Series: Give Thanks
Hebrews 13:6 ESV
Last night I had a strange dream.
I’ve known for decades that my dreams often mean something, or that God is telling me something. It took years for me to understand and sort through how to respond to my dreams, but I finally realized I was making it way too complex.
In Hebrews 13:6 we are told, “So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?”
My fear that relates to my dreams is that I was missing something.
I was right…I was missing something.
I was trying to interpret the dreams to make them make sense in my world. I was not considering the possibility that I wasn’t supposed to (or didn’t need to) understand the dream. Taking into account the dream was from God, I needed to take the facts about the dream and pray.
When I started doing that, I had peace. That told me I was on the right track.
Now when I have a dream I take from it the key elements I remember and I pray for the people in the dream, especially when they have a problem.
I learned that I do not need to know what the prayer means.
The dream I had last night was about a fellow who was in trouble. He was caught in a cycle of unknowing.
There was a problem in the dream but I do not know what the problem was…I learned I do not need to know the details.
The first thing I do is to “sit with” God and present the person who has a problem. Even though I don’t know specifically what the nature of the problem is I do know the severity of the problem.
That’s what I give to God.
I ask God to help the man because he is suffering.
In the case of the dream I had last night I could tell he was caught up in a web of unknowing. That told me the man didn’t know how to solve the problem.
I asked God to show him the solution.
Then I focused on the secondary characters in the dream.
I focused on what they seemed to be struggling with and how they were troubled. For one of the characters it seemed like it was a lifelong problem they had carried.
I asked God to help that character carry the burden and to feel like they were loved.
The remainder of the characters in the dream were connected to the main players. I think God was showing me that when the main characters received the help they needed the others would have peace.
After I pray for the characters, I have peace. It’s like God is releasing me from what God has for me from the dream.
When I was younger and I didn’t understand what God was showing me in my dreams, I carried it and continued to struggle with it. That was because I was trying to understand.
I wanted to know who and what and how in real life.
I came to realize that I don’t need to know how the details of the dream relate to real life. Once I relaxed and prayed about what I knew from the dream, I had peace. That was a sign that I had accomplished what God wanted me to accomplish.
So, back to the dream I had last night.
I know from experience that I will carry the prayer in my heart and take it to God for as long as I need to carry it. Once it is ‘prayed through’ God will help me to let go of the dream.
Then I have peace…incredible peace.
That is God telling me the ‘thing’ God wanted to accomplish is done.
Spiritual Practice: Your thing?
God may not speak to you through dreams, but stop and take time to discover what God is saying to you today.
In God, Deborah
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