Is Your Faith Ready?

Prophetic dream…or buttered hot dog roll eaten late in the night?

A storm was coming.  A destructive storm.  It was huge and was going to affect everyone and everything.  It came from the sky…from on high.  And when it hit the ocean waters, the ocean waters swallowed up everything on dry land.

I saw the wave coming…everyone around me saw the wave coming.  Some tried to run.  I stood still…very still…and let the water rush over me.  It missed nothing.  It swallowed everything.  Bodies and trees and animals were swirling and swirling, tossed to and fro, washing machine agitation.  I could see the looks of pure fear and panic on faces around.  I could see looks of resignation to an obvious fate.  I could see looks of anger that this storm was now in control and these people had no say in what was happening to them.

And suddenly, with no hope in sight, I was on my feet and dry…with everyone around me.  I was in a bubble…a huge, clear bubble that looked out into what appeared to be space.  Millions of stars to be seen.  The bubble was other worldly.  You could see clearly from one side to the other, even though there were hallways and sidewalks and rooms and closets.  If you looked one way you could see the smaller units of the bubble.  But if you looked out you saw stars…and if you looked toward the center of the bubble, you saw the whole bubble…clearly…full of thousands of people.

What happened inside the bubble was bizarre.  There was a day the sun shone so bright that the bubble began to heat up and people threw themselves from the bubble into space…falling (which in retrospect was strange because my mind knows there’s no gravity in space to make one fall).  There was the day things got cold…seeping-into-the-bones cold.  As I looked across the bubble, frost was forming on the walls.  People were racing for blankets…for a warm body to lie against.  And in the cold, many froze.  But I was watching it all…not a part of it even though I was there.  My eyes could clearly see all that was happening.  There were fathers chasing children.  There was food…so much food.  And some sat at tables eating and eating and eating.  They never left the tables…dining until they collapsed from the amount of food they’d eaten.  No one who sat at a table got up and left a table…they died while stuffing their faces full of the delicacies offered to them.  No one was satisfied.  And we could all see what was happening in this dining area…and still people chose to go in and take a seat.  There was so much more that happened in this dream…it seemed like every few minutes the scenery changed to some other story.  Every story started with something good…something that looked fine.  Nothing inside the bubble felt dangerous, until a person started to participate in it and could not escape that enticing scene.

There were elevators…hallways…open concourses…rooms…closets.  At times the walls appeared as glass and at other times they were walls that became boundaries so dark that no one could see in and no one could see out.  The closets were frightening.  I could only look inside of them…I never entered one during the dream.  The colors were vivid…the smells of food made my mouth water…the sounds of laughter so loud and clear…along with the screams of pain and fear.

I struggled to escape the dream.  This wasn’t the kind of daydream that one can capture or release and move on.  I came up out of the dream as if coming up out of deep waters.  I lay still.  I took a breath, aware that I could breathe.  I felt disoriented as I opened my eyes into my somewhat darkened bedroom and realized the time with a startle.  The dream had gone by in what seemed a flash, but I’d slept for five hours…a long time for me to sleep at one time.

I felt a voice clearly directing, “Write it down.”  You see, I had prayed only two nights ago asking God to speak to me in a dream.  The Bible is full of stories of angels visiting with messages from God and I wondered if God still spoke in dreams.  And I lay in bed pondering that dream.  Was it a message from God?  Was it my mind just sorting out life?  Was it a good dream or a nightmare?  Everything about it was wonderful…and frightening…and beautiful…and full of darkness…and confusing.  But as I continued to wake, and ponder, I kept grabbing bits and pieces of the dream and could see how it could be comforting in light of the events happening in my world today.

The storm represents the turmoil of the political scene these days.  In less than 48 hours, Donald Trump will become the 44^th President of the United States.  He does so surrounded by tumultuous hate and despair and vitriol like I’ve not seen in my lifetime.  Donald Trump is not the storm!  It’s the incredible turmoil of the people that is the storm.  My eyes tell me that the storm is over-taking me.  My eyes tell me that it’s deadly.  My eyes tell me that it’s going to sweep up everyone and everything in its path.

But my spiritual eyes, grown through almost 60 years of faith in God and a loving knowledge and experience with my Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ, tells me the TRUTH.  The storm CANNOT hurt me because my FAITH is the BUBBLE that will protect me.  My FAITH/spiritual eyes can see the big picture.  All that the world has found enticing and pleasing and fun and comforting will still be available… everything the people desire will still be available.  BUT IT’S TO BE AVOIDED AT ALL COSTS because it has the power to overcome and deceive and pull a person down and away from the bubble.  When we are admonished in the Bible to “persevere”…when we are encouraged to “finish the race”…when we are reminded to not give up “the good fight”…it’s because we are going to need those gifts and abilities to withstand the temptations to give in to what we see.  If we do so, our lives are over and we are no longer going to be protected by the “bubble” of our faith.  God has provided the bubble…it’s given to us for the purpose of protection…for the purpose of opening our eyes to see…for the purpose of revealing the truth.  We MUST HOLD ON to all that’s been planted if we are to face the coming days of turmoil, and fear and fear-mongering.  Doomsday prophets who have nothing to do with God will predict horrible scenarios that are out-and-out lies.  They will be led by the tools satan has clearly used to bring us to this day.  Media, technology, false religions and purely distorted minds will speak with authority…and we will know clearly which authority they represent.  They are the walls that will capture us and bind us to our deaths.  The hallways are the paths that we must rely on God to move us through to safety.  Elevators are those paths we can traverse with others, in groups…safety in numbers.  But those closets…those closets represent deep dark places.  Secrets.  Lies that cannot be undone.  We must steer clear of the closets.  And if we must deal with the closets, we must do so only IN THE LIGHT.  Light must be shed on secrets and can only be done so if secrets are revealed.  We keep secrets for a number of a reasons:  1) to protect ourselves, 2) to protect someone else, 3) to deceive or 4) because satan wants to have his way with us.  The only secrets we should have in our lives are those that are shared with God in private.  But one of satan’s greatest tools in this world is the destructive power of a secret.  One of the biggest truths we can remember from God’s Word is that we are to CONFESS.  Confession starts with speaking out loud what satan wants kept in private…because in revealing the secret, satan loses his power…the tenuous power that he uses to bind us to him.

I know that there is a lot of science that suggests our dreams are merely our minds reaction to physical things that are happening in our body while we’re at rest.  Our digestive system is at work when we’re resting.  Our muscles are repairing while we’re resting.  Our minds are sorting and cataloging events while we rest.  I’d grabbed an easy snack in the night when hunger spoke louder than sleep…and that food was being digested as I rested. 

But this dream was something so much more than the aftermath of that snack.  This was a reminder from God that my faith would get me through the storm.  The faith I have in Him…in His promises…in the knowledge of His Word…will help me to discern truth in the storm of lies that are headed our way.  My faith…even if it’s as small as a mustard seed…will cut to the chase and still have the power to move mountains.

A storm is coming.  Is your faith ready?