God is Using Dreams
“Shhh,” one of the women kindly responded. “We prefer it better if we do not know anything about you.” I was suddenly reminded of the mad professor from the movie Back to the Future.
The professor has an electronic gadget on his head, and whenever Marty tries to talk and explain why he is there, the professor yells, “No! Don’t tell me!” He wanted to read Marty’s mind with his gadget. That was how I was feeling.
When we arrived at the prayer room, I was encircled by Christians with prophetic gifts. They began to pray. Some of them sang. Others remained silent with their eyes closed. A few of them made strange sounds as they cried out to God in prayer. I brought my hands up to my mouth as if to show that I was praying, but I kept my eyes open. As a teenager, I learned at Bible camp in Indiana that praying with your eyes open ensured that no one will steal food from your plate while others were saying grace.
Then something even more strange began to happen. Some of them began to have visions, and then they used those visions to draw pictures in what they called prophetic art. I had never seen anyone have a vision and then draw what they saw in their vision. Those with visions spoke and prayed in the most powerful way imaginable. They made a special deposit into my life.
It was then, in that room, that I understood what I did not understand, what I still do not understand fully. God has given special gifts to everyone, and He speaks to us in unique ways according to the way that He made us and in line with the gifts He has put in our lives.
Several years later in April 2013, I found myself on a book tour in a church in Norway. I started the evening talking about the underground church in North Korea, the subject of the book that I was promoting.
However, knowing that a group of Iranians were in the back of the room listening, I began to talk about the similarities between underground churches in China, North Korea, and Iran. I briefly mentioned the people in Iran coming to Christ because of visions and dreams. All of the Iranians began to laugh among themselves in the back of the room. Suddenly I felt very self-conscious and wondered if they thought that the idea was laughable. I had just come from Iran and knew about many people coming to Christ because of dreams. Perhaps this group of young Iranians found the idea preposterous.
The Iranians in the group were led to Christ by one person, and that person came to Christ because of a dream.
The phenomenon is happening seemingly every day in Iran. It doesn’t matter how I feel about dreams or visions, because dreams and visions are changing Iran.
There is a devaluation of dreams in the Western world and a dismissive attitude regarding their significance, but throughout the Bible, dreams revealed divine meanings and acted as a method of communication between God and His people. Dreams were fraught with meaning about the future, offered solutions to life’s biggest problems, or warned of imminent dangers.
Today, many people believe that dreams are a physical manifestation of a psychological state—that dreams are connected to experiences, exposure, traumatic events, or even indigestion. However, the ancients considered dreams to be sacred and religious. And in Iran, dreams and visions are having just as much power as they did ages ago. Thousands of lives are being changed, and the landscape of an entire country is being transformed because of the power of dreams.
Category: Spirit, Spring 2019
Followers
Fans
