Dreams and intimacy with God

🌷JOHN ARNOTT: "DREAMS AND INTIMACY WITH GOD"

Dreams, as common as they are to all of us, are nonetheless very often overlooked, ignored, or dismissed as a curious result of a double-cheese pizza the night before. Sometimes, as in the case of recurring nightmares, they can be feared or even hated.

But the Bible has much to say about dreams and visions, and it’s important to understand that they have great power to change your life. I remember years ago, in the mid-1980s, as Carol and I had planted our first church in her hometown of Stratford, Ontario, I started to take dreams seriously and began studying them in Scripture. I did a word search on my primitive computer, looking for every time the words dream and vision are used in the Bible. I then printed out the whole list on fanfold paper, and it stretched the entire width of our church. It was a graphic reminder of how abundant and important dreams and visions are in Scripture. I began to take dreams even more seriously.

I remembered that Joseph believed Mary’s story of her virgin conception because of a dream he had and also that after Messiah was born, Joseph fled with his family to Egypt, saving Christ’s life from Herod’s butchers, all because of another dream (see Matt. 1:20- 25; 2:13-15). Wow!

Let me tell you of a life-changing dream I had over thirty years ago.

In the dream, I was told to go to Buffalo, New York, to bring home three pint-sized bottles of cream. Some of you older readers may remember when milk was delivered to your door in quart-sized glass bottles and cream in pint-sized glass bottles (for you younger readers, a pint is about half a liter). Well, in the dream, it was the best cream ever.

I woke up excited, sensing something was up. I related my dream to Carol, and together we immediately took the two-and-a-half- hour drive to Buffalo to see if God would open up anything to us. I knew only one person in Buffalo, and that was Pastor Tommy Reid from The Tabernacle. I didn’t know him at all, really. I had merely said a brief “hello” to him while attending a recent conference at his church.

We arrived at The Tabernacle in the early afternoon. Pastor Tommy was not in, but we met with Gordon Spiller, who was then the dean of the newly formed Buffalo School of the Bible, a Bible school based out of this church. I was very interested in the courses of study that were shown me.

We soon met Mark Virkler, one of their main teachers, and began a friendship that has endured for more than three decades. We have since met his wife Patti and his children, Charity and Joshua, on many occasions.

Well, Carol and I returned home with a manual on “Hearing God’s Voice,” which turned out to be spiritual “cream” of the highest and best order. We had no idea of the fantastic journey of the heart that was being put into our hands. That dream of the cream bottles changed the course of our spiritual destiny!

We brought home what was soon to become one of our four core FIRE values that have formed the basis of our ministry: “intimacy,” or hearing the voice of God. This wonderful teaching from Mark has transformed our lives. It became the fountainhead of all that we hear from the Holy Spirit, including words of knowledge, prophetic words, visions, and even dreams. It amazes me to this day that had I not had that dream of the cream bottles over thirty years ago, our ministry today would be very different indeed.

Our four core values are layered on top of a biblical, evangelical, charismatic statement of faith. They are as follows:

🌲 F—A revelation of the Father’s love (see Matt. 11:27; Luke 10:22 NIV).
🎺 I—Intimacy, or hearing the voice of God, a value whose discovery we owe to Mark Virkler. Our life and ministry were transformed through this dialogue and intimacy with God.
🍦R—Restoration, teaching, healing and deliverance for life’s hurts.
🎶 E—And finally a power and love encounter from the Holy Spirit. This took everything in our ministry to a whole new level of relationship, healing, and evangelism.

The first three, on which we worked faithfully throughout the ’80s and early ’90s, are the fulfillment of my dream about the. three cream bottles. These values prepared us and our church teams for the 🌲fourth bottle of cream: a mighty outpouring of the Holy Spirit in power and love that would become known as the🌷 “Toronto Blessing.” God is so much more than history, tradition, and Bible study. He pursues us for a dynamic love affair with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.💒

Dreams and their interpretations are therefore of the utmost spiritual importance. There is a promise from the Book of Joel that is quoted by Peter on the Day of Pentecost. Peter says that God’s Holy Spirit will be poured out on all flesh and they will prophesy, see visions, and dream dreams (see Joel 2:28; Acts 2:17). Dreams are absolutely the will of God. They always have been—and so much the more now for us who live in the last of the last days. Joel’s prophecy is pointing to you and me.

