Voice of God

The Kingdom Value of an Old Man’s Dreams

Standard

'An Old Man Asleep, Seated by the Fire' by Rembrandt van Rijn“‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams…'”
—Acts 2:17 ESV

I’ve come to the melancholy realization that youth is departing and old age arriving. Gray is the new cast of my hair. And are those…jowls?

Sigh.

At such times, I find comfort in the Scriptures, but even there resides the lament of the aging. Abraham and Zechariah leap to mind, with their “but” responses in light of God’s revelation. “Too old, God. Dried up. Useless for your task.”

Except it wasn’t true, was it?

I also recall the prophet Joel’s statement from God regarding old men dreaming, and Peter’s use of the prophet’s pronouncement as an anchor for the New Covenant.

The young men get the sexier, more startling revelation: visions. The future. The pressing need. The warning.  A guy walks into the room and proclaims he had a vision, and everyone perks up. Being called a visionary is a positive that sets one apart from the greater mass of humanity.

Not so the dreamer, though. Get called a dreamer, and it’s a knock. Out of touch. Tilting at windmills. Fantasies. Won’t come to much. Anyone can dream. Nope, nothing special at all.

Old men, the ones with gray hair and jowls, dream.

Hey, I may not be 21 anymore, but I’m not ready for a porch-based rocking chair yet.

God gives dreams to old men because young men can’t handle them as well. Here’s the truth about dreams and why the older, wiser man (or woman) receives them:

1. Unlike visions, dreams pose puzzling questions older people are more experienced to answer.

Both visions and dreams can be strange. The Bible is filled with bizarre imagery that people receive in dreams and visions. The difference is that God tends to narrate visions as they happen. Dreams don’t get that same explanation. There’s no hand-holding or convenient running commentary in a dream.

What is the point of experience in life? To apply it. Old folks dream because they have the life experience to make sense of the imagery in dreams without annotations for what they see. God trusts the elders who have walked with Him for years to understand more readily because they know the character of God. They understand life in ways the inexperienced don’t. God entrusts dreams to those who can call upon a storehouse of knowledge or who have the walk with God down pat and can more readily tap into His supernatural wisdom.

2. Dreams bring older folks—and those around them who will listen—peace by taking the community back to the past and to the familiar.

In our youth, we sought out our elders to reassure us and lend their wisdom to us when we were troubled and uncertain. Unlike visions that often show disturbing, confusing images, dreams are associated more with a peaceful repose. Dreams are a sanctuary, a nocturnal sanctum. In dreams, we may see unusual combinations of people, places, and things, but they are usually already known. The past lives on in dreams. We recall the good times. What is lost or gone is alive and present again, and we can find comfort in knowing that nothing good is lost forever in God’s economy.

Dreams are the means by which the elderly help others recall the good times. When times aren’t good, the old folks serve as the community well to bring refreshment to others through their dreams.

That noted, being old also brings the burden of having seen too much. Dreams are not a mind bleach, but they do temper all the horrors and sadness that come with accumulated wisdom and life experience. Dreams reframe the good times that are past by bringing them, again, into the present as a balm.

3. Dreams help us recall anew what once worked well.

We tend to forget past solutions. Even wise, old folks. A seasoned mind is a bit more cluttered, and like a closet filled to the ceiling with life’s accumulations, wading through that mess to find the dojigger that does that one thing we need to do right this second…well, it can seem a daunting task.

Dreams allow experienced folks to cut through life’s clutter. They help reconnect with the past and what worked once so we can reuse that once-buried truth again. Because there really is nothing new under the sun.

4. Dreams allow seniors to recast the past and what is already known to form new solutions.

You know what they say about deep waters. Because the well of a life lived long with God is deep, the raw materials for new solutions may exist, just unseen.

Dreams are God’s way of remolding those raw materials of the past into new realities. Yes, the young men may see in their visions what is yet to be, but through dreams their elders can see the truths of the past combine in new ways to make something just as fresh and exciting.

Aren’t dreams intriguing when they bring together the disparate elements of life into one, impossible tableau? In a dream, what does it mean when a deceased parent, your soon-to-be born grandchild, and an old boss from a summer job three dozen years ago show up at your dream breakfast table and chat about life? What may God be saying through that impossible encounter? And how may that help others?

