The Permission to Dream Again...

Some time ago, our pastor asked us on a Sunday morning, “If you could do anything you wanted to do, and time and/or money was not an object, what would you do?”

The dreamers among us immediately began to make lists of the dreams on their hearts: to paint – create works of art as a full time job; to travel anywhere and everywhere; to pay off all of my friends’ mortgages and car loans; to join Heidi Baker loving the children of Mozambique…

But my first reaction to the pastor’s words was to freeze and go blank.  And I dare say that I was not alone in my reaction.  For some of us have not allowed ourselves to dream for so long that we don’t know what to do with an offer like that. 

Sometimes it seems I believe in “the God of the second shoe”.  Yes, there are blessings in my life, but there’s this nagging thought at the back of my mind saying “Just wait – don’t get too excited.  That second shoe will drop.  It’s not a matter of ‘if’, but ‘when’.”

Yet I have seen what happens when someone begins to dream again.  One evening at Shore Vineyard Destiny Healing Rooms, a quiet young man came for prayer for severe depression.  He was way too young to be stuck, with his whole life ahead of him.  We prayed for him for a while.  Then I asked him, “what would you really like to do, if you could do anything you wanted?”, and it was as if a light switch was turned on in his face.  He began to smile as he told us the dreams of his heart, what he really wanted to do with his life.  Then we prayed again with him.  We prayed that the God who loved him and loved the dreams of his heart, the one who had created him for that very thing that made him feel alive, would fulfill those dreams and desires in his life.

I believe God has a word for his kids as 2014 ends and 2015 begins.  I believe he is saying “You have my permission to dream again.  You are not too old, too young, too frail, too sick, too soiled, too anything.  It’s not too late.  It’s time to dream again.  I am not the God of the second shoe!  I am the God who created you to dream with me, and see those dreams come to life.  For I am right here, dreaming alongside you.  

Some of you will paint pictures that will touch thousands of people, because my Spirit will communicate through peoples’ eye gates as they gaze on what you have painted.  Some of you will lay your hands on people with pancreatic cancer and see them healed before your eyes.  Others will travel the world praying and changing people and places by powerful words and prayers straight from your heart, and mine.  Some will get that reconciliation in your families that you have wept and prayed for in your secret time with me.  Some of you mamas will see the joy you prayed for – I have no greater joy than this, than to see my children walking in the truth.  There will be books published that touch people with my glory around the world.  You will feed the hungry.  You will release captives and teach them to abide in my freedom.  You will carry my presence wherever you go.  Signs and wonder will follow you, as you follow me.

You have my permission, my command.  Dream!  Dream big.  I am dreaming with and in you.  I love you and I love your dreams.  I’ll tweak them if I need to, but don’t hold anything back.  Dream huge, dream often, dream with me.  You have my permission to dream again."

Come and dream with me!

IF YOU LOVE ME, LEAN HARD

 

Facing some uncertain things right now, I could not wait to run into the arms of my Daddy yesterday and spill it all out to him in my journal.  I asked him some hard questions.

Daddy, in your word it talks about never seeing the righteous begging for bread, but I do see your kids desperate like that sometimes.  What about your people running from ISIS in the mountains of Iraq?  Daddy, it looks like sometimes you don't take care of your kids - you let them die.  What's up with that, Daddy?

"Then what happens?"

They're with you, and everything is ok.

But they suffer so, Daddy.  Will I suffer so, too?

"I am your Daddy.  Trust me.  I will provide for you and your little ones."

Daddy, I have no more little ones.

"Yes, you are a mama to many little ones.  They watch you.  They learn to trust me by watching you.  If you love me, lean hard."

Give me a scripture, Daddy.