As Dr. Charity Virkler Kayembe points out in her book, 🎵Hearing God Through Your Dreams, dreams are one of the main avenues that God uses to communicate with His people. Numbers 12:6 clearly states, “If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord make Myself known to him in a vision; I speak with him in a dream” (ESV).

I strongly encourage you to read this book. Read it carefully, as a new adventure into the promises of God and new experiences with God.

In Hearing God Through Your Dreams, Dr. Charity—daughter of Mark and Patti Virkler—writes out a complete inventory of all the dreams recorded in the Bible, walking the reader through the 🎻various kinds of dreams that one may have from the Lord. Dreams are usually 🌷subjective, she explains, but occasionally objective and intended for others. They are usually🌹 figurative, symbolic, and allegorical, but not always, as occasionally there are literal dreams such as the Angel of the Lord’s message to Joseph in Matthew 1:20-23.

She explains how there is a 🎷symbolic language to be learned. It varies for every person, as the same symbols often mean different things to different people. If you learn this language, you’ll be able to discover powerful and meaningful messages and💒 insights from God.

All of humanity is desperate to hear a word from God. People are seeking bizarre and unbiblical experiences. They are even searching for occult communications because so many do not know🔥 how available God really is. He truly is available to each and every one of us through 💡dreams, through His Word, and through two-way communication with Him. Jesus said, “My sheep hear My voice... and they follow Me” (John 10:27).

I was greatly challenged by this book and motivated to focus again on the importance of 💤💤dreams from the Lord. It helped me to change some things. I now prepare 🚘my heart before going to sleep at night, putting paper and pen beside my bed. I take care to see that my final 🚞thoughts for the day are biblical and wholesome instead of going to sleep after watching the evening news, which is full of problems and disasters. I am asking God in🔦 faith to speak to me more than ever in dreams and revelations in the night.

And do you know what? He’s doing it!

- Dr. John Arnott, Catch the Fire and Partners in Harvest Toronto, Canada

Praying with authority

Praying with Authority           “Elijah the Tishbite... said to Ahab, ‘As the Lord, the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, surely there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.’” 1 Kings 17:1-2 NASB Elijah stood before King Ahab, all alone. Not backed by armies or the faces of friends and colleagues. In the flesh, this could have been a moment to panic. To hesitate or back down. Yet Elijah was fearless and resolute. He was confident that God was with him. He knew that God had given him an assignment and His authority. He was bold enough to speak God’s words to the king. To step out in faith, not concerned about his personal reputation or what the king might do. Faced with similar circumstances, others might have reacted with fear or felt timid in the face of the power of the king. Nineteenth century evangelist, Reuben Archer (R. A.) Torrey, used Elijah’s example to encourage believers to understand the real power of prayer. Torrey, who was born on this day in 1856, realized that most Christians were praying, but few really prayed with authority. He discovered that most believers were hesitant or afraid. Writing more than 100 years ago, Torrey reminded readers about the “astounding things” that were brought to pass because of Elijah’s prayers. At his word, the heavens were closed. And only at his word were they opened again. The Bible reminds us that Elijah did not have superhuman powers, but was a human, just like us (James 5:17). If his prayers had such power, so can ours! Are you willing to pray with authority? Or will you hesitate? Will you allow doubt and disbelief to dominate your heart? Accept the challenge of believing God at His Word. Exercise the authority He already has given you. Believe that prayer changes things. Pray for your country. For leaders. For your family. Your community. For a move of God. For miracles. Prayer Father, I commit these needs to You: ________. I believe that all things are possible. I believe You for miracles. I humble myself before You. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Treasure and wealth

🍑Concern for the Wealthy 💒(Luke 6:25; 12:13-21; 18:18-30)

Bible Commentary / Produced by TOW Project

Jesus’ first problem with wealth is that it tends to displace God in the lives of wealthy people. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Luke 12:34). Jesus wants people to recognize that their lives are defined not by what they have, but by God’s love for them and his call upon their lives. Luke expects us — and the work we do — to be fundamentally transformed by our encounters with Jesus.

Peter Schneck sold a thriving ad agency when he realized it was keeping him from being in a close relationship with his son.

But having wealth seems to make us stubbornly resistant to any transformation of life. It affords us the means to maintain the status quo, to become independent, to do things our own way. True, or eternal, life is a life of relationship with God (and other people), and wealth that displaces God leads ultimately to eternal death. As Jesus said, “What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves?” (Luke 9:25). The wealthy may be lured away from life with God by their own wealth, a fate that the poor escape. “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God,” says Jesus (Luke 6:20). This is not a promise of future reward, but a statement of present reality. The poor have no wealth to stand in the way of loving God. But “woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry” (Luke 6:25). “Be hungry” seems a bit of an understatement for “miss eternal life by putting God outside your orbit of interest,” but that is clearly the implication. Yet perhaps there is hope even for the wretchedly rich.

