Your Old Men Will Dream Dreams

On the night prior to my final comment about “church”(Under the heading, Bugscuffle Arkansas), my lovely wife awakened me from a dream. My active dreaming, along with the muffled yelling and flailing, apparently awakened her first.

I don’t always attempt to recall dreams, but the timing of this one was significant, and it was different than any I had ever experienced. I couldn’t help but to wonder if it had been God given, so I was sure to mark in my mind to remember it in the morning, and now, days later, I am still thinking about it. When I attempted to blog that morning, I was restrained. Here’s what I said:

dalek said...

I must confess that I am struggling. I am hesitant to continue in the present course of "messing with the church". The struggle is with the feeling that I can't clearly communicate the concepts that I consider vital to healthy church without disparaging much of what is the present reality for most of us.

I have written much more this morning, but I am not at peace to post it.

Deleted.

I pray for the leading of the Holy Spirit.

The Dream:

I was in a house that I did not recognize and with a hand full of people, whom I did not know, but with whom I felt comfortable, as though they were my brothers and sisters in Christ. The people were present only for a few moments in the beginning but faded from my awareness as the kitchen and dining area became filled with morbid-pale-grey looking spirits. Each was in human form, but were not actually physical, and every one was black-eyed and bruised and injured as if having been violently beaten. Everywhere I looked, they sat on chairs and table, counter tops, windowsills, and on the floor. Some stood in doorways, and others hovered about the room. I remember three in particular who, while hovering over my head, having furrowed brows and angry eyes, thrust themselves inside my intimate zone, as if trying to impose themselves upon me. I ducked and swung a backhand at them as one would when being intruded upon by the sudden buzzing of a wasp or a bumblebee.

I was not afraid; but annoyed. Their presence didn’t seem threatening, only intrusive, imposing, vile and depressive. They had no real power to cause fear or temptation. Their presence seemed more about the influence of negativity, of critical spirits, and of injured feelings, and of ill thought.

When I had had enough, I invoked the name of Jesus and shooed them away like flies, chasing them from each perch and standing place, and they were quickly gone.

It was then that I realized that there was another individual with me, a man, physically present, I think. He walked on the floor and spoke to me. He was dressed all in brown, and was not morbid like the rest. Nor did he flee like the others, but negotiated with me for a coffee-travel mug. If I would give him my travel mug, he would be on his way. So I gave him a mug from the cupboard, and walked him to the door.

As the door was closing behind him, he turned and alerted me about the coming of another, about whom I should be concerned. At that, he pointed across the yard, where I saw a spirit creature coming across the grass. He had the body of a spotted goat, walking upright on his hind feet, and he had a swollen-looking black pigs head, bearing teeth, Snarling and grunting, and looking directly at me, as he went.

My mind, immediately paralyzed by fear, I was in the throw of convulsions, having little or no control of my body. Yet, at the same time I had an inner boldness of spirit, which forced my stumbling and faltering body forward, down the steps and into the yard to confront him. I was flailing, falling, and shouting as in chant, “Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!”

Whether Jesus was with me or not, I was not aware, but His name was ready on my lips.

“Honey! Honey! Wake up! You’re having a bad dream.”

“Yea, I was dreaming about demons. Chased them away. You’ve ruined the end of it.”

I remember wondering if I could go back to sleep and take up where I had left off. No such luck.

Whether this was a dream given me by the Spirit or not, I don’t know. If it were, I think I understand the meaning of some of it, yet parts are still a mystery

Give me your theories. Who or what were the spirits in the house? Who was the man in brown? Was the goat/pig the devil himself? Shall I expect to meet them all again in waking hours?

Are you crazy enough to comment on this?

Prayer

Dale asked me to start a thread on Prayer since I asked him whether he was going to. I am glad to start it though I must admit I do not have the mind or degree of study that Dale and Jeff have blessed us with.

Here goes:

Prayer is a wonderful topic for us. I have already learned a lot from just two classes and reading in between.

I have been reading Josh McDowell’s works and I am struck by how he came to Christ. Basically his relationship with his dad was awful and The Holy Spirit finally drew McDowell to God by showing him that God was anxious to provide the relationship that he never experienced.

What does that have to do with prayer?

Well, I always start my prayer “Dear Heavenly Father”. He is my Heavenly Father. However, He is so much more!

Today’s lesson was excellent. Having to pray as though God was not sovereign was a worthy experience and should become a consistent activity. And, thinking of the various personalities of God in our prayer is helpful to our faith.

