That Was A Weird Dream!

 

THAT WAS A WEIRD DREAM!

Have you ever had a weird dream? Have you ever had a dream that seemed so real, that you didn’t realise you were actually dreaming? Have you ever had a dream that in your awake hours actually happened? Even a casual reading of the Bible reveals that many people had weird dreams where God was able to speak to even to the most godless person! This should give every believer, burdened with the eternal destiny of those who have not yet experienced the goodness and love of God, the inspiration to pray that God might just speak to those they are praying for by their dreams. 

But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him,
“Behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken,
for she is a man’s wife.”
Genesis 20:4

​But it wasn’t just the godless that God spoke to in dreams. We have examples such as Jacob who heard from God in a dream (Gen. 28:11-17). His son, Joseph had several strategic dreams (and an ability to “interpret” dreams, Ge. 40:8-12; 41:12) (Gen. 37:5-11). The young king Solomon had a dramatic encounter with God in a dream (1Kings 3:5-15). Joseph, the guardian of the Christ child, was guided by God on several occasions through dreams.

But as he considered these things,
behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying,
“Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife,
for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
Matthew 1:20

And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod,
they departed to their own country by another way.
¶ Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord
appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child
and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you,
for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.”
Matthew 2:12-13

¶ But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a
dream to Joseph in Egypt…But when he heard that Archelaus was
reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there,
and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee.
Matthew 2:19, 22

The apostle Paul heard from God in various ways, including dreams.

And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia
was standing there, urging him and saying,
“Come over to Macedonia and help us.”
Acts 16:9

And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, “
Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent
Acts 18:9

God seems to delight in speaking to people in a dream in a way that would change their lives. This is why I think we should consider the divine use of ‘weird dreams’! I’ve already mentioned Abimelech (Gen. 20:4), but I have overlooked mentioning Pharaoh (Gen 41), Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 2), and Governor Pilate’s wife (Matt. 27:19). In each of these instances those who had these divine dreams had no doubt that God had communicated to them. In some of these examples, God orchestrated for angels to enter into people’s dreams and converse with them. Perhaps in another Pastor’s Desk one I will explain why angels (or demons for that matters) cannot “read our minds” (only God can do this which is why we can silently pray with our spirit/mind 1Cor. 14:15) but for now, I want to point out that the bible does reveal that spirit beings have an ability to sow ideas into our minds – but only God’s angels can speak to a person in their dreams. Therefore, I propose that we join together and ask God to speak in dreams to those pre-Christians we are praying for in a way that will lead them to encounter the goodness and love of God.

Questions for discussion:

1. Why do you think God has so frequently spoken to people in dreams rather than by other methods?
2. Why is someone more likely to accept what they dream as being a genuine message from God?
3. Can we pray for God to speak to people in dreams?

Your pastor,

Andrew

Let me know what you think below in the comment section and feel free to share this someone who might benefit from this Pastor’s Desk.

THEY SAID IT COULDN'T BE DONE

 

But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Matthew 19:26

Christianity is a religion of impossibilities! Consider the following impossibilities. God did the impossible when He –

◊ created the universe from nothing (Gen. 1:1; Psalm 33:6; Jn. 1:3);

◊ created life from none-life (Gen. 2:7; Job 33:4; Jn. 1:4);

◊ enabled an elderly barren woman to conceive and bear a son (Gen. 18:14; 21:1-2);

◊ revealed the future in verifiable and specific detail through His prophets (Jer. 25:13; 29:19; Amos 3:7; Acts 3:18);

◊ sent His eternal Son into the world by being born of a young virgin girl (Isa. 7:14; Mtt. 1:23; Lk. 1:23; Rev. 12:5);

◊ empowered the Christ to perform miracles of healing (Mtt. 4:23), resurrections (Mtt. 9:25; 11:5), food-provision (Mtt. 15:36);

◊ raised the Christ from the dead (Mtt. 28:7; 1Cor. 15:4);

◊ translated (ascended) the resurrected Christ back into the dimension of eternity (“Heaven”) (Jn. 20:17; Acts 1:9)

◊ sent the Holy Spirit into the earth to spiritually regenerate, gift, and empower those who surrender/ed to the Christ (Acts 1:8; 2:4; Eph. 5:18; 1Cor. 12:7);

◊ enabled the apostles of Christ to perform miracles similar to the Christ (Acts 6:3; 19:11);

◊ despite virulent and brutal attempts to destroy both the Church and the Scriptures, He has miraculously preserved both (Acts 6:7; Psalm 119:89).

