Oddly enough, and contrary to established practice (with me), the Lord gave me a message, that spoke directly to my need, through three dreams. Let me fill out the background to this story, so the foundation is established (gotta have THAT, huh? I mean JESUS, of course!)
I’ve been pleading with the Lord to speak to me through my dreams. He seems to do it so easily through others, what with them seeing Him, and speaking directly to them, in their dreams. MY dreams, however, were ones harried and pursued of tasks to be fulfilled, and failure. An oft repeated one, has been of myself in school, with horrible grades and disapproving teachers (and in one, it was the devil, himself, and these kind of messages are from that one, anyway). In truth, the Lord has reproved my discontent, in the past, by telling me that He speaks so easily, and with such familiarity, during the day, to me, with a still small voice, with His Word, and with my circumstance, that He has no need to use my dreams. Still, I have longed to be like others (Who can fathom?)
Well, yesterday, a man was telling about a dream he had, where he died and was in heaven (so now it’s OTHER peoples dreams, huh, Lord?) The angel speaking to him asked him what his ten most important miracles, that he had been given by God, were. The gentleman had a message from this dream for himself, but there was one for ME, in there, too! I had a response to his angel’s question! I immediately thought of my greatest, miracle, blessing, and gift, which is the Lord’s heritage, that new name that He has given me! My acknowledgment from God, that of my identity IN HIM, has meant more to me than anything else I can think of! (But wait, there’s more!)
My dreams last night were the usual, where I revisited my past from the security of my present. I went back to my job site for some event or something, and got hit with memories of angry supervisors, isolated me with no one to talk to, and meaningless tasks. I walked away. Then I was with my youngest brother for some family thing (he wants nothing to do with my Christianity, not even to hear about it). We talked at each other and achieved nothing. I left my brother at the hotel and went to my former high school. I didn’t recognize the place. They were promoting “justice for palestine”. Just when I started to feel really sorry for myself, and was telling my self that I was always an outsider, that I’d never had friends, I decided I wanted to leave that place, and then came the horror part. It dawned on me that I had lost my purse, with my phone and wallet, I had put them down somewhere, who knows where, and without them, I was stuck in that wasteland.
In the dream, I prayed (because that is HIS calling that makes all the difference). I actually found my purse, with everything still inside, including the money, exactly where the hotel clerk had put it, hanging under a strip of fabric to conceal it for me, because I had walked away from him without it. It still had my wallet and ID, and I knew, then, that I would still be able to function in a broken and alien world. I was happy, then. It was like a deliverance.
The message seems obvious, now that I’ve written it down, but I still wondered, as I usually do, after the dream. The Lord brought back a memory of another dream I had, to flesh it all out. In this other dream, from a couple weeks ago, I was trying to inform others that I was royalty. They just looked at me like I was crazy, same as they do when I talk about JESUS (like He’s here, with us).
These dreams fit right in with the other things the Lord has been telling me, like the book “This Present Darkness” (how I feel about the world), where the prayers of Christians are the real battle in the war we fight, and the book “Girls with Swords”, in which the Word is our only weapon. In the second book, she was telling how the Egyptian pharaoh decided to oppress the Hebrews because he was AFRAID of them and WHO THEY MIGHT BECOME. When I got out my Bible for my daily reading, it was the EXACT SAME passage of scripture that was next. However, in the next chapter, there is one other important fact, that the Lord wanted me to know. BECAUSE of their oppression, the Lord heard their cries, and sent them a deliverer! It was time for Him to remember those who were His inheritance.
This last fact is integral to my own identity. The Lord has affirmed, because of my name, that HE hears my cries. And what have I been crying out for, but the coming of our Deliverer?