Think of a large family owned business. You have a father, a son/daughter working together with many other employees. If there is a problem at the office the family would not generally refer to the parent / child relationship but rather the owner/supervisor relationship. Or, if the owner had a child starting at the bottom, the owner could not allow the parent/child relationship to interfere with the business.

What about a father coaching his son’s H.S. baseball team? The personality of the father must be COACH during the games and practices. If his son is the worst on the team, he must quell his fatherly love and sit his son for the sake of the team.

We have been made in the image of God. I often wonder if we do forget that. Like Jeff pointed out, we wouldn’t want to talk to each other the way most of us talk to God. Boring!

Why would our Creator, the Designer of our personality, the Giver of our passions build us to prefer active, vivid and creative communication with each other but not with himself?

Remember, “In His Image” not an image unlike Him!

So, when David was going to fight the Philistines did he think “my Heavenly Father will save me?” or did he think “The God who delivered us from the Egyptians will save us?”

My point is not that God needs us to assign the perfect God personality to Him in our prayers. Maybe we need to.

If our prayers are boring it is not because God is boring. The God Abraham knew at Sodom and Gomorrah was a negotiator. “If you can, will you…”, was the prayer of Abraham.

How about the God of Joshua? He was the God of the Universe, of might and of deliverance. He made the sun to stand still, the walls to crumble and enemies to flee.

We can pray “Dear Heavenly Father, please vanquish are enemies” or we can pray “Our Mighty Fortress, the Defender of your People, Mighty God, the God of Power and Justice, deliver us from our enemies and make the victory ours”

I am in sales. Praying is something I should do more of. How about:

“You are the God that created work. You designed it for our benefit. In the Garden you gave Adam work as a gift. His job was to name your creation and tend to it. Lord, you give us work as a gift. As I go out today I pray that you bless me as I obey your desire that I work. And, as I work Lord I do so to provide for my family. Lord, you say in Matthew that you clothe even the lilies of the field and provide for the sparrows. As I approach business’s today I pray that you open doors and minds because you are the God of Provision and the God who created work for me.”

I know my prayer is not eloquent. I don’t know all the Hebrew names for God that correspond with the personality of God. However, I am satisfied that God cares more that we honor his personalities more than that we know Hebrew.

I think Paul’s lesson in Roman’s about nature declaring the glory of God is probably linked closely to prayer. I say that because without prayer there is no real link to God.

Think about this. What if someone in the jungle didn’t know a thing about Jesus? Paul says that person can know God through creation.

Let’s say this person is feeling that the wind god and the fire god just aren’t working. Instead, he surmises that the God who makes the wind is really the God and not the wind. And, he decides that rain is not a god but who creates rain is.

So, one day he is worrying about his crops and he says “Oh God of the rain, please grant this farmer your blessings so that my crops can grow and feed my family. For without your help I cannot raise enough food to feed my family”.

Do you not think that God would be blessed? Is it likely, possible, and probable that God would accept this man’s faith in Him as Creator? Wouldn’t it be consistent with the Loving God to take that man’s faith in Him as the God of rain and draw him closer and show him that He is the God of everything?

I suspect that we will find a great many Stone Age era people in Heaven. They may not have any inclination of Heaven either but they crossed the river and God will meet them “here I am beloved, I am The God of Rain, Wind, Fire and (by the way) SO MUCH MORE THAN YOU EVER IMAGINED!”

We will probably all learn that God is the God of SO MUCH MORE THAN YOU EVER IMAGINED.

They say we only use a tiny part of our brain. How many of us use only a tiny part of God?

Posted by Kent

Doing Good and Sharing

Hebrews 13:16

"And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased."





I was reading some letters to the editor in the House2House Magazine when I came across this story:

Sunday night before celebration a guy approached me asking prayer for a financial need, along with other life situations which have been difficult for him. Rather than pray for him, we took an offering right there in the lobby of the church. People threw money into a little basket as God led each one. The man needed $150 to pay rent... We handed him over $300, and he wept the rest of the night as we worshipped.

Bugscuffle Arkansas

Some of you had read this story before. I’m posting it again because there’s a new readership. My hope is that it will make us all to be reflective of the meaning and significance of “church”. I’d like to hear the thoughts of others about what they consider the most important aspects of their church experience.

