Dreams Part 1

I'll save the first dream I had for next post. But I'll talk about one of them really quickly because it deals with with the response God has called me to make in learning about prayer, evangelism and intimacy....

The night before I met with Erik Fish on Campus, I had this dream. It was a dream that really disturbed me. In the dream, I was going to hang out with some friends, but before I got to far, my brother called me back. He had some bad news. He said my mom might have cancer. It was devastating. I went back to the place where he was at and approached him. I didn't understand how this could be happening. It was hard to believe, but I remained cool and collected. I knew what I had to do. We must respond....

This dream really disturbed me and stirred my heart. I didn't know what it meant, and I couldn't believe this was happening. To give this dream context, I have to rewind to the summer of my senior year of high school. During the summer of my senior year, I went to a summer camp with my church. After the camp, I was on fire for God, and I came back ready to light the world on fire for Jesus. However, as soon as I came back, my family and I were attacked right away. That night my mom and dad got in a fight, and they were talking about getting a divorce. The next day, my dad had left the house, and I didn't see him for much of the day. To make matters worse, my mom got some devastating news in the mail.

She got a letter saying that she would have to come back into the clinic for testing. She might have cancer. Cancer? Upon hearing these words, my heart sunk. I had been asleep the whole day, and I didn't hear about the crazy events that were unfolding before me until my brother broke to me the news both about the divorce and now... cancer? I broke down in tears and fell to the floor in a state of confusion and powerlessness. I was on the verge of possibly being part of a broken family in more ways than one. What was I going to do?

I had two choices.... I could either hate God and turn back on Him for allowing something like this to happen especially I had been on fire for Him after coming back from summer camp or I could trust Him and put into practice everything I had learned all my life and especially the things I learned at this camp. At camp, the theme was Faith Works. But you see, I had grown up in a Christian home all my life. God and Faith and all those terms had become meaningless cliches to me. I had never experienced the realness of who God was. But now, I was faced with the choice of putting into faith and practice what I actually had been taught and supposedly believed.

I resolved in my heart that I would trust God. I said, "Okay, God I believe you are real, and I am going to trust in you." I found my brother and told him we were going to go find my mom together. My mom and left the house and walked away by herself, so we decided to go after her. We walked together until we found my mom at a bench by the park near our house. She was crying and looked devastated. Things were not going her way. As we approached her, we began to talk to her and see how she was feeling. We encouraged her and began to tell her some of the things that God had put on our heart. The moments that proceeded were all things that must have been inspired by the Holy Spirit because I know in my own strength I could not have said the things I said that day.

As I spoke to my mom, I began to comfort her and tell her that things would be ok. I remember telling her that I believed God was truly at work in our lives and His will would be done in our lives. The verse that came to mind was a verse that I had remembered at summer camp. It was James 1:2-4.

²Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, ³because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. ⁴Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

I always had heard this passage used many times especially the phrase "consider it pure joy." I always heard how we should have joy in all situations especially during the trials of our life. I could never understand it, but I decided that now more than ever was probably the best time to find out what it really meant. In that moment, I resolved that I would have faith that God would use this situation for the God and that I would find joy. I remember for one of the first time ever really responding in prayer with my family. I had prayed with my family before in the past. But this was one of the first times I had really ever responded in prayer. It was a powerful moment.

It ended up that the letter about cancer was a blessing in disguise. It brought to light the frailty of life and it allowed my mom and dad to realize how much they really loved and cared about each other. They were able to work things out. A few months later, my mom found out that the cancer results were a false alarm. God had preserved our family, but in the process, he had taught us a valuable prayer. The first response is prayer. We must truly believe that God is sovereign and working out the tiny details of our life. He really cares and is molding us for something greater, but first we must respond.

So almost 3 years later, I found myself reliving that moment all over again. Yet in my spirit, I sensed God was calling me to the next level He was calling me to respond to. He called me to pray and seek God in the place of prayer, but that was not enough, we must take that to the next level and respond to God in sharing the power of prayer with others. We must respond by allowing God to take down our barriers of fear and step out in faith that He will show up for us as we speak to others.

I have been learning a valuable lesson about myself. I have faith that God will do big things in my life and bring to pass the big visions He has placed in my heart. However, I found myself missing a huge part of faith. I firmly trusted that God would bring huge breakthrough in terms of the big picture, but if I believed this why didn't I have faith that He would come through in the smaller things. Why didn't I have faith that He would bring people to me to share with? Why didn't I have faith that He would give me the words to speak or that He would take away my fears? I realized that for the big things to happen God first called me to be faithful in the smaller things. He first wanted me to step out in faith and share his love with others.

In the past few weeks, God has really called me back to the places of what is my next response. He has reminded me of the past and the huge things He did when I responded in the place of prayer. But there was a next level of response. The response to share - the very heart of evangelism and one of the closest things to the Father's heart....

Oh the Father's heart.....

We'll save that topic for Dreams Part 2