Always seeing something I didn’t see before…Dreaming

I don’t put a whole lot of stock in my dreams, meaning the ones I have when I am sleeping and not the ones I have during my waking hours. I typically don’t remember my dreams, but there have been a few times where my dreams have awoken me in the middle of the night. Some of them were pretty vivid and many of them have dealt with losing someone I loved or being involved in some kind of struggle with evil.

For some reason I have never been inclined to determine the interpretation of any of those dreams. I typically just shrug them off as…well…as a dream. It’s not real so it must not be significant. However, dreaming in the Bible has a whole other perspective. Dreams are given some pretty serious ink in scripture.

One dream I can remember learning in Sunday School and I have read before on more than one occasion is the dream that King Nebuchadnezzar has in Daniel 2, which I read today. It may seem amazing, but the more I study scripture the more I realize how little I really know, but I don’t think I knew that Daniel not only had to interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, but he had to tell King Nebi what he had dreamed.  Nebuchadnezzar put so much stock into this dream, and most likely was so afraid of what it meant that he wanted to make sure that it’s interpretation was spot on. What better way to do that then to ask all of your “wisemen” to tell you what the dream was? I mean if they had a connection to a supernatural power that could interpret the dream, then telling the “wisemen” what the dream was should not be any task too hard.

Principles I learned today:

1) Life’s greatest challenges produce the greatest opportunities for faith and for earthly rewards. I’m not a health and wealth guy. In fact, my theology of the end times excludes any notion of a rapture prior to any tribulation. My reasoning is simple. If the disciples were killed, then why wouldn’t we be tortured even more. Whether cancer be the one knocking at your door or the commander of the King’s army the challenge that lies ahead will not be easy, will not guarantee freedom from other challenges, but will be an opportunity for God to be glorified, to increase our faith, and quite possibly reap some worldy benefits – especially if the king is involved.

2) Just because you’ve been asked to do the impossible doesn’t mean it’s impossible to do if you ask for help. This is a big one for me because I hate to ask for help. I don’t necessarily fail in asking for God’s help, but I fail miserably at asking for help from friends. I need to humble myself often by asking friends for help.

3) Pay attention to your dreams. I may start journaling my sleeping dreams, but maybe that was the media of the day. Maybe with technology and mass media God is communicating visually and personally through those avenues, but I think I’m going to start with the dreams and see where that takes me.

Principle reinforced

There is always going to be something you didn’t see before when it comes to scripture. So, read it…every day…year around.