Dreams...What's the Point?

During my childhood/early teen years I had a lot of nightmares. No matter what I did, I couldn't get them to stop. I would get so frustrated because they were so vivid. Some weeks I wouldn't sleep a lot. I remember a couple times waking up and thinking what I had dreamed about had actually happened. There are some I still remember as though they happened last night, that still terrify me. I would ask the Lord over and over "Why am I having these dreams? What is the point?", but I wouldn't get an answer. Eventually I started asking to not dream at all. It was difficult to go to sleep sometimes, knowing the nightmares would come. I didn't understand at that point that God had given me authority over them, so I did the only thing I knew how and asked Him to take the dreaming - good and bad - away because it was too much. So He did. I didn't dream about anything for a long time, many years. But I still carried around the question: "what is the purpose of dreaming if it frequently turns into a nightmare?".

During college, somewhere around 20, I wanted to start dreaming again. I figured I was older and should be able to handle what comes at me a lot better, so I asked God if I could dream again. Just as He took them away, He let them come back. Slowly, but they came back. For a little while there were no nightmares, and then they came back full force; especially when I was sleeping in certain places. They became vivid more often, with greater emotion inflicted. This time around, though, I would talk with people about what to do. I started praying before going to bed. If I had a nightmare during the night, I would pray every time it would wake me up. And I kept asking the Lord, "What is the purpose of dreaming?".

Gradually the nightmares lessened. I still dreamed, but less often. When I did dream, it would become ingrained in my mind, more real. Eventually I started writing them down, whether nightmare or not. I went to a dream seminar to learn about interpreting dreams and to try and understand better the purpose of them. But it wasn't until today that I really heard and accepted the answer to my question.

Dreams are the Lord's way of speaking to us. Nightmares come from Satan trying to rob us of communication with Him. (I have noticed that friends of mine who receive many dreams from the Lord, often started out having many nightmares.) Of course not all dreams are from the Lord. Some occur because of what we think about during the day, or stressful situations in life. However, they always show us things about ourselves or others. We can't control things when we are dreaming. We can't stop ourselves, while sleeping, from dreaming. Don't ever discard a dream or nightmare. Write them down. Pray about them. Because there is always something being said through them, you just need to find it.

Narnia. Who Knew?

It amazes me some of the ways the Lord chooses to bring revelation. As I was driving home from a short trip to VT the Lord started to speak to me through C.S. Lewis' book The Horse and His Boy. It was a surprise as Jesus started revealing things in my heart.

It was near the end of the book when Shasta is bemoaning his misfortune over his life, and how he has come upon several lions throughout his trip that terrified him when normal people wouldn't even see one in their lifetime. Basically he's complaining. Amidst his self-pity and turmoil Aslan - a symbol of God - comes to him and enlightens him about the events that have happened in his life that he views as 'unfortunate'.

Here is part of the dialogue that occurs between the two.

"Aslan: You believe you are unfortunate. Why?

Shasta: Why Wouldn’t I? If only you knew what my life has been like.

Aslan: Tell me.

Shasta: Well I’m no better than an orphan. I’ve never known my real mother or father, and I was brought up by a cruel fisherman. And then finally I was able to escape. But for what? To get chased by lions and mistaken for someone else in Tashban? And to get frightened half to death by some beasts near the tombs? And suffer from heat and thirst in the desert, and then just as we’re about to reach our goal I get chased by another lion who wounded poor Arivus? And, and…now I’m lost and miserable.

...

Aslan: I was the lion who forced you to join with Arivus. I was the cat who comforted you among the tombs. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay a child near death so that it came to shore where a man sat wakeful at midnight to receive you."

As I was listening to this play out, the difference between God's perspective and my perspective or anyone's is so different. We as humans see things that happen in our lives a certain way. Just as Shasta saw pretty much everything in his life was unfortunate we tend to do the same thing at times. We bemoan the state our life is in or an event that occurred that we would have liked to see go differently or the perplexity of something. It reminds me of the story where two people stood opposite each other looking at a glass ball. When asked what color it is, one person says black and the other white. When hearing the others answer each person gets angry and starts arguing. It isn't until one person walks over to the other side to see why the other person sees another color do they realize that the person was seeing it from a different perspective. Sometimes we do that with God. We stand on the other side of the ball and argue with Him that He is wrong. There's no way His side could be white and ours black. It isn't until we let go of our perspective and pride and look at a situation from His perspective that we see the truth. His perspective is always the right one. He sees the big picture more than we will ever be able to and He knows why things happen.

You're probably thinking I should have known this beforehand. And guess what...I did, just not in my heart; the only true way to know something. When we evaluate the things in our life and decide to complain about them or throw ourselves a pity party, we need to step back and ask God to show us the situation from His perspective. You might be surprised as Shasta was to discover His side of the ball.