Oh wait.
I guess I should clarify.
Not one of those "walking down the street nude" dreams.
Yet it was almost as exposing.
I dreamt that I was about to get up to the podium and speak a message at church.
And I was not prepared.
I had no idea what I was going to say when I got up there.
Do you ever have recurring dreams? What are they usually about?
I can't help wonder if God has been trying to talk to me my whole life on this one theme and I am just now getting it because he varied the dream this one time.
Usually, my recurring dream involves an emergency of some sort. Something has happened and I need to get help for someone or myself and I am usually holding a telephone in my hand in an adrenaline filled moment, I'm trying to call for help. And something always goes wrong with the phone. In my panic, I keep mis-dialing. Or the phone isn't operating correctly. Something keeps me from making that call for help and I always feel so...helpless. Useless. Like I can't come through when the chips are down and I won't ever be prepared when the time comes to "save the day".
The difference with this church dream was my internal mental impulses about the situation, my attitude. Just as I was impotent in the phone emergency dreams, I was unqualified in the speaking dream, but the way you "just know" some things in a dream without it really being explained, God allowed me to see something really not lovely about myself. The revelation? Pride. A sense of, "I got this." And that turned out to be so, so wrong. My arrogance yielded a bumbling speech that was of no use to no one and I was ashamed and humbled. Dreamland yielded a lesson for reality.
"He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord."
Deuteronomy 8: 3 (NIV)
My heart aches for the Old Testament prophets. Boy, they had a hard job to do. It must've been frustrating to say the very least to try communicate to people who really didn't want to hear what you had to say. Just a couple of days after that challenging and humbling dream, I was reading the first three chapters from the book of Ezekiel. I learned something from Zeke...he did not go in unprepared. And yet, Ezekiel's preparation was not of his own striving. Ezekiel was a 30 year old priest when he was called to something "more". In preparation for Ezekiel's greater ministry, the Lord revealed some pretty amazing things to him. So awe-inspiring in fact, that Ezekiel would fall facedown, overwhelmed in awe and worship. (Ezekiel 1:28, and 3:23)
What was really noticeable to me was the up and down physical posturing in these chapters. When you read this you'll see Zeke would fall down and even sit down ("And there, where they were living, I sat among them for seven days--overwhelmed" 3:15)...and the LORD would lift him back up. Ezekiel would need to go somewhere and the SPIRIT would move him.
"He said to me, 'Son of man, stand up on your feet and I will speak to you.' As he spoke, the Spirit came into me and raised me to my feet ..." Ezekiel 2:1
"Then the Spirit lifted me up..." 3:12
"The Spirit then lifted me up and took me away...." 3:14
"Then the Spirit came into me and raised me to my feet..." 3:24
So here's Zeke, a 30 year old priest who probably thought he had his life pretty well mapped out. And in the first three chapters of his story he is knocked down, wiped out and amazed beyond his wildest imagination. Probably everything he thought he ever really knew about God was shaken up by the Maker Himself, to the point where only the Spirit could get this quivering mass of flesh back up off the floor. God essentially says to this man, "I have a really important message that you need to deliver for me. In fact, it's so critical that I'm holding you personally responsible for the fate of these people if you don't deliver this message." (3:18) Woah. Heavy! If it were me, I'd be jumping right on that particular mission...I mean, not that I'd really WANT the job, but after all he'd seen, I bet the sense of urgency and respect for the Boss would be pretty intense. But guess what? It was a classic case of "Not so Fast Buster!"
After the Spirit picks poor Zeke up off the ground yet again in 3:24, He speaks to this messenger and says, "Go, shut yourself inside your house. And you, son of man, they will tie with ropes; you will be bound so that you cannot go out among the people. I will make your tongue stick to the roof of your mouth so that you will be silent..."
Oh Zeke! Gee, how I feel your pain! I mean, Zeke's a guy so perhaps talking a lot may not have been his game, but they do say that men use a lot fewer words each day than women, and I know from personal experience that if I have to keep quiet for too long I feel like I'm going to explode! And it's even worse if I have be be stuck at home for a long stretch. I get cabin fever and start to go nuts. Even a quick drive to take the kids to school helps me feel so much more human than if I never venture beyond the walls of the house. I do believe a woman's greatest mission field is in her own home and I for sure have enough here to keep me occupied for decades! But oh, how I sense that there is a "Part II" to this life!!! I don't have a clue what that will be, but I am so eagerly looking forward to every step of the journey! Loving the now, smiling at the future.
Anyhow, I digress. Back to Zeke. He's been pumped up and now his zipped up. What a roller coaster ride! I learned from reading the beginning of this book that there are things to learn about speaking the the Word of God. We may have indeed seen some amazing things but just blurting them out before God's done talking might not work. Listen. Take it personally. Worship and take time to be in awe because it IS that big. It IS that important. Take good notes. Let the Spirit manipulate your position. Fall down again and worship some more because you can't handle this alone. But do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. Be obedient. And then after all of that you might need to start at home. And part of that might involve just keeping your lips zipped for a time. And then! And then! Then God will speak to you and open your mouth! And then whatever comes out from there will probably be a lot more useful than if you had walked up to a podium with nothing but your ego.
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