When Dreams Become Reality: A Lesson on Hearing From and Listening to God
Sometimes, you have a wild and crazy dream, and then you wake up, and you can’t remember what it was. Then there are other times when you google the dream or talk to many people about it, trying to get their interpretation. Then, there are times when you may question what the dream was about and how it may relate to your real life. Journey with me as I tell you about my wild and crazy dream the other night.
This year, I’m reading the Bible from beginning to end again. I’m currently in Deuteronomy, so if you know, you know. If you don’t know, let’s say it’s not an easy read. I’m just giving you a little backstory here before I jump into what we are talking about today.
I get good sleep every night; not great, but good. I also have dreams, maybe once or twice a week, that I can remember when I wake up, but not all the time. Sometimes I wake up after getting seven hours of sleep, and I feel so dizzy, as if I didn’t sleep at all. I wear an Oura ring, and according to Oura, I’m rested and ready to participate in physical activity. Usually, I agree with Oura, but sometimes I wonder if Oura knows how much work I did while sleeping.
The dreams that I vividly remember are ones where I’m doing a crap ton of work.
The other night, my dream took place during Bible times. I remember there being darkness. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of us, on a mountaintop. People were wailing and worried about death and dying. Now, during this scene, a familiar face enters. She is a familiar face to me, but maybe not to many of my readers, but I know she will be shortly. She is a Princeton Seminary graduate, and she has been my closest and longest friend; for context, we have been friends since the 10th grade, and we are coming up on our 20th high school reunion, so that’s a long time.
As my friend enters the scene, I see myself looking at her, and she is attacking a serpent from behind so that she can lay it to rest. She said she’d been doing this for several minutes with other creatures so that people would not be harmed. She then explained to me that I needed to scale down the side of this steep mountain to figure out how to bring provisions to the people and eventually provide a way for them to escape the mountaintop. She also explained that we were the only two people who could save all these people.
Then I woke up.
I had therapy that same day, and my therapist and I unpacked what I thought to be a wild and crazy dream. When I explained out loud that I always feel like I’m rescuing someone or saving someone or doing all kinds of acrobatics to save an entire human race in my dreams, I realized that there is something I often want to run from in real life. I also often ask God what it is you’re trying to show me here, and I know my friend has felt the same way because, for a large portion of our lives, we had similar paths.
In my life, I find myself in places or positions where I’m constantly asking God why he placed me there. What is it that He wants me to do? After much-needed unpacking and correlation to real life with my therapist, I decided that from now on, I’m going to ask God where He needs me most. Instead of fighting where I’ve been placed and constantly searching for the why, I’ve decided I will do the work He called me to, walk the path he prepared for me, and trust the process.
If I’m supposed to be slaying dragons and scaling mountains to save people’s lives hypothetically and in reality, then I’m doing it, and I’m doing it with confidence since God has my back.
