God often speaks to me through dreams; I can recall time after time where this has happened in my life. Many times, in dreams, God is warning me about something that is to come, I know He does this so that I will be prepared when it comes.
Frankly, these types of dreams used to cause me to be anxious but I have learned that if it is from God and He is showing me what is to come that it is something I am coming through. And coming through with victory, therefore they no longer cause me to be anxious, only guarded.
If God shows me something about myself or deals with me about something, I often, not always, but often, share it with you. Why? So that hopefully, you will learn from these things and avoid them.
To me, it is like getting directions to a city from someone who has traveled the road before. They will know all the bumps and delays along the way and if they share them with me, if I am wise, I can avoid them.
Therefore I don’t share these things to air my dirty laundry but hopefully to help someone. Now, to my motivation. A couple nights ago, I had a dream, even when I woke up I knew it was from God. But what surprised me about the dream was that it was frightening and I know fear is not from God. Fear is never from God. Yet at times, we can use fear to our advantage – for instance, if you have a fear of fire, you won’t touch it, you know that fire means present danger, so you stay away from it.
Let me tell you about my dream. In my dream, there were dogs, several of them, very mean dogs that wanted to bite and destroy, they were rabid or something, all I know is that they were trying to get in the house to kill and destroy. In the dream, I had a ‘doggie door’ in my door, you know, one of those doors that animals can come in and out without opening the door. This door was perfectly square, that’s what I recall about it.
After a few moments those mean dogs found the doggie door and got in, I took a broom and hit them and chased them back out. Then I had to block that little, square opening so they couldn’t get back in. This I have shared with you is the main part of my dream, the rest of it was simply looking for other people to make sure they were safe and okay from the dogs.
The way I usually know if a dream is from God is that it stays with me and I remember it in vivid detail, as with this one. All day yesterday, it kept coming to me, finally, I got out my dream book, my book of symbols and looked up some of the words; let me share them with you.
Dog = strife, contention, offense
Biting Dog = rewarding evil for good
Rabid Dog = great and present danger
Broom = cleaning as in cleaning out your house
Square = speaking truth without love, no mercy, hard, harsh
Frankly, as soon as I read these definitions, I knew exactly what the dream meant. There was someone in my life that had hurt me deeply, and they had done it over and over and over and to this day, continue to hurt me. I had prayed and asked God to change my heart and cause it to be merciful to this person. But recently, some things had happened that made the wound even greater, and I began speaking the truth about them without love. Once I did that, I realized I wasn’t applying mercy at all and my heart was becoming hard to this person.
This was my aha moment and it wasn’t pleasant. I know that God was showing me that this attitude was allowing some things in my home and in my heart; strife, contention, great and present danger. It was time to clean house. I know from your emails that many of you have suffered deep wounds from those you love. You have suffered deep wounds from those you work for. Even so, it is not worth allowing all these things in your home and in your heart. It is time to stop trying to block their way in and remove that opening all together.
You see, when we do these things, we leave an opening for things that are not of God to come into our life, God isn’t doing it to us, we are doing it to ourselves. But the good news is that if we opened that door, we too can shut it.
That’s what I did last night. I did as I tell everyone else; I made a choice to shut that door. Not for the other person, but for me. I am trusting God for way too much to allow something like this to block it, it is not worth it. I desire peace in my life at all times; it’s not worth allowing all kinds of contention to come in my home or in my heart just because someone hurt me. Time to get over it and move on. SHUT THE DOOR and you will shut down the danger.
I hope you learn something from my challenges…that, my friends, is my hope.
