I’m just chilling in North Carolina at the time of writing this. I’ve mentioned previously that I’m here for a missions conference and an alumni reunion for the Bible school I attended. The theme for the reunion event was Restoration. For the last few weeks God has done a work in my heart and removed some things/issues in my life, and days before I left Holland I could tell the difference, but I was still looking forward to what God would do in my life as a result of going to the conference.
I can count on my hand how many times in my life the Lord has given me potent dreams that were penned by Him. This week, I have had one every single night. Sometimes more than one per night. I don’t mean ones where we don’t remember them later, but the ones so strong you can’t forget. Sometimes dreams are just simply your own spirit conjuring up images of things on your mind or heart and putting them before you in a dream. Other times it’s the devil trying to throw you off, other times the Lord does speak to you through your dreams as one of the many ways He communicates with your spirit. Other times, it’s just your own flesh (mind and emotions). For example, if you are infatuated with a member of the opposite gender, and keep having dreams about them, it probably isn’t God or the devil speaking to you, but your own desires manifesting in dream form, just for clarification.
But I’ve had these dreams every night that are ripe with symbolism. One in particular sticks out, and I think it benefits anyone who wants to hear my thoughts–you wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t, right?
So the other night, I had this dream that I was back in Holland, with a bunch of Christians, as well as Pyter Boomsma on some kind of tour boat going through one of the canals characteristic of the Netherlands. It was not clear to me where it was. This girl was put on a seat in the back, and started shaking and convulsing, frothing at the mouth, eyes rolling around back in her head and just shaking and manifesting a demon, or many. I mean, in the dream, this girl was messed up! I started to look around to see the reactions of the other Christians around me, and they all had an attitude that this girl was far gone and nothing could be done for her. Others present had tried doing things and praying things for her release from these demons, to no avail, and were now looking at me and Pyter as naïve young arrogant men for thinking we could. Our youthful zeal about setting this woman free was repulsive even to those around us who had seen no fruit from their own labors.
So Pyter and I began praying in the Spirit; we were commanding and rebuking spirits in her and seeing her react violently to it, and then calming down somewhat moments later. But we had a battle ahead of us and spent considerable time praying for her and doing warfare over her soul and spirit. All the while, the Christians around us are shouting and yelling things to discourage us, and saying we’ll never accomplish anything, or that they’ve tried this and it didn’t work, who do we think we are if they couldn’t do it, and stuff like that.
We ignored them.
As a side note, I’ve already been around enough years in my short lived life as a Christian to know the biggest obstacles to doing great exploits for God are other Christians in your life who don’t want to believe for big things themselves. When you meet people like that in your life, bless them, but ignore them. They will always try to put out your fire as a result of their discouragement and failures or lack of ambitions for their own life. Cling to those who’ve gone before you with success.
We were laboring in prayer and warfare and just praying in the Spirit for a while (in the dream), and we were seeing gradual result, one thing going to normal after another in this girl. Then finally, I was almost tired and ready to give up, the words of the other people on the boat really getting to me and causing me discouragement. I tell Pyter I’ve done my best, and that God is happy with our effort. He looks at me and gets this determined look on his face and says “but she’s not free”. He insists on trying one more thing; he proceeds to stand straight and closes his eyes and speaks a word of knowledge about something in this woman’s life, and rebukes a specific demonic spirit by name, and immediately she calms down and sits still in her right mind.
After all that time, there was something specific to deal with that if we had paid attention to the Lord’s prompting, we could have dealt with it head on in the first place and saved ourselves all the bother we spent in prayer. When the rest of those Christians on this boat with us realized what happened, many of them started to applaud and cheer us on, encouraging us with words like “we knew you could do it, we had faith in you, good job” which was the opposite—they had been trying to discourage us from trying! But now that we succeeded in this girl’s life where they had failed, they were happy for us.
The night after this dream, I went to the healing team ministry’s meeting at some FIRE students’ house. As the students go out to malls and streets looking for people to pray over for healing, they meet first for some prayer, worship and practical teaching. This week a sister shared about operating in the prophetic and with words of knowledge and told how sometimes God gives dreams and then you go find people in real life who fit the description. For example, she shared about having a dream or something about a purple jacket, and going out witnessing and meeting a woman wearing a purple jacket in the middle of summer. After asking her about why she was wearing it the woman told her she had some condition, and she felt cold, even in this heat, so this sister and her friends prayed for her and she was totally free and healed and other obvious symptoms of her illness disappeared right away. She shared such examples like that about what the Lord could do with our dreams.
So obviously this stirred me up to wonder if Pyter (who was there) and I might possibly run into someone who met the conditions of my dream. I shared it with him, and it encouraged him and we both desired to see something like this in real life. I’d love to tell you we did, but it didn’t happen. In fact, I didn’t hear of any testimonies of radical healing. The only person I got to talk with, was from ordering a slice of pizza in the food court and sitting next to a man who looked dejected. People having their hands in their face usually gives me that impression, eh. The Lord prompted me to ask him questions about his job, and after telling me his travels keep him from his family, I offered to pray for him, which he declined but listened to me as I shared about the love of God. That may not sound like an amazing testimony to share about healing, but Lord knows what kind of seeds may have been planted in his life as a result of some complete stranger sitting down with him in a mall and listening to him for a moment.
Getting back on topic with this dream; I’ve been seeking God and asking him about this dream, and if there was anything relevant about it other than making a point to me and giving me understanding about something, and he reminded me of how discouraged I’ve gotten listening to other people raining on my parade dissuading me from doing great big things for God.
Friends, when you decide to step out and do something for God, I’m telling you, Christians will be the ones to try to stop you. That’s not the whole point of this dream of course, but it sticks out in my mind how we had the tenacity of faith to go for it when everyone else in the dream said we couldn’t, then when we did what everyone else couldn’t, their minds were changed.
Don’t be surprised if you see the same reaction in those around you when you step out and change history in your own world.
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