5. Dreams can also reveal the future and alert us.

To the one God has given much, much is expected. A life rich in God-given experience is a bank from which the banker invests in himself and others. Visions aren’t the only means of seeing what is to come. Dreams also are revelatory—only they don’t come with as many footnotes. God expects the person made wise with experience to fill in the annotations that aren’t there. Visions are for the raw. Dreams are for the already tested.

One of the most visited posts on Cerulean Sanctum is “God Speaks Through Dreams.” It’s so highly ranked because it’s one of the most heavily Googled. People are looking to make sense of their dreams. And people wonder if God is talking to them in those dreams.

If you are older, know that your dreams matter. God has something to say to you who are experienced with life, and He can do it through your dreams.

You matter to God’s Kingdom. Your dreams, your experiences with life and all its joys and sorrows have value to yourself and to others. Visions from the young may look great on the surface, but there is a surpassing value in dreams that give relevance to the seasoned saint, because God needs the service of everyone.

God Speaks Through Dreams

Standard

“‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke; the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.'”
—Acts 2:17-21

At my church’s VBS last week, the theme revolved around Joseph, the one who by God’s revelation saved all of the known biblical world. The dream of JosephGod spoke that plan of salvation to Joseph through dreams.

Evangelicals don’t do well with dreams. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in the average church who would claim to have the gift of interpreting dreams. In most churches, the mere mention of the role of dreams in directing the church, planning for the future, or meeting the needs of people too afraid to share their needs publicly will get you an initial blank stare that morphs into that “I smell a heretic” scowl.

Yet any pass through the Bible reveals dreams to be a common means of God speaking to and guiding individuals, groups, and nations.

Which is why the enormous pushback by some Christians against dreams is a big problem.

That passage in Acts that starts this post…a few questions:

1. Is the Bible the authority for how we should conduct our lives?

2. Are we still in the Last Days?

3. Is the Holy Spirit still being poured out?

If you answer yes to all three questions (and you should), then guess what? You affirm that God speaks to people today through dreams.

See, that wasn’t so hard, was it? 😉

Fact is, there’s no biblical argument that can be formed against dreams as a contemporary, God-ordained means of revelation. None.

Despite that truth, we Western Christians get upset at the idea of using dreams as a way to order our lives and the life of the Church. Why? Because dreams are messy and sometimes weird. And man, do we Westerners hate anything messy and weird in our churches! Still, that says more about our own foibles than it does about the veracity of dreams as a form of approved divine revelation.

I strongly believe, though, that our automatic rejection of any kind of God-ordained revelation that occurs outside the Bible’s chapters and verses is a major flaw in the contemporary Church. As much as I love the Bible and affirm it as the final arbiter of truth, the Bible may not speak to specific situations that are not explicitly stated in its pages. Yet the need for specific answers remains.

A case in point: For a church looking for a new pastor, the Bible does not say which of five great candidates would be the best choice. How then do we choose if all five meet the Bible’s exacting criteria for the role of pastor? By drawing straws? By hoping that the other four will get calls from other churches and leave us with only one candidate? By relying on our intellects to scry out the right man?

When the early Church had a similar issue, this is how it was resolved:

Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a member of the court of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.
—Acts 13:1-3

Plenty of good candidates, but the Spirit did not select Simeon, Lucius, and Manaen for the work, did He?

This is how the Church is to function in those specific, individual situations to which the Bible does not directly speak:  by listening to the Holy Spirit’s extra-biblical voice.

I know that rubs a lot of people the wrong way. I’m sorry. Man up, because this is what the Scriptures say in response:

Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good.
—1 Thessalonians 5:19-21

So rather than tossing out all extra-biblical revelations—dreams included—we are to test them. We then retain and act on those that pass the tests.

We’re doing that, right? No? You say we’re just throwing them all out instead?

*Sigh.*

Should we be surprised then when our churches seem adrift and lacking in direction? Or when our rational church decisions produce irrational results? And what about when bad things happen to good people because no one bothered to address what may have been an unrevealed, yet fixable, problem before it got out of hand?