He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed,
you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”
Matthew 17:20

 

FOR THOSE WHO DARE TO DREAM

One of the first mobile phones in the 1990s was soon likened to carrying ‘a brick’ around!

What was once thought of as impossible by one generation has frequently become common-place to the next generation because someone dared to dream and ask, “Why not?” In the mid-1990s, a young Bill Gates wrote a book entitled, The Road Ahead at a time when powerful computers filled entire rooms and personal computers were a novelty used for playing Space Invaders by those who didn’t have a book to read. In his book, Gates predicted that computing would soon be able to be done on a small hand-held device that could easily fit into your pocket and would be connected wirelessly to an invisible storage-“cloud” enabling users to access and retrieve enormous amounts of information instantly. He predicted that these hand-held computers would be integrated into mobile phones and would also enable identification (even national passports) and financial transactions to buy things without the need to carry credit-cards or cash. “Impossible!” Computer experts of the day scoffed at his brash and daring predictions. While Gates leveraged the resources of Microsoft to try and make it happen, and eventually developed a disappointing prototype, he was never able to achieve what he had forecasted in his book –

but that didn’t mean it was “impossible”! While Gates himself failed to fulfil his vision of what would later become known as a ‘smart phone’, another brash young computer engineer (Steve Jobs) took Gates’ vision and began to dream of a totally different way to merge the internet, a mobile phone, a music-player (“iPod”) and a computer, and thus, in 2007, the iPhone was introduced to the world — and what was once thought impossible has now become common-place. 

 

‘THE PASSING OF THE IMPOSSIBLE’ BY F.W. BOREHAM

In 1914 F.W. Boreham marvelled at what was once thought impossible was now considered common-place. In writing in his weekly Hobart Mercury column (and later published by Epworth Press in a collection of essays called, Mountains In The Mist) he declared to his secular readers the position that Christians held about what constitutes the impossible – 

Of course we know, being the Christians that we are, that there is no such thing as an impossibility in the world or out of it. An impossibility is an impossibility. Impossibilities belong to the realm of mythology. They inhabit the same weird world as the brownies and the elves, the fairies and the ghouls. As serious and scientific and practical and believing men, we must frankly confess to ourselves that the very notion of an impossibility is, on the face of it, a ludicrous absurdity.
F.W. Boreham, The Passing of The Impossible, ‘Mountains In The Mist’, 1914, p. 38

When we consider the pace of change over the past one hundred years, it becomes apparent that what was considered impossible soon became common-place to the next generation. This applies not just to innovations such as the recent emergence of the iPhone, but also to previously ‘impossible’ human achievements including – the scaling of Mount Everest by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, breaking the four-minute mile by Roger Bannister, sending a manned spacecraft to the moon where Neil Armstrong and Buz Aldrin were able walk on the lunar surface, and while in 1910 the Men’s 50m freestyle world record was 86 seconds – in 2009, Brazilian, Caesar Cielo swam it in 20.91 seconds! And after Bjorn Borg had won 6 Roland Garros crowns (1974-1981), everyone thought it would be impossible for anyone to match that record, but last year (2020), Rafael Nadal won his 13th Roland Garros crown making him GOAT of clay court tennis after completing what most thought could never be done!

 

IMPOSSIBLE CHRISTIANITY!

It is assumed by many that modern Australia was first settled by the irreligious riff-raff of Britain’s over-crowded prisons. This is often the explanation given for how unChristian and unChurched Australians are why it would be impossible for Christianity to gain any traction in Australia. Added to this is the perception that the early Christian missionaries oppressed Aboriginal Australians who have then largely rejected Christianity. But consider the following challenges to these perceptions. In 1959, a young evangelist from the backwaters of North Carolina came to Australia to preach the gospel. When he arrived in Sydney, ten thousand people came out to hear him!

Aerial view of the Sydney Showgrounds on April 12th 1959 where 10,000 people came out to hear Billy Graham

Even at night thousands of Sydney-siders braved the chill to come out to hear Billy Graham preach in the Sydney show-grounds on April 13th 1959

But it was when he came to Melbourne that something truly impossible happened! One hundred and thirty thousand people came to hear Billy Graham preach at the MCG!

Geoff Gawler was 10 when he saw Billy Graham at the MCG and says it changed his life.(ABC News: Jess Longbottom)

If Australians consider themselves irreligious, Tasmanians are a whole other level of irreligious. Take a tour of the Port Arthur historical site and you’ll gain an understanding why. But when Billy Graham came in York Park in April 1959, impossible as it was thought to be,17,000 people filled the stadium to hear the evangelist and, per-capita, more people than anywhere else in the world made a first-time commitment to Christ! 

