The words that changed everything.
While listening to Shawn Bolz recite a portion of Jennifer Leclaire’s Dream Wild Prophecy, which you should check out, these words jumped out to me: ‘You will do more with less.’ For months, God has been struggling with me over a few small things. Well, actually I’ve been struggling to listen to God. *Facepalm* Since last year, I sensed God pushing me to shift some of the methods I use to do things, and I hadn’t.
Let me give you a little background on my personality. I am super analytical. I’m an avid learner and an eager researcher too. You may think, nifty strengths. Unfortunately, not always, because at times, I let my head knowledge, get in front of my heart knowledge. Making it a challenge to listen to the impressions of my heart over facts. To be honest, I believe I do this because research is proven and faith is risky. But the day I heard, ‘You will do more with less,” I finally said yes. At that moment, I felt no condemnation as God told me, ‘stop doing so much’ and to trust him with the details as well as the dream. At that moment, I knew I was ready. Ready to apologize and change. My response to God was, ‘I will stop doing so much, as you say God.’ LOL. And guess what? It worked.
Taking the risk and listening to what God is saying is scary, but look at it this way. Believing in God is full of risks, right? And if you’ve taken the risk to believe God exists, then you can also take the risk to trust what He says.
Let me share with you a dream I had the week of May 14th.
In the dream, I was traveling with one of my brothers. He was driving, and I was riding in the backseat. I don’t remember if anyone else was in the car, I just remember that he was there and that we were driving up a mountain. I didn’t know where we were going, but I wasn’t worried because I was with my brother and I trust him fully. Then something happened. I felt the car sharply shift to climb the mountain. It’s hard for me to even describe this, but typically when you drive up a mountain, it’s a slow, uneventful climb. And you don’t really notice how high up you’ve gone until you reach the peak. In my dream, it was quite the opposite. The car felt as if it jumped on two wheels and took off like a plane. As we scaled the mountain on two wheels and at a very aggressive rate, I closed my eyes in complete terror and slid down in the back seat. I did not want to see what was happening. It was bad enough having to feel the altitude drop in my belly.
I was relieved when I felt the car reverting to its normal driving position, which is on all four wheels because I knew we were back on level ground. At this point, I decided to peek up to see what was happening and saw my brother driving into a parking lot. As I drew the courage to inch over closer to the rear driver’s window, I peeped out, and to my astonishment, all I could see were the tops of trees. Why did I do this? Jesus, I was scared all over again. These trees were super tall, like pines, and the road we came in on was built over them. Then, before I could get comfortable with what I observed, the car stopped, and my brother jumped out, heading over a bridge towards a community. Having been left alone, I sat in the car plotting what to do next, knowing I needed to get out I’d already figured I’d crawl to the next destination. Did I mention, I have an absolute fear of heights, in my dreams and in real life? As I drew more courage to engage my surroundings, I saw children playing out there. They were near the bridge I needed to walk over, running around and totally fearless in this sort of air world that we were in. Everyone up there acted normal, except for me. When I say normal, I mean no one appeared afraid to be where they were.
Finally, I was ready to get out of the comfort of the car. Crawling or walking, I was determined to get to the next place, most likely crawling tho’ because I was still scared and drew comfort from feeling like I was closer to the ground. *Facepalm* And there I went, I opened the door, put my foot on the ground and boom, I woke up.
My husband, who was already awake and standing in front of me, said good morning, and I replied, I just had the weirdest dream.
My history with dreams.
For those that know me, you know that I’m a big dreamer and that I totally believe that God communicates with people in dreams. Dreaming about the past, present, and future is super common for me. For the longest, I’ve had dreams that held figurative and literal meanings too. Just last week, I dreamed about an email header at work with a specific phrase, and a few days later, I received an appointment invitation to discuss that very thing.
I’ve found that the dreams that have the most significant meaning are usually the ones I don’t understand at all. Like this dream. I’ve also learned that when I don’t understand the dream, I typically don’t get any immediate insight into it. Which I don’t believe is because God doesn’t want me to know what it means, I think it’s because I dismiss the dream for lack of immediate understanding.
Before I tell you what this dream means, here are a few truths about dreams.
I believe that dreams come from three primary sources, your soul, dark influences, and God. I also think that the language of dreams evolves over time because symbols are relative to time. As a dreamer, ask God to interpret your dreams, write them down, and create your own personal dream symbol journal. Many books teach dream interpretation, including common symbols and their meaning. I don’t think there is anything wrong with using credible resources to learn with unless you rely on them more than the Holy Spirit to provide meaning.
Back to the meaning of the dream.
Elevation is required, consent is not.
- In the dream, I was traveling and initially didn’t know I was going up a mountain. Which means God does not need my permission to take us (Him + I) where he wants to go. The mountain symbolized elevation. The speed and the way I scaled the mountain pointed to the acceleration and unusual method God will use to accomplish it.
God brings comfort in transition.
- There’s an idiom that says ‘somebody pulled the rug from under me.’ When people say this it implies that something suddenly changed and they were surprised. Well, in my dream God ripped the ground from under my feet, but God also had my brother with me, demonstrating the comfort he’d provide during this transition.
Fear is foreign.
- I was the only one afraid in my dream. Fear was completely foreign to the people there. And even though I was beyond scared, I chose to move forward because I knew I couldn’t stay where I was.
By the way, it’s super important that you write your dreams down, because the information being revealed in them may carry a similar theme or be related in some other way. For example, this dream and a dream I had several months ago are related. In Podcast Episode # 25 – Executing God’s Plan, I talk about a dream where I was walking down a familiar road that became unfamiliar. I knew this was coming, but didn’t know when. However, based on the dream I’m sharing with you today it’s happening now. And here is the clear connection, in my most recent dream the rug aka ground was pulled from under my feet demonstrating that the familiar is leaving.
Now, I think it’s interesting that God used my brother to make me feel comfortable in the dream, but still ripped the comfort out from under me. Here’s an example of why I believe God did this. A few days ago, my son asked me what a VCR was while reading a ‘Dogman’ book. Well, after he asked this, I thought about VCRs. They were still popular even when DVDs came out. Then BluRay was released, and there was the death of the VCR, but not immediately. Some companies even created BluRay and VCR combination players. I thought this was dumb because these companies knew VCRs were dying, but it wasn’t. When something new is introduced to a market, naturally there is resistance, but when you introduce a new product or idea with something that’s old, that people are familiar and comfortable with, it’s a win, win. You see, people are more likely to try something new with something they are familiar with.
And even when God introduces us to new things, He often does this using something we are comfortable with. Don’t get me wrong, God doesn’t need our consent to do anything, but He does want us to be willing participants in the future He’s building. And God is giving us the grace to take the risk to dream with Him, build with him, and scale the different mountains of influence with Him.
Let’s pause as you think about that and as you ask God to make this dream personal to you.
My closing thoughts.
For some of you feel like you’re losing and you can’t afford the risk God is asking you to take. Taking a risk on God is a sure reward. The risk is so worth it, and you are not losing. You are an arrow in the hand of the Great Deliverer — being drawn back to launch forward.
Listen to the Lord. Take the risk. God is telling many of us to do something weird, but not creepy, and different from what we are used to. Please do it. And remember, Noah seemed crazy until it started raining.
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