It's about 6:15 on Saturday morning. I woke up early from a dream. I want to share it with you because it really ministered something to me that began when I listened to a sermon by John Piper earlier in the week called, The Beautiful Faith of Submission.
The dream: I was with a group of young people and I was the one in charge. There was this one young woman with a big mouth and when I say big, I don't just mean loud and mouthy, but her literal mouth was quite large on her face. She kept disrupting the group with her loud, rebellious talk. She was talking over the top of me as I was trying to instruct the group and I told her to be quiet. She laughed at me and continued talking disrespective of my authority. Again, I told her to be quiet and she said, "No!" and continued talking. I promptly jumped up from my seat and tackled her and slapped my hand over her mouth, but my hand wasn't as large as her mouth, so she was still struggling to say some things. At this point, I was sitting on her with one hand over her mouth and so, I took my other hand and held her nose until she was so out of breath, she finally stopped struggling to talk. At that point, I took my hands away and she just lay there with me sitting on top of her and was quiet. I asked her if she was going to be quiet now, and she shook her head, 'Yes'. I let her up and she returned to her seat. I pulled up a seat right in front of her and leaned forward in my chair and said, "Young lady, your sin of rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft to God! Do you understand that? She shook her head, 'yes'. "You must repent of your rebellion and self-will." Do you understand that? She shook her head, 'yes'. "You are not The Boss! Do you understand that?" Again, she shook her head, 'yes'. By this time, tears were rolling down both of our cheeks. I held her in my arms and told her how beautiful she was and how much this repentance was going to relieve her of a burden to control things and have everything her way. I told her that it would release her to go forward into her destiny in God. We were sobbing together. This was the end of the dream.
I knew when I awoke that this was a dream from God and I immediately had several scriptures running through my head. The first one was, I John 1:9, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." I was struck for the first time at the power of this promise. So many times I feel helpless to change my unrighteous ways, but this verse gives me a promise that God will cleanse me!
Another verse which was running through my head was, James 5:16, "Confess your faults one to another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much."
Another scripture that was coming to me was where Eve was in the garden and satan came to her suggesting that God might be deceiving her. He told her that she should eat from the tree that was forbidden and God was trying to trick her. I realized that Eve's first sin must have been fear. I was remembering times that someone has suggested to me that another person that I have trusted is deceiving me. I remember the fear that swept over me at the thought that I might be deceived. Fear is the first feeling one has in this situation, then anger at the betrayal and the anger leads to rebellion or rejection against the person. We then have a doubt that we are entertaining and in the case of Eve, it led to her choosing to believe a lie, which led to her choosing to reject God as her Lord and choose to be her own god. This is huge! That scripture from I Samuel 15:23, "For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubborness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord..." Eve rejected the word of the Lord which caused a domino effect of sins and all because satan suggested to her that God was a liar! Satan is still suggesting to God's people that God is a liar. We prove that we believe him when we don't do what God says, then, we are cursed with a self-willed, self-ruled life of worry, because we know that we cannot cover all the bases and protect ourselves from every attack that this world sends our way. We curse ourselves to a life of fear! Oh, God! This is huge! Let us repent and turn back to God and find rest! Love, Dian.