“But that was then!” I hear you say? Consider then, that from this point churches around Australia began to experience extraordinary growth. A young returning missionary and his wife to Australia, Andrew and Lorraine Evans, took on a small church in Klemzig, Adelaide. Pastor Evans dared to believe that impossible is impossible and began praying for his church to grow extraordinarily. The church changed its name to Paradise Community Church (and is now called Influencers Church) and grew to be one of the first churches have a regular attendance of 2,000 people! But it kept growing and had a regular attendance of 6,000 before it established extra campuses around Adelaide to accommodate its growth. Meanwhile, around the same time, a young evangelist and his family moved to the pastorate of a church in Richmond, Victoria. This modest sized church of 150 attenders quickly grew to be a church of over 2,000 under the leadership of Pastor Phil Hills and planted around 200 churches around the perimeter of Melbourne! Today, “Richmond Temple” as it was known and today is known as Neuma Church has over 6,000 weekly attendees! Meanwhile, in Sydney, a young Brian Houston, planted a church in the Hills district of suburban Sydney and today that Sydney church has — what many people had always considered to be impossible — over 25,000 regular weekly attendees! In fact, I could mention churches in nearly each Australian capital city that now have attendances of over 10,000 people per week! Christianity impossible in Australia?  Think again. And time prevents me from documenting the many revivals and outpourings of the Holy Spirit on the Aboriginal communities of Australia resulting in an incredibly vibrant Christian Church among our First Nations peoples!

Now, there is one text among the great sayings of Jesus that I confess I never understood until very lately: ‘Verily, I say unto you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove ; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.’ Now, I was so incredulous about the possibility of removing mountains that I had to see it done before I really and truly believed. I am writing in Tasmania. And here in Tasmania we have a mountain — Mount Lyell. And gradually a strange faith stole into the hearts of men. They believed that underneath Mount Lyell there was an abundance of copper. They suspected it. They investigated it. They believed it ! And when they really believed it, they actually said unto the mountain, ‘Remove hence into yonder place!’ They believed; they moved the mountain; and nothing was impossible to them. The men who drove the spectral impossibilities from the shadows of our civilization were great believers, all of them. Columbus did not believe in the new world because he discovered it; he discovered it because he first of all believed it…[And] The history of missions is one continuous story of the invasion of the impossible.
F.W. Boreham, The Passing of The Impossible, ‘Mountains In The Mist’, 1914, p. 44-45

 

THE GOD OF THE IMPOSSIBLE!

What often looks impossible today in the realms of technology, travel, power generation, medicine, and even church, often becomes common-place tomorrow. But it takes those who are prepared to dream and dare — despite their critics. I’m looking for people who are prepared to dream and dare with me. Our city of Launceston has many fine churches but it is yet to see what the God of the Impossible can do with a church that is prepared to dream and dare. When I read the closing book of the Bible I am captivated by the ‘dream’ of God to see people redeemed from every tribe, nation, and tongue that will eventually comprise a number so vast that no-one could possibly count them! (Rev. 7:9). This is God’s grand dare for the Church and I’m in on the dare! Perhaps we too could dream of a church made up of people from an many nations, tribes, and languages as possible! Perhaps we could dare to dream of a church so significant that hundreds come each Sunday just to find out for themselves what God is doing! And when the day comes — and the day will come — that such a church exists in our city of Launceston, Tasmania, we will remember that there many who said “It couldn’t be done!”

Your pastor,

Andrew

Let me know what you think below in the comment section and feel free to share this someone who might benefit from this Pastor’s Desk.