1 Samuel 11:1-11.  God's people at Jabesh Gilead were attacked by the Ammonites.  The people tried to make a treaty with them, but the Ammonites gave them one condition for the treaty.  They would gouge out the right eye of every person of Israel, so that God's people would live in disgrace. God's people asked for 7 days to decide if they would submit to this condition, then they sent word to all of Israel to see if they could get some help or not.  Newly crowned King Saul heard about it and gathered the troops in their defense.  During the last watch of the night before the city of Jabesh Gilead was supposed to be handed over to the Ammonites, Saul sent 3 divisions of soldiers into the Ammonites' camp and slaughtered them until the heat of the day.

Never mind that all of this happened right after the prophet Samuel had told the Israelites that they had sinned against the Lord in even asking for a king.  Would God reject them for their rejection of him?  No, instead Samuel tells the people, "For the sake of  his great name, the Lord will not reject his people, because the Lord was pleased to make you his own." 1 Samuel 12:22.

Daddy, you were somehow pleased to make me your own, to be able to say, this one's mine - that pleased the God of the Universe, the King of all creation.  Why in the world did it please you to make me, Taffy Spaloss, your own?

And he whispered in my heart some of his reasons, as he will whisper to you when you ask him what he loves and treasures about you.

I thought then of Hinds Feet on High Places, and the times Much Afraid chose to trust her Shepherd when faced with impossibilities along her journey to the high places.

"Here I am, your little handmaiden, Trusting in Uncertainty."

Here I am,

Resting in your goodness.

Leaning HARD

On your everlasting arms.

Placing all that I have, 

All that I am, 

On the One who says of me,

"For the sake of my great name,

I, the Lord, will not reject you,

Because it gives me great pleasure

To make you my own".

Taken from 1 Samuel 12:22.

Daffodil

Here she comes,

Her bright green stalk

Bursting through spring snow

Tall, proud, bud stretching skyward toward the sun.

Then a brilliant yellow flash!

The daffodil briefly lifts her sunshine bonnet heavenward,

Then bows her lovely head:

The created glory deferring

To the greater glory of Creator.

Tidbits from Hebrews

“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts…”  

I was reading these words one morning in Hebrews 3, leading up to that amazing chapter 4 where God describes what it’s like to rest in him.  I felt like he was saying, “Enter my rest. Don’t let unbelief keep you on the other side of the window, your face pressed against the glass, watching others enjoy life, enjoy me and my presence.  It is your choice, not your fate, that keeps you there on the outside looking in.”

So, I listened, and here’s what I heard Daddy singing over me this morning:

I’m not like your father.

I’m not like your father.

I will always see you.

Always hear you.

Always help you.

Always love you.

I am not like your father.

Listen.  What is Daddy singing over you?

That Sucker is Not Coming Down!

Our microwave is on the fritz, sending my husband, Jimmy into one of his soapbox messages on how things are built today.

“They make everything to break, so you have to buy it again.  That’s not how I build things,” he declares.

I have seen him build, even just to put a shelf up in my sewing room.  Extra nails, extra screws. “That sucker is not coming down”, he promises.  And in those times when he does actually have to take apart something he has made, it’s a big chore due to all those extra pieces of hardware, and the heaviness and quality of the wood.  

 Just read a word this morning from Bob Hartley (here is link to read for yourself: http://elijahlist.com/words/display_word.html?ID=12999), where God spoke to him about building.  At the end of the article Bob asked God questions, and to each question God responded “Go forth and build”…”Go, build and have fun”…

So what kind of building is God in the business of doing?  Does he want us to build in such a way that broken people have to rely on us forever, like we are led to believe is the manufacturer's motive in creating microwaves whose doors no longer latch so they cannot run anymore?    I believe God says NO to that building motive since it does not line up with his heart to honor and empower people to be who he created them to be.

We are called to bring the Kingdom of God wherever we go.  We invite people to see God, to see what God sees in them, and be part of this heaven coming to earth called the Kingdom of God.  Like Jimmy, we build to last, not to make people rely on us to sustain them and keep them dependent on us to feed them lest they starve.  Instead, we teach them to taste and see that the Lord is so good, to learn to feed on him themselves.  So our ceiling becomes their floor, from glory to glory.

And “that sucker is not coming down!”