When I read God's Word, I hear Him speak

Since 1998, I have been reading God's Word nearly daily. Through my time with Him, I hear God speak to me. It's not audible. God just makes His Word evident to me. Those lessons are many times reinforced by messages delivered by teaching pastors and sharing with others who study God's Word. I used to write the messages in the margins of my Bible. Needless to say, my Bible is filling up with messages. In 2006, I started to be more intentional about writing God's lessons to me in a journal. Because God is just sharing so much with me, I feel the burning need to share with others. (Jeremiah 20:9) I am hoping that through this blog, folks will join me as we read, hear God and discuss what we've learned. This isn't so we can simply increase our knowledge about God or to spout off Scripture to impress people. This is so we can really come to know God, and get a greater meaning of His truths so we can go out and live them. God said that if we love Him, then we will obey His commands. (John 4:23-24) And James said don't just listen to (or read) the Word and think that's good enough; you're just deceiving yourself. Live the Word. (Rose's paraphrase of James 1:22) It's similar to this great quote people are passing around now... Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car. So, join me as we learn from God and what He wants us to do. Then let's encourage one another to live it as a testimony to God so that people know He is who He says He is.



Friday, November 8, 2013

Truth & Grace


Part 1 – Sticky Dreams

I had a dream several months back and the dream has stuck with me because of what I saw. Since I was a little kid, God, Satan, angels and demons will show up in my dreams. At first these dreams would absolutely petrify me especially the ones where Satan or demons showed up because of how I would interpret the reason for their appearance. Unfortunately, there weren’t people around me that were solidly-rooted-in-the-Word Christians who could tell me God’s truth and explain why the dreams were happening. Instead, I thought these dreams were the result of watching a scary program on TV or seeing a scary movie or from living in Salem, Massachusetts and being exposed to the occult or simply that I was a bad person. Many a good nights’ sleep were lost over the decades because of fear of sleeping; fearing that once asleep the dreams would happen again and this time making the visitation permanent.

Starting in 1983, I had two amazing dreams where the Lord visited for a positive reason bringing an amazing sense of peace and hope. Those dreams were so calming that, honestly, I didn’t want to wake up. I took those dreams as a gift and tried to remember them as I would nightly drift off to sleep telling myself that if the Lord visited me like that before then, He must love me.
When I married Chauncey and had him beside me nightly as my “protector” – outside of ordinary dreams – the spiritual dreams, good and bad, stopped for a time. So, I thought that the dreams were in fact a product of an over active imagination, as I had prayed throughout the years that God would take away my creativity and imagination so that these dreams would stop. It wasn’t until 1995 that I had a visit from two angels during a dream that scared the life out of me causing me to wake up nearly hyperventilating and screaming, “I’m not ready!” realizing I wasn’t ready to meet God. Although the dream frightened me because I realized I wasn’t ready to die, the dream instead shook me into the reality that after my salvation in 1985, I had not grown with God and not lived a life growing with Him. That dream was the catalyst to get me to move from complacency to seeking God. (When I get to heaven, I am going to have to thank those two angels for the reality jolt.)

As my relationship with God over the years has deepened and He continues to share with me more about whom He is, who He is not and who I am in Him, I am able to better accept the dreams and understand them. These are true dreams because they happen when I am sleeping, not like visions that happen when awake. Typically they are scenarios that articulate Scripture and I find the answers to the dreams when I read the relating Scripture. That reality jolt dream in 1995 contained elements of Revelation, a book of the Bible that, at the time, I had not read because it frightened me. (Now, I absolutely love prophecy.) When I finally read Revelation seeing aspect of the catalytic dream in that book of the Bible, that is when I realized I was having specific dreams – the kind promised to believers when the Holy Spirit is with them. (Acts 2:17) "In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.”
Throughout the years, I have come across Scripture that explains what I saw in that dream so I know it was a visitation rather than simply a crazy dream or nightmare. Sometimes in my dreams, there are no visual Scripture scenarios and then I must quickly understand the context of the dreams so I can answer the situation I’m in with Scripture. Those types of dreams are when Satan or a demon shows up in the house and I’m aware the presence of evil is there. My answer? “What is in me is stronger than what is in the world. God is in me and He is sovereign. He defeated you and you know it. You have no place here so leave. You cannot touch me and you cannot touch the others in this house.” (1 John 4:4; John 16:33) Now I am able to wake from the dream, understand what just happened, know God is with me, roll over and go back to sleep. It is so very reassuring knowing the truths of God.

