Dreaming Truth

Day Seven

I had a dream that faded almost as soon as I was awake.  All I remember of it were impressions: I had something embarrassing happen to me, but I don’t know what.  The devil tried to make me feel ashamed for the embarrassment, I don’t remember how.  I shrugged off embarrassment, and the Lord told me (the only thing that I remember clearly): “Where pride is absent, grace abounds.”  Perhaps that means that hurt pride results in shame.

I don’t always dream about the devil, but when I do, I tend to remember it.  A couple of times, I’m sure that’s because he was actually there.  I will tell you about them, not because we should be fixated on the devil—not at all!  But I think these particular dreams are instructive.

The first time I dreamed about the devil I was 17 years old, born again, and newly filled with the Holy Spirit.  However, I didn’t really know or understand how to walk with the Lord.  I had been raised in the Episcopal Church, and made my decision to follow Jesus the night before my Confirmation.  But I just didn’t know that we could pray spontaneous prayers, so when I had a need (sick relative or whatever), I looked it up in the Book of Common Prayer and prayed from the book.  But when I was 17 my parents started going to a Charismatic Episcopalian prayer group.  They invited me, too.  I had never heard people pray like this, and I loved it.

A man from the prayer group was involved with the Full Gospel Businessmen, and invited us to come to a meeting.  The man who preached talked the whole time about the Holy Spirit.  I was fascinated.  We Episcopalians always called Him “The Holy Ghost.”  And He was the mysterious member of the Godhead.  But this man talked like he actually knew the Holy Spirit.  At the end of his sermon, he invited anybody wanting to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit to come down front.  I had no idea what that was, but I wanted it.  So I went down front.  I hadn’t known it at the time, but my parents were right behind me.  The man laid his hand on my head and immediately I had strange words in my mind.  I hadn’t known what to expect, nobody had told me.  But the man said, “Speak those words.”  So I did.

The first devil dream came shortly afterwards.  I dreamed that I was in my bedroom, with everything exactly in place, just as I had left it before going to sleep.  He entered my room by the door and walked around to the side of the bed where I was laying.  In the dream, my skin jumped up to goosebumps and I was very scared.  Then he grinned and sat down on the bed beside me.  I felt the mattress compress under him.  That’s when I woke up, and I could still feel the mattress compressed where he had sat.  I was very frightened and completely weirded-out.

Now, I understand why the devil visited me in that dream: he was trying to catch up with God as usual, but he was too late.

He showed up at other times in dreams through the years, doing scary things like walking around my bed in my new house.  The floor in the bedroom was linoleum, and although I didn’t see him, I could hear his hoof-steps on the floor.  Another time I saw my Bible get pulled out of the bookcase by invisible hands and put in backwards (spine inward).  But sitting on my bed was the scariest thing of all.

This winter while I was home visiting my family for Christmas break I had the first devil dream I had had in a many years.  Again, in my dream I could see my room exactly as I had left it before going to sleep.  I saw the devil standing by my window, backlit by the landscape lights outside.  Immediately, I turned my back to him and in my dream went right back to sleep.  A few weeks later I heard about how Martin Luther handled the devil’s nighttime visits.  He wrote:

When the devil comes at night to worry me, this is what I say to him: “Devil, I have to sleep now. That is God’s commandment, for us to work by day and sleep at night.”

Ha!  Just what I did, but I didn’t talk to him.

A week or two later, I had another devil dream, and this one paralleled the first one.  My room was exactly as I had left it before sleep.  The devil came in the door and walked around the bed to where I was sleeping and sat down on the bed.  Again I felt the mattress compress under him.  But this time instead of fear, I got angry.  I told him to get out of my room.  And I woke up.

As I observed above, I believe that the devil is just trying to catch up with God.  But he can’t.  I heard a Joseph Prince sermon recently that I wrote about in I Will Make You Know.  Basically he pointed out that where you see the devil interfering, God has already been at work blessing you.  Therefore, give God praise and thanksgiving for blessing you in the area where you see trouble.  You can read it in more detail by following the link.