What would have happened to the biblical world if Joseph had despised his dreams and the dreams of others? Would we even have a Bible?

A city surrounded by enemies decides that maintaining a city army is messy, demanding, and costly. So despite what the city charter says, the city leaders decide to disband the army. When the barbarians storm the gates, won’t there be regrets for what was ignored?

Yet this happens all the time in our churches because we simply do not want to deal with dreams (and other types of supernatural revelation) as a means of legitimately hearing from God.

When I was about 18, I had a dream that a friend drove onto some train tracks and his car stalled just as a train was coming. The dream was so frightening and vivid that I awoke and started praying for my friend.

Just a few hours later, that friend told me how he’d been out in the wee hours of the morning when his car stalled on railroad tracks just as a train was coming. He couldn’t start the car and worried that he would have to leave it on the tracks, only to find his door refusing to open. But one last twist of the key got the car started, and he drove off the tracks just moments before the train came hurtling through.

What if I had ignored that dream and not prayed for my friend right then? Do you think the outcome would have been different? I do.

Someone else was blessed because I took action regarding the content of a dream.

For several years, a terrifying recurring nightmare troubled me in my 20s. The dream was always the same. I’d awake thrashing and in a sweat, my heart pounding.

I was fortunate that the University of Cincinnati is known for sleep research, so there are a greater than average number of folks in the area who deal with sleep and dreams.  I was able to find a Christian man who helped people understand their dreams. He and I spent several months working on my recurring nightmare, plus other dreams.

In the end, God gave us an answer to what the nightmare meant. Once I understood, I was able to take specific actions that resolved the issue behind it. The nightmare then ceased.

I was blessed because I took action regarding the content of a dream.

More recently, I had a recurring dream that troubled me. Going back about six years, I’d have this one dream about once a year. Then 18 months ago or so, I started having the dream about once or twice a month. I was stymied by what to do about the dream because it didn’t fit real life situations as I knew them. Nothing in the dream conformed, so I excused myself from taking action because I rationalized away the need to do anything.

Just a few days ago, I found out that this recurring dream had sadly come true. The dream proved more real than the shadowed appearance of “reality.”

I did nothing about a dream. A sad outcome resulted. Now I can’t do much about that outcome.

I believe that the outcome would have been different if I had prayed fervently about the dream, despite the seeming nonsense of it. Instead, I disbanded the army and let the barbarians storm the gates.

Four steps we can take to restore the value of dreams in our lives and in the life of the Church:

1. Believe that God wants us to listen to our dreams — He IS speaking to us, so we need to heed what He is saying.

2. Respect recurring dreams — If a dream (or dream theme) recurs, it may be God’s way of demanding our attention because the dream is important. (Genesis 41:32 — “And the doubling of Pharaoh’s dream means that the thing is fixed by God, and God will shortly bring it about.”)

3. Pray — Ask God for the following:

a. Discernment — We need to know which dreams are genuinely from Him (and not from the triple-meat pizza we ate before bedtime) and require us to take notice and action.

b. Interpretation — We must always ask for an interpretation of dreams, either by the Holy Spirit’s illumination within us or by the wise words of those blessed with a gift of interpreting dreams.

c. Direction — We must take action on God-ordained dreams once interpreted.

4. Share our dreams with other believers— A dream may not mean much alone, but when similar dreams are shared by others, a pattern may emerge; so if a dream seems vivid, don’t be afraid to talk it out with wise believers and other Christian dreamers.

Someone’s going to say it, though: “But Dan, can’t dreams be misinterpreted or mistaken?”

Yes, they can. But that’s OUR fault. Consider this:

And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I have had a dream, and there is no one who can interpret it. I have heard it said of you that when you hear a dream you can interpret it.” Joseph answered Pharaoh, “It is not in me; God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer.”
—Genesis 41:15-16

Joseph understood the source of interpretation. If we genuinely operate in the Spirit with regard to dreams and their interpretations, God is faithful to provide answers; He is the interpreter. Like Joseph, we must be tapped into God if we are to handle dreams correctly.

Here is the starting point for handling all dreams correctly: We establish the Bible alone as the arbiter of the meaning behind a dream and its interpretation.