At age 23, and in my senior year of college, I agreed to pastor Friendship Community Church, a very small church on top of a mountain in northwest Arkansas. It was in a good location for a church, because it was on the only paved road on the mountain. We were 10 miles from Devils Den, 16 miles from Hog Eye, and 12 or 13 miles east of Zimmerman Church, the closest other church on the mountain, which was down a dirt highway in a little community called Bugscuffle. Real places. True story.

The Zimmerman Church at Bugscuffle, in her day, was a quaint and beautiful little-white-clapboard building with tall-stately pillars on the front, and tall windows with green shutters and a tall ceiling. The walls, floors and ceiling had an antiquity about them with the simplicity of wainscoting mixed with fine woodwork. But, at that time in 1979, when I first saw her, she was vacant and broken down. The weeds and underbrush had overtaken the churchyard, the roof leaking, the windows busted, front door hanging on broken hinge, shutters askew, and random floorboards torn up. This beautiful little place, where people, in distant time past, gathered and raised voices of praise to God, had a stench about it, and was trashed with the filth of cobwebs, empty nutshells and the fodder of mice and squirrels, and the leavings of visiting raccoons and other Arkansas vermin.

I remember the feelings of wonder, curiosity and sadness that I felt at the sight. It was something that I had to take time to breathe in, and let the quietness of the place sink deeply into my soul.

Arkansas was hot and humid in the summer, and you had to accept the fact that you were all sweaty, and there wasn't much breeze in this wooded area to give any relief. And you had to watch your step or where you put your hand because of the possibility of snakes or scorpions. Your desire to explore, and your feelings of caution, and the discomfort of the sweat got all mixed together, so that the experience was creepy and miserable and intriguing, all at the same time. In a place like that it's hard to know if you're welcome or if you're trespassing; you know what I mean.

I couldn't help but to picture what it must have been like for the people who worshiped and fellowshipped there. I wondered if the preacher had been fiery or boring, and I wondered if they had had a piano or handmade stringed instruments to accompany the singing. They probably had an itinerate preacher, who maybe just quit coming, or maybe, they had their very own minister once, that they ran out of town, or perhaps he took sick and died. But, all was quiet now, a house of cobwebs and dirty floors, and a refuge for snakes and bugs.

Something happened at Bugscuffle. Whether it was a family feud or a church fight, or if it just withered and died, no one seemed to know, or they weren't willing to say. I wondered what memories the pulpit, the walls and pews could tell, whether there were revivals, and savings, and movings of the Spirit, but they too were silent.

God, obviously, no longer visited the building. I wondered if He still visited any of the people that were once in fellowship there. "Were there any still living? Where were their families? Would the Lord have me to try to reach them? How could I reach them?" It wasn't that the people in those parts would go a distance to another church, and there was no other church within normal range, and each community had its own identity and was tightly knit, and exclusive. They probably wouldn't come out to Friendship Church where I was pastor, and they may not have been welcomed there.

"Maybe I could be an itinerate preacher. Maybe I could pastor in both places", I thought. I thought about how wonderful it would be to restore the Zimmerman Church and to bring the people back together for Bible study and worship, and to get them to overcome their differences and to love one-another and to reach out and touch the lives of others with the love of Christ. The elders and the people down at friendship didn't think so. Besides, they weren't willing to share their preacher. They had their own to take care of. Let the people down at Bugscuffle look out for themselves.

I was wondering if the place wasn't providentially named, Bugscuffle, or if someone named the place because of what happened there. When I picture what a bug scuffle looks like, I see two beetles with locked horns and claws in a struggle that results in death and destruction.

I'm fairly certain that Friendship Community wasn't providentially named. I'm not real sure what the name was intended to mean, but at least there weren't any spiders and snakes, and we had a piano, and there was central air.

Whether Anybody Knows It or Not!

Photo from the movie, The Passion of the Christ

"In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being"... Hebrews 1:1-3

I was thinking about revelation - not the book of the Revelation, but the concept of revelation. Revelation is God showing us things about Himself which we could not otherwise know or discover. According to the Hebrews passage and other passages in the Bible, God reveals Himself to us in many ways, but Jesus is the ultimate revelation of what He is like.