Just imagine the trouble we could give the devil if only we really understood our inheritance as God’s children.  We were made to live as more than conquerors, so why are we living ordinary lives?  In the movie Superman II (1982), Superman gives up his superpowers for love.  Very romantic, and not so much different than God becoming a human because of love for us.  But many Christians are living Clark Kent lives that are excruciatingly ordinary, when we have been given the right to live the supernatural lives we were made to live.

This is day 7 of my fast for understanding of these End Times, and how better to prepare for what’s ahead.  I believe that living in God’s supernatural empowerment is key.  God is good!

Bad News Comes, but Jesus is Still Good News!

I got an e-mail the other day saying that my lifelong friend had committed suicide.  He was a believer, but clearly must have been in a terrible personal crisis.  Nobody had any idea, but now that I think of it, he probably never got over his big brother’s death 30 years ago.  Not that any of us have gotten over that, either, but I think it affected Jim more profoundly than any of us had realized.  Looking back, I realize that’s probably why he drank.  I don’t remember him drinking to excess before Nick died.  And I think he just always felt inferior to Nick because Nick was loved by everyone.

I loved Jim, and even if I had never thought this through before, I know that I did show him lots of love.  My whole family did.  He often called my parents just to talk.  But I think that some wounds are just too deep for ordinary human love to heal.  But he had turned to drink instead of to God for comfort.

One thing I was led to do was to forgive him this last sin—after all, suicide is the sin you can’t repent from.  So I forgave him because Jesus said that the sins we forgive will be forgiven (John 20:22-23).  I think that it doesn’t occur to most people to forgive suicides.  After all, it’s such a selfish act that leaves everyone you love feeling beaten and broken and confused.

I am reading “Pursuing Holiness” by Jerry Bridges © 2006, Navpress.  Jim’s suicide proves to me that we can’t afford to simply rest in the holiness Jesus gave us when we called to Him.  We’ve got to work on ourselves.  And it occurred to me today that even though Jesus did the work of salvation long ago, our personal salvation required our cooperation (i.e., confession, repentance, and baptism).  So it makes sense that our spiritual walk requires us to continue to surrender, cooperate, and yield to God as He molds us into the kind of vessels that He can use.   As with anything worthwhile in this life, you get out of it whatever you put into it.  Jesus said that troubles come to us all, but if we’re close to Him, He shields us from things that could potentially destroy us.

Thanks for letting me ramble.  This is just so hard!  But God is still good!  Please pray for Jim’s wife, children, mother, and sisters.

A Godly Legacy

The Olympic Games will soon begin in London, and while I was there, I couldn’t help but be struck by the contrast of the modern world in the midst of a city so old.  London was founded by the Romans about the time when Jesus walked the earth.  I even saw Roman ruins among the glass skyscrapers.

But even more striking than the contrast of ancient and modern was the contrast of godly and worldly.  London is a city like most, bearing the smudge of the world’s fingerprint upon it:  crime, drugs, homelessness, prostitution, etc.  Two things especially struck me about the spiritual state of London’s population, the first was violent crime.  I had picked up one of those freebie newspapers, and it was full of stories about murder—most of which had occurred in London.  The majority of the murders I read about were random murders—murder just for the sake of killing.  And the violence of these murders was astonishing.  For example, a heavily pregnant 20 year old woman was beaten to death at a bus stop.  Her unborn infant died with her.

The other thing that struck me about the spiritual state of London was the hostility towards Christianity.  In addition to the same anti-Christian attitudes found in America, I was told that it is popular in London now to have un-christening ceremonies in which they become un-baptized.  I don’t know anything about the ceremony, but they sign an un-baptism certificate in front of witnesses, and send a letter to the church asking to be removed from the baptism records.  They even send letters to their god-parents, informing them that they will now be solely responsible for their own spiritual choices.