If I have a dream in which I leave my wife and kid and become a meth dealer, the meaning of that dream is most certainly NOT that I should leave my wife and kid and become a meth dealer. No dream interpretation or subsequent action on that interpretation should violate Scripture—ever. Scripture stands as the authority over all dreams, interpretations, and actions taken.

This is not to say that the dream itself can’t be awful or that events in the dreams can’t stand contrary to Scripture. Just as people in the Bible sometimes act contrary to the will of God, the events of dreams may portray sin. It may be that God is trying to root out sin in our lives or in the lives of someone we know.  Proceed cautiously, though.

If you or I have a dream, will God be angry with us if we take the simple baby step of praying about it? Will we be chastened by Him for taking everything—including our dreams—to Him in prayer?

If we take dreams seriously and always pray about them, I think God will bless us in mind-boggling ways. Yes, some dreams will prove to be nothing more than too much TV before bedtime, but God’s not going to be angry if we take even that dream to Him in prayer. It will just peter off into nothing of any consequence—except that we spent a little more precious time before the God who loves us.

The ramifications of ignoring dreams are huge, though. In the face of an approaching famine, the words of God that come to us in dreams may be all that stand between life and death.

So, what’s the problem with us and dreams?

God Is Still Speaking

Standard

IlluminationThis is a response to Steve Camp’s post “Worship Wars.” While I greatly respect Steve’s teachings in general, I believe there is a problem with his limited view of God’s speaking to people today. The underlying idea he expresses is that God ceased to speak to us once the canon of Scripture was closed. This perspective is very common and I hear it all the time in the Christian blogosphere, but I contend it makes Christianity into a dead religion that was codified in a book by a God who once spoke, but does so no longer.

At issue is this quote from Steve’s article:

Worship cannot be about my feelings or personal moorings based on what I think God is mystically communicating to me in a supernatural way.

While it is true that feelings cannot be the basis for worship, what God is communicating to us when we are communing with Him is critically important, especially if that communication is “supernatural,” as Steve puts it. Steve limits what God can say only to what He has chosen to have written down in the Bible.

I start my response with a man who intimately knew God in a way that few do today:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God—John 1:1

An intelligent, plain man, untaught in the truths of Christianity, coming upon this text, would likely conclude that John meant to teach that it is the nature of God to speak, to communicate His thoughts to others. And he would be right. A word is a medium by which thoughts are expressed, and the application of the term to the eternal Son leads us to believe that self-expression is inherent in the Godhead, that God is forever seeking to speak Himself out to His creation. The whole Bible supports this idea. God is speaking. Not God spoke, but God is speaking. He is, by His nature, continuously articulate. He fills the world with His speaking voice. One of the great realities with which we have to deal is the voice of God in His world. The briefest and only cosmogony is this: “He spake, and it was done” (Psalm 33:9). The why of natural law is the loving voice of God immanent in His creation. And this word of God which brought all worlds into being cannot be understood to mean the Bible, for it is not a written or printed word at all, but the expression of the will of God is the breath of God filling the world with living potentiality. The voice of God is the most powerful force in nature, indeed the only force in nature, for all energy is here only because the power-filled Word is being spoken.

The Bible is the written word of God, and because it is written it is confined and limited by the necessities of ink and paper and leather. The voice of God, however, is alive and free as the sovereign God is free. “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life” (John 6:63). The life is in the speaking words. God’s word in the Bible can have power only because it corresponds to God’s word in the universe. It is the present Voice which makes the written Word all-powerful. Otherwise it would lie locked in slumber within the covers of a book.
—A.W. Tozer, excerpt from the chapter “The Speaking Voice” from The Pursuit of God

Agree or disagree?

Does God not still speak to us? If He does not, then what is the purpose of having the Holy Spirit placed in us if God did not intend to continue to speak through His Spirit? The Spirit is more than a stamp of salvific approval on the Christian. If He were only that, then there would be no reason for Him to be a living Person. Stamps do not speak, only persons do.