Who would ever have imagined that God would be loving of humanity to the point of total self sacrifice as seen above? You and I would never think it, if it hadn't actually taken place in history. And, think about the person who had never heard of Jesus (yes, and there are millions who have never heard of Jesus); how would they ever discover that God loves them as much? Assuming the person never met a preacher, a missionary, or a believer, and that the person has no access to any historical record of the event, it would seem that they couldn't know it and they couldn't discover it unless God chose to reveal it in some supernatural way. (He does do that, you know)

Interestingly, God's chosen people, Israel, had all the revelation.

"Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ"... Romans 9:4-5

They even had Jesus, the ultimate revelation of God, with them in real time, and even witnessed His crucifixion first hand; yet, they didn't understand the image of God that Jesus presented, and they failed to believe and to obey.

So then, wouldn't you agree with me that the abundance of revelation, and the clarity the revelation they received, didn't guarantee faith and obedience? Yet, according to Romans10:19-20, the gentiles who weren't even seeking God, and who didn't have abundance of revelation, or clear revelation of God, found Him anyway. This is most amazing to me!

Well, If that is true, then what makes us think that the "unreached peoples of the world" will ultimitly not find God, or be found by Him?

And here's another question. Does a person really have to understand the details of the redemptive plan of God in Christ for it to have taken place? The fact that Jesus died for the sins of the whole world isn't negated because there are people who don't know about it, or because there are people who don't completely understand it, is it?

This raises interesting questions. More to come in the comments section.

Let's talk about the Holy Spirit.

OK, jross. Thank you for bringing us down to Earth.





To all,

Here's what jross commented on an earlier post:

Seekers, I've been waiting for a new theme of discussion,and since none has materialized, I decided to start the discussion on "sensitivity to the Spirit" that Dale mentioned in his original post. Coming from a non-charismatic church background and being fairly nondemonstrative emotionally myself, I've always been fairly skeptical of others who claim to have been "led by the Spirit" to do this or that--particularly when the "this" or "that" appeared to be just a whim of that individual...But lately, maybe due to God's stirring (?), I'm beginning to think that the Holy Spirit is working in my life and in other's lives in very specific ways. Don't get me wrong, theologically and intellectually I always believed that He COULD direct individuals in very specific ways, but I have been very reluctant to attribute it to Him. Jross

I am with you, jross. I recently told a leader in a nearby charismatic church that I have a theology of the Holy Spirit, but I don't have an experience. Yea, well, maybe... well... probably I do have experience, but I am hesitant to claim it.

I am also sensing His leading more and more... I think. And honestly, I've shared it with a chosen few, but I've been silent with the larger group. I guess I'm waiting for a sense of the right timing.

Is anyone else thinking the same? Is anyone willing to talk about it?

And, jross, I'm wondering what leading are you sensing?

A Question about Time

This post is about our limited and earth-centric concept of time.

It may be that you have never considered the fact that God's sense of time is not earth-centric. My perception about God and time is that He seems never to be pressed by time like we are. He doesn't seem to be in a hurry about anything.

The photo seen above is of the planet jupiter, with two of her moons in view, the closer moon, Lo, and the small dot to the far right, Europa.

Jupiter is 2.5 times more massive than all the other planets combined, so massive that its barycenter with the Sun actually lies above the Sun's surface (1.068 solar radii from the Sun's center). It is 318 times more massive than Earth, with a diameter 11 times that of Earth, and with a volume 1300 times that of Earth.

Jupiter also has the fastest rotation rate of any planet within the solar system, making a complete rotation on its axis in slightly less than ten hours, which results in an equatorial bulge easily seen through an Earth-based amateur telescope.
(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter )

If we use the standard of time set by the rotational speed of the Earth, and as measured by our wrist watches, a day on Jupiter would only be about 9 hours and 50 minutes long.

I'm not sure how a month on Jupiter would be determined. Our months on Earth have something to do with the time it takes for our moon to make one revolvolution around the Earth. Jupiter has 60 moons, each of which has a different orbit schedule. For example: for every four orbits that Lo makes around Jupiter, Europa makes exactly two orbits and Ganymede makes exactly one. So unless we choose one of the 60 moons and set it's orbit as the standard, we would not be able to determine the length of months or how many months are in a year.

What about years? A year on Jupiter is equal to 4,380 Earth days of 24 hours each, or aproxomately 10,512 Jupiter days of 10 hours each.

Point of application: When the Bible says that one day to the Lord is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day, it is likely that it is only using figurative speech to tell us that God doesn't operate on the same time schedule as we do.

Question: Is there any practical spiritual insight, or any down-to-earth application that you and I can gain from this?