Upon reading ”Dreaming With My Eyes Wide Open,” you may feel a lingering touch of nostalgia remembering an old song with me. These days I’m experiencing something like that. The dream, however, isn’t “dreamy.” It’s real.
I’m not living in an imaginary world. Just invisible.
Joel’s prophecy said, “Your old men shall dream dreams” (Joel 2:28, NKJV). Maybe that means I’m over the hill.
Because I keep dreaming a dream.
I need to define this kind of dreaming, though. Because it isn’t the leftover thought processes of a busy yesterday; nor is it the mental machinations resulting from a mushroom and pepperoni pizza tossed into the tummy just before bedtime.
The dream is real. It is God-given. It is, to use a scriptural expression, “seeing the invisible.” Any element of “memory” it entails is the remembrance of the fact that our Almighty Father can do anything: There is nothing too hard for You, Lord. And insofar as “imagination” is involved, the “image” is something proceeding from His mind and becoming implanted in mine. The idea is His, and it is not at all uncommon in the Word that the Lord communicates His will by dreams.
Not mystical dreams. Not fantastic dreams. Not puzzling dreams. Not weird, wonder-what-this-means dreams. But in dreams nonetheless—a vision born in the mind and heart by the Holy Spirit. This vision becomes so thoroughly possessing of one’s thoughts that it becomes a tangible reality in his or her experience.
And that’s the way God works. He has an idea, determines His will, and then brings it to pass. In teaching us to move after the pattern of His workings, He begins by giving us His idea. We receive it as a dream. His Holy Spirit impresses us with the confirming certainty that this idea is His will. And as soon as an idea from God is known to be the will of God, His Word tells us exactly what to do. Pray, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10).
From that time on, what you know He sees as an already accomplished fact begins more and more to appear to you in the same condition. Done. A dream come true. Praise begins to follow on the heels of prayer.
What do you see the Father willing for your life? Let it happen. Receive the dream, and possess it in prayer as you call on Him in Jesus’ wonderful name. This isn’t so much “positive thought” or “self-persuasion” baloney. It is simply a biblical pathway to receiving God’s intended purpose for a group of His people—or for you, His deeply loved child.
Dream on!
This Week’s Prayer Focus [5 in 5]
- What do you see the Father willing for your life?
- What “dream” has He opened up to you and/or your church?
- What do you want to see the Lord bring to pass in your life, church and community?
- Pray for a dramatic increase of cross-cultural workers through Foursquare. As the world’s population rapidly expands, so does the need for “the whole church to take the whole gospel to the whole world.”
- Pray for our urban centers—that boldness would arise in many Foursquare leaders, and they would be compelled to bring hope to the cities of our nation and the world.
Share your thoughts. See comments below, and add your own.