THE PARABLE OF THE RICH FOOL (LUKE 12:13-21)

The parable of the rich fool (Luke 12:13-21) takes up this theme dramatically. “The land of a rich man produced abundantly,” too much to fit in the man’s barns. “What shall I do?” he worries, and he decides to tear down his barns and build bigger ones. He is among those who believe that more wealth will lead to less worry about money. But before he discovers how empty his worrisome wealth is, he meets an even starker fate: death. As he prepares to die, God’s mocking question is a double-edged sword, “The things you have prepared, whose will they be?” (Luke 12:20). One edge is the answer, “not yours,” for the wealth he counted upon to satisfy him for many years will pass instantly to someone else. The other edge cuts even deeper, and it is the answer, “yours.” You—the rich fool—will indeed get what you have prepared for yourself, a life after death without God, true death indeed. His wealth has prevented him from the need  to develop a relationship with God, exhibited by his failure to even think of using his bumper crop to provide for those in need. “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God” (Luke 12:21).

Friendship with God is seen here in economic terms. God’s friends who are rich provide for God’s friends who are poor. The rich fool’s problem is that he hoards things for himself, not producing jobs or prosperity for others. This means both that he loves wealth instead of God, and that he is not generous toward the poor. We can imagine a rich person who truly loves God and holds wealth lightly, one who gives liberally to the needy, or better yet, invests money in producing genuine goods and services, employs a growing workforce, and treats people with justice and fairness in their work. In fact, we can find many such people in the Bible (for example, Joseph of Arimathea, Luke 23:50) and in the world around us. Such people are blessed both in life and afterwards. Yet we do not want to remove the sting of the parable: if it is possible to grow (economically and otherwise) with grace, it is also possible to grow only with greed; the final accounting is with God.

THE RICH RULER (LUKE 18:18-30)

Jesus’ encounter with the rich ruler (Luke 18:18-30) points to the possibility of redemption from the grip of wealth. This man has not let his riches entirely displace his desire for God. He begins by asking Jesus, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” In answer, Jesus summarizes the Ten Commandments. “I have kept all these since my youth,” replies the ruler (Luke 18:21), and Jesus accepts him at his word. Yet even so, Jesus sees the corrupting influence that wealth is working on the man. So he offers him a way to end wealth’s pernicious influence. “Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me” (Luke 18:22). Anyone whose deepest desire is for God surely would leap at the invitation to daily, personal intimacy with God’s Son. But it is too late for the rich ruler — his love of wealth already exceeds his love for God. “He became sad, for he was very rich” (Luke 18:23). Jesus recognizes the symptoms and says, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Luke 18:24-25).

By contrast, the poor often show amazing generosity. The poor widow is able to give away everything she has for the love of God (Luke 21:1-4). This is no summary judgment by God against wealthy people, but an observation of the heavy grip of wealth’s seductive power. The people standing near Jesus and the ruler also recognize the problem and despair over whether anyone can resist the lure of wealth, though they themselves have given away everything to follow Jesus (Luke 18:28). Jesus, however, does not despair, for “what is impossible for mortals is possible for God” (Luke 18:27). God himself is the source of strength for the desire to love God more than wealth.

Perhaps wealth’s most insidious effect is that it can prevent us from desiring a better future. If you are wealthy, things are good as they are now. Change becomes a threat rather than an opportunity. In the case of the rich ruler, this blinds him to the possibility that life with Jesus could be incomparably wonderful. Jesus offers the rich ruler a new sense of identity and security. If he could only imagine how that would more than make up for the loss of his wealth, perhaps he could have accepted Jesus’ invitation. The punch line comes when the disciples speak of all they’ve given up and Jesus promises them the overflowing riches of belonging to the kingdom of God. Even in this age, Jesus says, they will receive “very much more” in both resources and relationships, and in the coming age, eternal life (Luke 18:29-30). This is what the rich ruler is tragically missing out on. He can see only what he will lose, not what he will gain.💕💕💕

The story of the rich ruler is further discussed under "Mark 10:17-31" in  Mark and Work at www.theologyofwork.org.