HOW TO FLOURISH IN TIMES OF ADVERSITY

 HOW TO FLOURISH IN TIMES OF ADVERSITY

There are many things in life that are completely counter-intuitive. That is, the most natural and obvious thing to do is sometimes exactly what you shouldn’t do. I saw a dramatic example of this on Air Crash Investigations where a plane inexplicably nose-dived and crash-landed killing all on board. After examining the flight recorder, the investigators found that the pilots had reacted to the plane’s slight drop in altitude by pulling the plane’s nose up to correct it. But due to an anomaly in weather conditions, the plane didn’t respond as expected and continued to lose altitude. So the pilots pulled back on their control columns even harder to quickly correct the drop in altitude. This action, however, caused the even greater loss of altitude which resulted in the tragedy. Investigators concluded that in such conditions, the pilots should have responded counter-intuitively by pointing the nose down to regain control of the aircraft before attempting to increase its altitude. Another counter-intuitive example came from Dr. Fazale Rana, a biochemist, who presented at Legana several years ago and shared how a dam had been built in South America which flooded a valley and formed several islands. The native wildlife managed to take refuge on these islands but conservationists were concerned that on one of the islands predators also took refuge and would soon wipe out the other animals whom they preyed on. Counter-intuitively though, the island with no predators soon saw its wildlife die out, whereas the island with predators saw its wildlife flourish! Adversity may well be one of the most counter-intuitive factors operating in our world for our good!

 

WHAT IT MEANS TO FLOURISH

History bears witness that most people do not handle ease, comfort, and times of plenty, very well. Conversely, history bears witness that in times of adversity, heroes emerge who display selfless courage, extraordinary bravery, and ingenious innovation. In times of adversity we look for answers to problems because we must — not merely because we are curious. In times of adversity time becomes more precious and cannot be wasted on frivolous amusements because lives are on the line.

Fear not, for I am with you;
be not dismayed, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
Isaiah 41:10

Christian psychologist, Dr. Archibald Hart, and his clinical psychologist daughter, Dr. Sylvia Hart-Frejd, are the co-authors of The Digital Invasion – How Technology Is Shaping You and Your Relationships. They wrote their book before COVID-19 drove us all to go deeper into the online world. While their book deals with the highly addictive nature of the digital world, and the dangers of “spending more time in the virtual world than the real world”, they have some great suggestions for how people can flourish — especially during times of adversity. It’s during such times that we either retreat and become self absorbed, or advance by dealing head on with the challenges that adversity brings. In their book they cite another family member (who is also a psychologist), Catherine Hart Weber, who defines what flourishing looks like-

Dr. Weber goes on to explain flourishing this way: “You flourish when your life has meaning and purpose and you routinely experience emotion virtues such as love, joy, gratitude, peace, and hope. We have meaning when we know we are making a positive impact on the lives of others around us through our work and legacy.”
Hart, Dr. Archibald D.. The Digital Invasion (p. 152). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition, citing: Catherine Hart Weber, Flourish (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2010).

 

THE COUNTER-INTUITIVE RESULTS OF ADVERSITY

According to Dr. Archibald Hart, Dr. Sylvia Hart, and Dr. Catherine Hart, flourishing occurs when our life has meaning and purpose and we cultivate love, joy, gratitude, peace and hope. This, they argue, happens when we make “a positive impact on the lives of others.” This advice sounds like a paraphrase of something the Apostle Paul (a man very acquainted with adversity) wrote to the Galatians – 

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
Galatians 5:22-23

While adversity can make some people bitter and resentful, it can also make those who rely on God to become better and thankful. I have seen this happen to both kinds of people throughout this COVID19 crisis. Some people have seen opportunities that didn’t exist before and have innovated to take advantage of them. Other people have retreated into self-absorption and have inevitably become melancholic. Here’s five things we can all do to flourish through such adverse time – 

1. Be transparent with God in your prayers. If you’re struggling, pray about your struggles to God.
   
2. Ask God to use you to be a blessing to someone else.
   
3. “Do the hard thing!” Heroes step up in times of adversity by taking the first step in doing the thing that seems too hard. The second step always looks more obvious and easier after you’ve taken the first step. Remember Isaiah 41:10 and ask God to help you to do the hard thing.
   
4. Think ahead and begin sow into your future. Would you like to learn to play an instrument? Buy that instrument, pay for lessons, make time to practise. Do you want to earn a degree? Enrol in your first subject. Do you want to be able to run a marathon? Start by running as far as you can today. Then do it again tomorrow. Then do it again the next day, and so on. Do you want to learn a new language? Take a course and start learning it.
   
5. Refer to the person who serves you in the supermarket (or any shop/café/business) by their first name and engage them in courteous conversation. Kindness, consideration, and empathy are core traits of those who flourish.
   

Whoever pursues righteousness and kindness
will find life, righteousness, and honor.
Proverbs 21:21

In years to come, you will look back on these times as one of the greatest seasons of your life – despite it being a time of adversity – you remember this season as a time where you flourished. 

¶ The righteous flourish like the palm tree
and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
They are planted in the house of the LORD;
they flourish in the courts of our God.
Psalm 92:12-13

 Pastor Andrew