So it is against this backdrop that we visited some of Christianity’s most important places.  The first place we visited was the Buxton Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery in Victoria Tower Gardens.  Abolition was promoted by Christians.  Sadly, there are more slaves today than at any other time in the history of the world—and this despite virtually every country in the world having laws forbidding slavery.  The modern name for slavery is Human Trafficking, and it is virtually everywhere.  The removal of most border controls in Europe means that transporting slaves throughout Europe is easier than ever.

From there we walked to St. Paul’s Cathedral, which was built by Christopher Wren.  His tomb inside the cathedral proclaims it as his memorial marker.  Wren was one of the founding Freemasons of London, and all around the cathedral are masonic symbols like obelisks, which originated as an object of sun worship and fertility.

Then we went to Tower Hill.  In Trinity Square Garden is a plaque showing the site of the scaffold where many people were executed, including members of the clergy and two Archbishops of Canterbury.  This was not the only place in London where Christians were martyred.  We also saw the site where Christians were burned at the stake for heresy.  When I refer to Christian martyrs, I mean both Catholic and Protestant.  In London’s history, when the Catholics were in power, Protestants were martyred as heretics, and vise-versa.  Either way, it is a sad historical fact.

The Tower of London was both a castle for visiting royalty and a prison.  I guess that was handy for keeping visitors in line.

The day was hot, 29 (about 85 Fahrenheit) degrees.  I know my Texas friends will laugh, but that seems much hotter than it actually is when you factor in no breeze and standing in the sun a lot.  So in the early afternoon we went to a cool, shady place:  Bunhill Fields, which was the Nonconformist burial grounds.  John Bunyan, pastor and author of Pilgrim’s Progress is entombed there.  Susanna Wesley is also buried there, and her headstone is visible from her son, John Wesley’s house, where we went next.  The house is small and simple, like the man (he was only five feet, maybe five-foot-two).  The most impressive feature of the house was his prayer room, adjacent to his bedroom.  There was a padded kneeler in front of a small desk with an open Bible on it.  He was said to have risen at four and spent many hours in prayer.  We were told the following:

One day John Wesley was riding along a road when it dawned upon him that three whole days had passed in which he had suffered no persecution.  Not a brick or an egg had been thrown at him for three days.  Alarmed, he stopped his horse, and exclaimed, “Can it be that I have sinned and am backslidden?”

Slipping from his horse Wesley went down on his knees and began interceding with God to show him where, if any, there had been a fault.

A rough fellow, on the other side of the hedge, hearing the prayer, looked across and recognized the preacher.  “I’ll fix that Methodist preacher,” he said taking a brick and tossing it over at him.  It missed its mark and fell harmlessly beside John.

Whereupon Wesley leaped to his feet joyfully exclaiming, “Thank God, it’s all right.  I still have His presence.”

I wonder how many Christians today would be so happy to be persecuted.

Next door to the house is Wesley’s Chapel, which has the organ on which Charles Wesley (his brother) wrote such wonderful hymns as “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” (lyrics:  http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Christ_the_Lord_Is_Risen_Today), “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing” (lyrics:  http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/O_for_a_Thousand_Tongues_to_Sing), Christmas favorite, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” (lyrics:  http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Our_American_Holidays_-_Christmas/Christmas_Day), and many others.

Downstairs is the museum, where I got the following wonderful quotes from John Wesley:

The Covenant

I am no longer my own, but Yours.  Put me to what You will, rank me with whom You will, put me to doing, put me to suffering; let me be employed for You or laid aside for You, exalted for You, or brought low for You; let me be full, let me be empty, let me have all things, let me have nothing; I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things to Your pleasure and disposal.

And now, glorious and blessed God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, You are mine and I am Yours.  So be it.

And the covenant now made on earth, let it be ratified in Heaven.  Amen.

I wonder how many Christians today would pray for suffering.

And I’ll leave you with the last quote:

John Wesley’s Rule

Do all the good you can,

By all the means you can,

In all the ways you can,

In all the places you can,

At all the times you can,

To all the people you can,

As long as ever you can.

I can only add:  Do good because God is good.