Dreaming before I teach
Sometimes I dream my messages before I speak. Last night I dreamt I was drawing a teaching on a long piece of paper. It was of a paved one-way road were you were only supposed to go forward.
The paved road represents the road God intends us to travel.
The pavement was smooth and though the road itself was straight there were many hills.
The hills had to be climbed, and in the climbing of the hills, you couldn’t see what was on the other side until you reach the top, and then there is another hill in the distance. It was a road of trust because you couldn’t see beyond the next hill. All you knew you are going in the right direction.
The good thing about the hills is that when we go over them, we can’t see any of the road behind us either. So if we have messed up, it was in the past and since the road is one way we can’t go back to look at it, at least we aren’t supposed to. Kind of like how God forgets our past and separates it as far as the east is from the west so not even He can see it.
What makes this road smooth is the manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit. The love casts out all fear, so there is no worrying or anxiety of the future etc. There is so much joy, that it causes a spring in you step, and the desire to dance. Worship pours out of your Spirit. Energy abounds and is always being renewed. The peace is so tangible because God’s presence is always present while on this road.
This road represents obedience, trust and acceptance to whatever God places in our life, knowing that He knows us better than anyone, and knows what we need to experience to develop character to conform to His image.
The one road sign that is often seen is YIELD. When thoughts come to our mind about our future, money, family, reputation, job, our stuff etc. God wants us to yield it to Him. When we put all these areas into God’s hands and trust Him with them, then we put our selves in a place where we cannot miss the will of God. Our steps are ordered and directed by the Lord.
To the left of the road was another road that looked more like the shoulder of the road but it was not paved and rough. Between the paved right side of the road and the unpaved left of the road it was grooved like you see on the side of some highways to warn you when you are drifting off course. You can’t but feel and hear the sound of the warning when drifting happens.
The left side of the road is the opposite of the fruit of the Spirit. It is full of fear of the future, fear of men, fear of rejection, fear of offence etc. There is no peace, and depression, despair and hopelessness are a constant companion. Our strength flees and it feels like we are just surviving. We focus on how bad the road is, and forget that the paved road is just to our right.
On the road there are roundabouts that show up from time to time. This happens when we are going through a particularly difficult time and we feel confused. We are supposed to go around and get off at the 12 o’clock direction and keep going straight, but when doubt creeps in, we can tend to go around and around the circle and don’t go anywhere. If we give into that confusion, fear, self-pity or even rebellion, we might choose to get off at 3 or 9 o’clock going in a totally wrong direction. These side roads are two way streets with U turns all along the way, but the only way we are allowed to U turn is if we repent for believing the enemies lies over what God has already declared.
It isn’t complicated, as it seems. We can either choose to trust God and what He says about us in so many places of the Bible, for instance;
“For I know the thoughts that think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, and to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11
or we choose to believe the lies Satan says about us and about our God.
Satan wants us not trust God, because what is not of faith is actually sin. If he can trick us into sinning by living in fear, then that opens the door to all sorts of other methods of torment and destruction in our lives.
The road we travel is bound to have some skid marks and if there was a marker showing the way we went, the route won’t be a straight line. It would probably look more like an S where we went back and forth between the paved road and the shoulder of the road. We have all crossed over the warning bumps and travelled on the left side for a bit, before getting back over on the right side, but the main thing is that we get back over on the right side.
If we have messed up, we can’t change that, but we can keep going forward and continue the work to mature our faith. It does take work to take our thoughts captive, but if we don’t do that, then it is too easy to become double minded, and unstable in all our ways.
Lord help us to choose to believe you even when we don’t see the results to our prayers and desires as fast as we think we should get them. Lord forgive us where instead of trusting that you had our best interest at heart, we chose our own way and traded the fruit of the Spirit for a spirit of heaviness and grief.
Lord, help us to stay alert as we travel this road, and pay attention to the signs you put in front of us. Thank you that your mercies are new every morning and we can start all over again each day on the right road.