Once again, I had a dream several months back and the dream has stuck with me because of what I saw. I found myself outside in the dark in an open area, with oak trees surrounding me – the size of scrub oaks. I was on an empty cul-de-sac and the road glistened from what must have been a recent rain. There was some light glowing on the cul-de-sac so I could see around the area well enough as if it were a streetlight. Some wicked looking cat passed by me. It had just appeared in front of me and ran almost charging at me. I just remember it being a black cat with skinny, pointy features and the size of an ordinary house cat. Then the cat charged back towards the cul-de-sac away from me, skidded to a stop while spinning around to face me. As it did, it changed in its appearance to a sleek, black, wild cat – fierce like a bobcat – only with a long, sharp tail, pointy ears and it doubled in size. It swished its tail fiercely as if to cut the air around it. That’s when I realized the situation I was in – I was dreaming and Satan was there. As the wild cat prepared to charge me, it changed its appearance once again. This time it became a mangy lion – if you have ever seen the animated film “The Lion King,” the lion reminded me of Scar the evil lion who was more thin and clever than massive and powerful. Again, the lion grew in size when it went from wild cat to lion.
As the lion began to advance, I stood my ground and for some reason, I was not afraid. My feet were planted about shoulder width apart, my hands balled into fists with my arms straightened beside me. I leaned towards the charging lion, opened my mouth and began to scream at the lion only no words or screams came out. I was silent. I was screaming silently. I didn’t tell the lion that God was in me. Didn’t tell the lion, who I now recognized as Satan, to leave. Oddly, I was overconfident about my abilities facing Satan and I was just trying to yell “Shut up!” yet no words were coming out. During this standoff, I realized that I was relying more on my ability than on the truths of God. And yet, just as the lion was about to pounce on me, it skidded to an abrupt stop while trying to back-peddle leaning back to avoid me and shut its mouth tightly out of fear. That’s when I sensed something very big was standing right behind me. Something very powerful was behind me and that is who scared the lion shut. It was God and He was protecting me. He shut the mouth of that lion as I was unable. (Daniel 6:4-27)

What upset me was that I tried to face the lion on my own, in my own confidence. Thankfully, God stayed true to who He is, His promises, His truths and His grace.  What I learned? It’s not up to me to keep the promises of God “earning my spot in heaven.” It’s God’s ability to keep His promises and in keeping those promises, it is not conditional on my ability. God promised. He declared it. So, it will be. (Ezekiel 24:14)

I heard Pastor Tullian Tchividjian say that “The quality of our faith does not save us; the object of our faith saves us.” It’s not my ever growing knowledge of God that is saving me. As I mature in Christ and move from who I am without Him to who I am in Him, I am not saving myself. I am not the one who moves me into maturity; it is not something I can learn and become more adept at with discipline, practice and time. I do not have the ability to take on what only God is capable of doing. It is God Himself that saves me. God Himself that is able to do what God is able to do. And even when my faith is weak or I doubt or I don’t step into obedience or I act as if I can do things only God can do, if a promise comes to pass, it is because God said so. He promised and He doesn’t need me to fulfill that promise. He doesn’t need me… He wants me with Him.
What impacts me is that the dream scenario happened. Perhaps God placed me in that situation, knowing how I would react, so that I would learn this truth about myself as I relate to God; and so I would relearn the foundational truth of God in a way that would stick with me. I need to always be aware that I am not earning my way to Heaven. Although my life is evidence that God exists because God is changing me from a rebellious, selfish, arrogant sinner into a person who reflects the image of His Son Jesus, I must understand that I am not becoming perfect like Jesus with the ability to live more perfectly on my own and without God’s provisions. I am living by the ability the Lord Jesus has shared with me. It’s His ability, His power given to me. So when God places me into situations that are beyond my ability to handle, He also gives me His ability to manage through those situations where, when I come out of the situation successfully, I can only acknowledge God for the reason why I was successful.

So, I had a dream and it stuck with me because of what I saw.

Part 2 – If You Don’t Know Truth, How Will You Know A Lie?