And what of inspiration or the words of a preacher like Whitefield brought to life by the unction of the Spirit? If God does not still speak, then there is no sense for us to be Christians any longer, for all inspiration is lost. It may have been codified once, but there is nothing more to say, therefore there would be no reason for us to speak a single word to anyone, preaching going the way of the dodo. Anyone here believe that to be true?

While I greatly respect Mr. Camp, he may one day come up against a person who meets the very criteria Camp himself sets forth, someone who is delivering the voice of God. What then?

Why are we so very afraid that God may still be speaking? Why should we be afraid of the Voice today? The Spirit blows where He wills; does He do so no longer? If He still does, would He come without a message? By no means! Because it is the very nature of God to always be speaking.

You could open your Bible anywhere and find God speaking to His human creations, but the one I choose here is God speaking to His wayward prophet Elijah. After God’s trouncing of the prophets of Baal through Elijah and the subsequent destruction of the Baalites, Elijah fears for his life and takes off into the wilderness, hiding from King Ahab and his wicked wife Jezebel:

Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.” (3) Then he was afraid, and he arose and ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there. (4) But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” (5) And he lay down and slept under a broom tree. And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, “Arise and eat.” (6) And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. And he ate and drank and lay down again. (7) And the angel of the LORD came again a second time and touched him and said, “Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.” (8) And he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God. (9) There he came to a cave and lodged in it. And behold, the word of the LORD came to him, and he said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (10) He said, “I have been very jealous for the LORD, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.” (11) And he said, “Go out and stand on the mount before the LORD.” And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. (12) And after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper. (13) And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. And behold, there came a voice to him and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (14) He said, “I have been very jealous for the LORD, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.” (15) And the LORD said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus. And when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael to be king over Syria. (16) And Jehu the son of Nimshi you shall anoint to be king over Israel, and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah you shall anoint to be prophet in your place. (17) And the one who escapes from the sword of Hazael shall Jehu put to death, and the one who escapes from the sword of Jehu shall Elisha put to death. (18) Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.”
—1 Kings 19:2-18 ESV

Notice a few things concerning Elijah and the Lord here:
1. Elijah was consecrated to God in the same way as we read in Romans 12:1 (“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.) He was a true worshiper of God.

2. Even though Elijah trusted God, he was afraid and depressed enough to die. While we don’t associate fear and depression with faithfulness, there was no doubt that God still considered Elijah faithful and still spoke to Him in a personal way.

3. God spoke to Elijah through the exact means needed to reach him. God’s tenderness is shown to the prophet. And while we are not to base our worship on feelings, God is mindful of the emotional state of His prophet and takes this into account in the way that He deals with His servant.

In light of this encounter, should any of us believe that God does not speak to us in the same way that He spoke to Elijah? As true worshipers, is the depth of relationship we have with God somehow capped so we can never experience the level of intimacy that Elijah experienced when God spoke to him in the whisper? Are we somehow perpetually lesser servants of God? I see nothing in the Bible that says that God cannot speak to me in the same way that He spoke to Elijah, even when I am afraid or depressed, just like the prophet. Why should we limit God? In fact, with the Spirit of God actually indwelling us, I believe that our potential for intimacy with God, to have amazing conversations with Him, are even greater than in the days of the Old Testament when God would periodically dwell on people rather than remaining in them.

Therefore, not only does God speak, but He speaks personally. He speaks to each one of us. His intimacy is with each one of His children, those who bear the Holy Spirit within. And not only does He still speak, but He speaks to our need, our place in Him, and in measure to our ability to respond. If Steve Camp has any fair remark it’s that too many self-appointed and highly immature “mouthpieces for God” want to talk when they should be listening, allowing God to mature them to the point where He will truly use them to speak if He wills. However, that fair criticism is used in a blanket way to establish a rule by which no one can ever relay the voice of God for an individual or group in the moment. By Steve’s rule, God would never speak in the way that He does here:

While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”
—Acts 13:2 ESV

If that kind of speaking is out today, then how are we to function as a Church?

Lastly, as the bearers of His Light, that Light speaks out from us to those in the darkness. Even our lives can be the words of God to mankind. Because God is still speaking, we should not be surprised when the person sitting next to us on the bus hears the Lord’s voice in our very countenance.

So if God is still speaking, the only question that remains is, Are we listening?