both of his parents were illiterate, but his mother was a devout Christian and sent him to a local Methodist school when he was seven years old, so that he could learn to read and write.

When he was nine, his father died, and Nelson was adopted by the Xhosa king. His father had done a great favor to the king, and now the Xhosa chief returned the favor by taking on the education of his advisor’s son. Nelson grew up in the royal household, with all privileges of comfort and education a tribal royal household could offer. His upbringing was designed to prepare him to step into his father’s shoes and become a royal counselor to his adoptive brother Justice, the future king of the Xhosa people.

But his life would take a different turn than the path his guardian had laid out for him. One day, at the age of 22, after the king had announced to Nelson and Justice that he had arranged marriages for them, Nelson decided to run away, to break with tradition and pursue a different course. He would study law in Johannesburg and later marry for love.

After the initial excitement of his new life working as a clerk in a Johannesburg law firm had faded, Nelson began to wake up to a new reality. For the first time, he was outside the tribal territory of the royal Xhosa household and confronted with the abject oppression of his fellow African people throughout the land. Mandela describes the fierce discrimination blacks faced in his book Long Walk To Freedom: “For blacks it was a crime to walk through a whites only door, a crime to ride a whites only bus, a crime to use a whites only drinking fountain, a crime to not have a pass book and a crime to have a wrong signature in the pass book. It was a crime to be unemployed and a crime to be employed in the wrong place, a crime to live in certain places and a crime to have no place to live.”1

In the beginning stages of his law career he resisted getting involved in politics, specifically with the Communist Party, since he was opposed to their atheistic views. But as he was confronted with the daily injustices against his people as a lawyer who was attempting to defend their rights, he became more politicized and took up the national struggle for his fellow Africans with the African National Congress (ANC).

Initially it was the ANC’s conviction that non-violent resistance was the path to bring about change in the political situation. This approach, however, had little to no effect. The new government was unrelenting, going so far as to expand racial segregation with the new apartheid legislation of the National Party in 1948. As the oppression increased, Mandela became desperate and called for a revolution and militant resistance.

Hunted by the government, he had to go underground. While in exile, he recruited support from neighboring African nations for his guerilla warfare plans, but upon returning to South Africa to implement the first sabotage act in October 1953, Mandela was betrayed and captured. Together with several other ANC leaders, he was charged and convicted of High Treason, which, according to the law, would demand the death sentence. On the day of sentencing, the atmosphere was charged, and everyone expected the inevitable as the judge prepared to announce the verdict. But by a miracle – and due to international pressure - the Supreme Court refrained from capital punishment and instead sentenced Mandela and his fellow accused to life in prison.

“Amandla!” Mandela shouted to the crowd in the court as he was led away and disappeared from the stage of political activism. This was the Zulu and Xhosa word for power. His fellow prisoners shouted “Awethu!”, which means “to us’’. The shouts became a symbolic representation of the struggle against apartheid and oppression in South Africa, demanding that political power be given to the people. It emphasized that the struggle against the oppressive regime would not end.

Mandela would end up spending 27 years in prison. And during that time, he came to realize that violence was not the solution. He would emerge from prison with a different agenda than reciprocal aggression to free his people from oppression. Instead, he emerged with an agenda of forgiveness and reconciliation toward the oppressors. His negotiations for a peaceful resolution saved a whole nation from genocide of a magnitude that, according to experts, would have made the Rwanda genocide of 1994 look like a picnic. Through his leadership, he reconciled Blacks and Whites, Coloreds and Indians, oppressor and oppressed.
The rest is history.

Prince of Egypt

About 5000 years earlier, in a Northern African country, a boy was born to a people that had hopes and dreams of one day being delivered from their oppressors and living in dignity and freedom in a land they could call their own. His parents believed in a better future for him so fervently that they risked their own lives to protect his life from the king’s attempt to kill him.

When they chose nonviolent resistance to save him and were hiding his existence from the authorities, they had no way of knowing that their offspring was destined to save their entire nation from the iron fist of tyranny.

Moshe Ben Amram - also known as Moses - was born a beautiful boy to the Levi clan of the Hebrew people enslaved in Egypt, in a time when his people were increasing in numbers and the Egyptian king was worried that they might overpower them or join forces with Egypt’s enemies. Moses’ mother, a devout believer in God, hid him when the Pharaoh ordered that all newborn Hebrew boys to be killed. Pharaoh had issued this decree in response to a rumored prophecy of a messianic deliverer, who was soon to arise among the Hebrew slaves. Moses’ mother and sister placed him in a basket in the Nile River, where Pharaoh’s daughter, Queen Bithiah, found him. When she saw the baby, she adopted him as his own.

From Hero to Zero

We don’t know if this is the name his parents gave him, but Exodus 2 says that Pharaoh’s daughter called him Moshe (Moses), which means “drawn out of the water.” As an adopted member of the Egyptian royal family, Moshe enjoyed all privileges of comfort and education that a royal household could offer. And yet one day, he had to run away. Having seen the cruelty of the oppression of his people, he had witnessed it in silence for a long time. But one day his response was different: he took action. When a merciless guard severely mistreated one of his Hebrew brothers, Moshe’s temper got the better of him and he answered relentless violence with violent resistance. But the moment he raised his hand against the Egyptian slave master and killed him, Moshe became a wanted fugitive.

Moshe went underground and fled across the Red Sea to Midian – a territory that stretches from modern day southern Jordan to western Saudi Arabia, southern Israel and the Egyptian Sinai peninsula. There he served his own sentence of solitary confinement, far from the privileges of the royal household and prestige, and from his Egyptian and Hebrew family and friends. This sentence lasted 40 years, in a parched desert, herding sheep. It was there and then that he encountered God in the “burning bush,” and finally returned to Egypt to obtain the release of his people from slavery.

The rest is history.

The Coat of Many Colors

About 400 years earlier than Moses, a boy was born to a prince called Yisrael, also known as Jacob. Joseph was then the youngest of Jacob’s eleven sons and considered a miracle child since his mother Rachel, Jacob’s...