“Crouching lions; hidden dragons”

From life to dreams, it’s important that we know truth, real truth and not the world’s version of truth and that truth is God’s truth. He set the truth standard and His standard is called righteousness or right standard. When we know God’s truths then we will know right from wrong, up from down, good from bad and, truth from lies. When we know God’s truth we can also know when it’s Him and when it’s not Him because Satan is crafty and wants to confuse us, trip us up, get us to second guess ourselves so he can deceive us, cause us to fall or cause us to blame God for something that we should be blaming Satan or, in many cases, ourselves. Satan’s goal is to get us to walk away from God permanently, separate us from God and destroy us completely. True evil is rooted in rebellion against God, believing we don’t need God that we are the god of our lives and so, we resent God. That’s true evil and it manifests itself in so many horrific and subtle ways. As arrogant human beings, we want to believe that we can easily spot things that are evil and things that are good. Looking broadly at life, we may all agree that Adolf Hitler is the personification of evil itself and think that when we see things similar to the atrocities committed by Hitler and his leadership, we can say with confidence that those things are evil because it depicts the standard of evil. We may agree that Mother Theresa is the personification of good things or – if there is a God – Godly things. So when we look at similar actions by others, we may agree to call those items good or Godly as they are what we think a loving God would do depicting the standard of good.

But when evil actions are caused by rebellion and resentment – which are the underpinnings of hatred – then evil can be a subtle lie twisting aspects of the truth to its benefit making it “not true” or false. It’s difficult to recognize unless you know the truths of God – who He is and who He is not.
For instance, I am always amazed that the Bible describes Satan and his actions with similar terms describing Jesus. Before his fall, Satan was called Lucifer which means “the angel of light” or “the bringer of light” or “Day Star” or “Son of Dawn.” (Isaiah 14:12) His role was to be the chief angel, reflecting God’s light and in charge of organizing the angelic praise of and service for God. Jesus is called “The Light of the World” (John 9:5) because when truth comes into a false situation, it illuminates the situation so you can see right from wrong, God from not-God. Sin and Satan are referred to as “a crouching lion ready to pounce and devour you.” (Genesis 4:6; 1 Peter 5:8) “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” And the royal description and leadership of King Jesus is described as the “Lion of the tribe of Judah.” (Revelation 5:5) “Then one of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.’” We like to think of Satan as who he is after his rebellion – the serpent or the dragon – therefor easier to spot. However, he is sometimes a lion; a crouching lion, hiding his dragon personification.

What we truly must know: “who IS God and who IS He NOT.” Satan doesn’t always appear as Hitler or Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy. Sometimes he appears to be a false-good or subtly-confusing. I always wondered why Eve listened to a talking snake in the garden. Sorry. Even though before the fall, man and animals were not afraid of one another. Man was the God-designated caretaker of the world – God’s paradise garden – and Man was to steward and care for all of creation inclusive of the animals. Yet, snakes just give me “the willies.” Before the fall of mankind, God still visibly walked the earth walking with Adam, sharing a relationship with him. So, if I were Eve, why would I listen to a slithering creature over the gorgeous, glorious, most beautiful God Himself? Unless, Satan was also most handsome. Even though this passage of Scripture describes the King of Tyre, scholars believe it describes Satan before his rebellion (Ezekiel 28:12-15):
“Son of man, raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to him, Thus says the Lord God:

"You were the signet of perfection,    

full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
You were in Eden, the garden of God;
    every precious stone was your covering,
sardius, topaz, and diamond,
    beryl, onyx, and jasper,
sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle;
    and crafted in gold were your settings
    and your engravings.
On the day that you were created
    they were prepared.
You were an anointed guardian cherub.
    I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God;
    in the midst of the stones of fire you walked.
You were blameless in your ways
    from the day you were created,
    till unrighteousness was found in you.


And that is why Eve listened to Satan. He was handsome and he walked the garden too. Then he twisted some truths spoken by God, stating them falsely, asking Eve if God really meant what He said causing her to second guess herself and most of all, second guessing God. “Are you sure He meant this?” That is why she was deceived. What was Eve’s mistake? Not getting council from her husband who actually heard directly from God – before she was created – what man was not to touch in the garden. And, with God walking the garden and enjoying His friendship with Adam and Eve, she could have asked God for clarification yet, she did not. So really what was in Eve’s heart of hearts that caused her to be deceived when Satan twisted the truth? Did she want to be closer to God? Did she want to be "like" God? Or did she want to be able to "be" God? What is in our own hearts that we choose to listen to things that sound good without verifying that they are good? 

Twisted truth, after all, is no longer truth but lies.

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