This is Your Chance to Shine!

Day Ten

As I was praying, the Lord reminded me of my Jesus dream.  I am certain that I have written about it, but maybe I didn’t because I can’t find it anywhere (very strange!).  If I haven’t ever written about it, then it’s time for me to write about my Jesus dream—especially now that I’ve written about those devil dreams.

It was winter/spring 2006, and I was living in Italy with my husband and younger son, Kevin, who was in his senior year of high school at the American School of Milan.  I dreamed that I entered a crowded Italian coffee shop.  Across the room there was a young man.  He was nice looking, with wavy dark hair, sturdy build, average height.  He smiled at me, and that smile changed him from average looking to someone I could hardly take my eyes off of.  His smile lit up his face and the room.  He crossed the room and spoke to me in English, which surprised me.  Actually, both things surprised me: crossing the room to talk to me and speaking to me in English.

He said, “What do you do?” and I told him that I teach English.  At the time I was teaching English to children, earning money so that I could tithe to the work of God.  So I said, “And what do you do?”  He said, “Come, I’ll show you.”

We left the coffee shop and went to an apartment nearby.  In real life, I would never, ever go into an apartment with someone I’ve just met, but there was something about him that told me I could trust him.  In all honesty, it didn’t even enter my mind to wonder if I should go in with him.

The apartment had wood paneled walls—and such wood as I had never seen before.  The wood had deep, well-defined grain and was luminous.  It was the most alive wood I had ever seen, and it was beautiful, warm, and inviting.  Three of the walls were wooden and fourth was stucco, and by contrast seemed cold and dead.  I said, “You did this?”  He smiled and said, “Yes.  What do you call this kind of work in Italian?”  I answered: “Restaurazione” (restoration)—pronouncing the word perfectly for the first and only time in my life (with practice I taught myself to roll my r’s, but my tongue can’t or won’t to roll that second one).

I pointed to the stucco wall and said, “And what about this one?”  He reached up and pulled away a chunk of stucco.  Behind it was wood, but it was dirty, dried-out, and badly in need of care.  He looked at me and smiled, “It’s a work in progress.”

That’s when I woke up, knowing: It’s Jesus, the Carpenter!  And I realized that I was that work in progress.

That dream helped me a lot because in a few months I had several things happen that sent me into the worst depression of my life, lasting over 3 years—not the least of which was my failing marriage.

While writing about the devil dreams, I thought about this Jesus dream, but like I said, I thought that I had already written about it.  In fact, I was sure of it because I remember adding the link to show what Jesus looks like.  But maybe that was only a dream, too.  Who knows?  Anyway, now that you’re curious, here’s the link: Jesus.  In my dream, Jesus had dark brown eyes and was clean-shaven, but otherwise, it is recognizably Him.

While praying this morning, I felt like God was smiling at me.  I didn’t really ask why, but just wondered, and then I remembered the dream, and especially that funny part where He asked me what His work was called in Italian.  Jesus is in the restoration business!  But why did He ask me what it’s called in Italian?  He told me: “To give you a chance to shine.”  Spoken like a proud parent!  God is good!  And Jesus is our handsome bridegroom!

Dream Big!

Day Eight

After writing about all my devil dreams, I didn’t want to leave the impression that I only dream about the devil or even mostly dream about the devil—nothing of the sort!  I dream God dreams all the time.  In fact, so many that sometimes I am in danger of forgetting them.

In my book, Laughing in My Dreams © 2012 Alisa K. Brown, www.lulu.com, I told about some of my dream confirmations about getting this apartment, but I had forgotten to write about one dream that was particularly beautiful.

The dream came in 2 parts.  In the first part I was on a bus with Giulietta, the wife of the Music Pastor at my Italian church.  Giulietta is a professional dancer, and dances mostly modern dance and ballet.  So, Giulietta and I were on a bus, going to see my apartment (which I was fasting and praying to get).  The bus was filled with people from church.  Elisa said, “The Lord will give you every place where you put your feet.”

When we got to the door of the apartment I woke up.  I started praying, thanking God for my apartment, and fell asleep again.  The dream continued right from where it had left off.

The bus arrived in front of the apartment—and there is a bus that passes right in front of the apartment, for real, though it stops in the next block.  We went inside and immediately Giulietta started praying in Hebrew.  Her prayer became a song, and although I don’t understand Hebrew, I recognized that it was a song of conquest and victory.  As Elisa sang everybody began to dance, touching all the walls, the windows, the doors, the furniture, etc. (even though it was an unfurnished apartment, it has furniture in my dream).  Then one after another, the people left, and finally Giulietta left, too, and I was alone in my apartment.

This dream came when I needed reassurance that I was on the right track.  Of the people who knew that I was fasting and praying for this particular apartment, only Bethany was truly supportive.  The rest would try gently to persuade me that I should probably look for an apartment in a less expensive part of town.  But not long after this dream, I had a breakthrough.  And now I am in the apartment.

Now, while I am fasting and praying for understand for End Times strategies and preparation, I know that I am on the right track.  Breakthrough is coming.

This morning I got on the bus to go to church, and the bus got about 10 blocks from home, stopped and had everyone get off because the Stramilano marathon was blocking the bus route.  The driver then turned the bus around and went back the way we had come.  I went to the tram stop, but the tram was also blocked.  So I went back to the train station about 5 blocks away.  But by the time I got there I was so exhausted and weak (fasting and physical exertion do not go together!) that I decided just to go home and pray instead.

There is a beautiful golden church at the end of my block, and just as I got to the corner, I stopped.  There was procession of 4 priests and 2 altar boys carrying gold crosses and incense censers, and maybe 4 parishioners with olive branches in their hands.  I watched as they crossed the street toward me.  I had forgotten that it was Palm Sunday today.  (In Italy, they use olive branches instead of palm fronds.)

In my prayer time, I felt such a strong presence of God that I hadn’t felt in a long time.  An hour passed very quickly, then another.  We didn’t spend a lot of time speaking to each other, we just embraced and cuddled.  It was really wonderful.

I’m not advocating skipping church, and I’ll go to an afternoon service in a little while.  But God is willing to meet you whenever and wherever you seek Him.  He might even send a procession to meet you!  God is good!

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!