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Most Christians, even those who are only just slightly beyond the baby Christian stage, realize the importance of dreams in the Bible. It was and still is one of the ways in which God communicates with us.
We remember the dreams of many key Bible characters. Here are just a few.
Of course, God also warns of pretend-prophets (prophets-for-profit), who claim falsely that they have a dream from God.
But God also declared through the prophet Joel that even in New Testament times, that dreams would still be a means which God uses to communicate.
Joel 2:28 And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions:
In our era, many non-Christians, as well as Christians study to learn how to interpret dreams, and how to distinguish bona fide “God dreams” from “gut dreams.”
By the latter, we are referring to the well-known fact that eating rich foods late in the day or evening, that the subsequent digestive processes can cause vivid dreams, sometimes not so pleasant ones.
Many students of the phenomenon of dreaming also agree that sometimes dreams are neither “God dreams” nor “gut dreams,” but are rather the mind-brain’s way of organizing the memories of the day’s activities, storing the important stuff, and getting rid of the unnecessary clutter, or we could say “taking out the garbage.”
With all that as background, I wish to share a dream I had some time ago which made such an impression on me that as soon as I was awake enough to do so, I grabbed my little pocket-sized digital recorder off my night stand and dictated the dream while it was still fresh in my memory. Here is my contemporaneous narrative.
It is Tuesday morning, October 13, 2020. I have been laying here, thinking about a dream I had—just a short time ago—when I was in that state of half-asleep/half-awake. It was around 5:30 a.m.
Anyhow, it was just a weird dream where I don’t remember hardly anything of the details except I was flipping pages in a 3-ring binder where all the pages were of 30-per-page address labels, but almost all the labels were gone.
In my dream, or my half-awake state—I had not opened my eyes yet—I can’t tell you if I was saying this in the dream or if I was waking up and thinking about it—I don’t know. But anyhow—this might sound silly—I wondered if it meant anything. So I just asked the Father in my mind: “Is there any spiritual or prophetic significance to this?”
And immediately the thought occurred to me—in other words, He answered and said, “Naw, son, I’m just taking out the garbage.”
In my dream I just giggled, which soon turned into a hearty laugh. And then I was beginning to be fully conscious and I’m pretty sure I giggled out loud a little bit, just thinking of the irony or incongruity of it: the Creator of the universe taking out the garbage!
And then the Scripture came to my mind immediately, which I recollected as “He that would be the greatest, would be the servant of all.” When I looked it up later, I seem to have conflated several verses, but still the meaning is the same. Here are the actual verses from the KJV.
Matthew 23:11 But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.
Mark 9:35 And he sat down, and called the twelve, and saith unto them, If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all.
Mark 10:44 And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all.
After I was done giggling, the Father added this: “Yeah, son, I do this for all my children.”
The thought occurred to me, He does this for ALL His children?!
“Yeah, for centuries, millennia, ever since time began!”
And I thought, what a humble Servant He is! Not that He is a genie in a bottle, but He is demonstrating leadership by example.
And then I got a lump in my throat and tears began to well up in my eyes as I thought, What a Papa!
It gives a whole new meaning to many years ago when I needed to be reminded by my wife to take out the garbage.
So I thought I would pass this along to you men who are married, or to you younger folks who still live at home and are assigned this chore—to remind you to remember this dream and do it with a smile, willingly, and remembering that the heavenly Father has been doing it for us—perhaps every night—since time began…for ALL His children.
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