Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Dreams

Last week during our small group meeting, I left being motivated to pray over my dreams and record them for the entire week.

This is something I've never done, and to be honest, I've never even thought about doing. Sure, I have had certain dreams that really stood out to me and led me to write them down. But this time it was different. Every night, I would pray before I went to sleep and ask the Lord to both protect my dreams and also to open up my dreams as a platform for Him to speak to me. The first few times I did it, I felt a little funny, not because I was uncomfortable or not confident that God could truly speak to me through my dreams, but because it was just something out of 'the norm' for me.

The morning after my first time doing this, I was amazed that I not only remembered my dreams from the night before, but I remembered them in full detail. This is huge, because I rarely even ever recall my dreams. So, before I could forget, I wrote them down. I am not sure if they held any significance, but the fact that I was able to remember them, made me so excited! So for the next week, I did this (almost) everyday.

I really want to make a strong habit of doing this. What a beautiful way for our God to speak to us! I am not doing this with the expectation that God is going to speak something profound to me in every dream, but it's awesome to be open to Him in that way.

It's already been neat to read through my dream journal and see the little and big things that God is doing in my life.

"For God speaks in one way, and in two, though man does not perceive it.
In a dream, in a vision of the night,
when deep sleep falls on men, while they slumber on their beds."
Job 33:14-15 

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Do you have a dream journal? Or, have you ever felt God speak to you through your dreams?

4 comments:

  1. Oh wow. This is great, Brenda.

    I do believe that God speaks to us in dreams, in that He's graciously sent messages to those who follow and worship Him. Among the two that immediately come to mind are Joseph in the OT interpreted dreams and Joseph in the NT, the Lord appeared to him in a dream to tell him that the baby that had been conceived in Mary is that of the Holy Spirit.

    I do feel and think God had provided for me a few dreams. Nothing necessarily profound, but just enough for me to understand part of His will. I've tried to write down what I dreamt once... didn't quite work out. I couldn't see the paper and my hand writing was illegible. :-\

    It was nice running into you again. I got to admit, it feels a lil weird to be reading your blog.

    Cheers,

    -Aaron

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    1. Thanks Aaron! I firmly believe the Lord can and will speak to us in unique ways, dreams being one of those ways. We just have to be careful to discern if it is of the Lord or not.

      It was cool running into you again! I am sure I will see you around!

      Best,
      Brenda

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  2. Hi Bren,
    I have been wanting to write a response here since I read this post. It seems that there are so many reasons not to have faith, and as I was going through grad school, learning about all of the injustices and atrocities in the world, I really wondered if there was a God. Still now, I wonder, as I'm sure many people do. However, there are three moments in my life I go back to when I question if there is a God, and one of those is a dream. In the midst of grad school, I was do a major research paper on the deadly war in the Congo, and I was reading about how rape is often used as a weapon of war there. I wondered about faith. Yes, it was easy for me to believe in God and his "perfect timing" and his "plan for my life" when I was living pretty comfortably in the United States. But what does God's perfect timing or plan for life mean in situations such as these, I constantly wondered. How could I believe in God's plan for my life when this was happening simultaneously? In the middle of this, I had a dream about these people, the people I was reading about, living in horrible circumstances half a world away. And in this dream, I had this strong sense of peace that heaven must exist, not for me, not as a reward, but for these people. Heaven must exist for these people. I woke up from that dream in the middle of the night with such a strange feeling, almost like I had received a partial response to all of my doubt. That moment is still one of my three moments I go back to when I question my faith and if there really is a God in the midst of this crazy world we live in.

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    1. Brooke,

      Wow, what a beautiful and honest statement. Thank you for leaving that comment.
      I can definitely resonate with what you're saying, because while I was working everyday on the North Korean issue, my heart broke into pieces. I had many of conversations with God about questions I had, and I will be honest, I didn't necessarily receive all the answers. However, I agree with you with that sense of peace that you received, because I received it as well. The truth is, we live in a fallen world, and as much as our hearts break for those oceans away, our God's heart breaks even more for them. I believe there is something bigger going on, something we can not see, but that is the beauty of faith.

      I have also had several moments in the midst of uncertainty where God completely blew my mind. I'll share one with you. For security reasons, I can't give a name to this individual because he is a refugee that escaped North Korea and LiNK helped to rescue and resettle him. His story is a testament to just how awesome God is, and how much bigger He is than we know. This young man was living in NK and he had a dream one night and in his dream he visualized this story of a small man fighting this big giant and he won - and within this dream he felt someone telling him to leave NK and that he should not have any fear, and that once he reached China, he'd be taken care of. So, the next morning he left. He had no idea what was going to happen to him, but he trusted this dream that he had. He got to China, and ended up getting connected to our partners there. When they were interviewing him, and asking about how he escaped, he explained his dream. He later asked about this story he visualized, and if anyone knew what it meant. The person he asked then told him, it was the story of David and Goliath in the Bible. This refugee had no idea who God was, or what the Bible was, but when he heard the story was in the Bible, he then said this God in this book is the person who told me to leave my country, and that He would take care of me. He became a believer because of this, and he is now living in America.

      I just love that story. It of course hits home for me because of my passion for this issue, but it was also just a testament to how God is much bigger than we can fathom. Of course, there are still terrible things that happen around us, but we can not deny that God is doing amazing things as well.

      I don't have all the answers, but I do have faith and trust. Everything else comes after that.

      Brooke, you rock, and I miss these talks we used to have back in the day :)

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