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Exchanged Glory IV: A Time for Every Purpose
<page 87>On the previous night, this wishful thinking had plunged to its death with a tremendous release of pent up emotion.
I woke up in the middle of the night with the following dream:
A girl had fallen from the sky and died in the ocean. Then a couple of men parachuted into the ocean, made their way to the shore, and built a memorial for her. They etched their names into it.
I moved from the memorial to my house on the other side of the ocean. There were big pipes that went into the ground and brought water to the surface. I went into the basement of the house, and found more pipes along with streams.
I picked my nose and tried to clean off the snot from my hand using the streams. I missed the water at first, but then I managed to clean it off my hand.
Then I crawled through some tunnels that connected everyone’s basements. There were streams in the tunnels also.
Here’s my best shot at an interpretation: The girl who had died was symbolic for my vision to reach out to people with the good news about Jesus. The ocean was symbolic for the world. When my vision had come into contact with the real-life attitudes and actions of people, it couldn’t handle the conflict. During my “sobbing through the neighborhood” experience, it had fallen from the sky and died.
After the previous night, I would never again view ministry in the same way. Although I had read in the Bible that people loved their sin more than they loved God, I had never before let that truth hit me below my mind. The thought of cherished friends and relatives going to hell was too terrible for me to emotionally accept, so my heart had shielded itself from the dreadfulness. When I was younger, I had done this by embracing a view of God’s love that made it difficult for Him to judge anyone.[60] At an older age, I had latched onto the desperate belief that if I followed Jesus well enough, I could find some way to turn others to Him.
My recent experience had changed that. I had watched sin up close and had seen how those who are under its influence resist truth and hide from the grace of God. My belief that they would respond if they could see someone sincerely live for Him had been shown to be a lie.
The result of my self-deception was that I had blamed myself for other people’s choices. I felt that if I was a better Christian, God would somehow reach them and drive them to repentance. On the previous night, this wishful thinking had plunged to its death with a tremendous release of pent up emotion. I had at last accepted that I couldn’t convince anyone, and I couldn’t force God to convince them either. No matter how much I cared, their destiny depended on His choices and theirs. All I could do was follow Him and pray.
<page 88> It felt good to reach these conclusions. My false optimism had become an increasingly difficult burden to carry. A girl had fallen from the sky and died in the ocean. She had become too heavy to hold in the clouds.
The two men who built the memorial were symbolic for the fact that the previous night had been a significant night for me. God wanted me to remember it. Adopting a new vision was going to take a good deal of work, and the memory of the painful death of the old vision would help motivate me to move forward.
I also sensed that God remembered the parts of the vision that had been from Him. At its root, my desire had been to serve Jesus, and He would hold me to that – but in a new form. From this time forward I needed to emotionally accept my limitations in sharing God’s love. Only He could make my efforts take root in the hearts of others.
When I had told God and the devil that I quit, I had tried to resign from God’s task for me. He was now letting me know that He had turned down my resignation. He still wanted me to reach out, but He was asking me to do it with greater wisdom.
The streams and pipes were symbolic for emotions. They flowed deep within my soul (in the basement), and affected my external life (pipes brought water to the surface). They were foundational to relationships between people (streams in tunnels between basements). The fact that I discovered them in the dream indicated that God was going to teach me about them in real life.
It took a while before I understood the significance of picking my nose. (I know it is a disgusting image, but to be honest, dreams often use disgusting images to portray spiritual realities.) I began to get some insight after about ten days when the Holy Spirit impressed on me that I was mature in my mind and will, but I was still immature in my emotions.
I sensed Him helping me to see what had happened earlier in my life. My parents had not nurtured me in a way that taught me how to work with my emotions. Then I had been forced to deal with circumstances that had overwhelmed me. As a result, I had developed survival techniques to get around my inner conflicts. The smoking fetish was one of them; it buried my negative feelings beneath a sea of pleasure. Another was the way I spoke harshly to my emotions, avoided them, and compensated by developing my mind and will. These shortcuts had kept my heart from getting the exercise it needed to grow properly.
The snot symbol came from a time when I heard an older man call a younger man a “snot nosed little kid.” Snot was symbolic for immaturity – in my case, emotional immaturity. It showed in many ways: my anger, my sexual temptations, my trouble understanding rebellious people …. A significant part of me had never grown up.
The image of cleaning snot off in the streams showed that God was going to help me to wash away my immaturity. He would teach me how to work with my emotions so that they could develop into what He had created them to be. I had sought this growth earlier in life but hadn’t found it (I missed the water at first). He would change that in the future (I got it the second time).
The previous night had been an important step. I had finally found my Heavenly Father when my emotions were in a state of disarray, and this made me secure enough to stop inwardly running from them. I was growing in faith that He would embrace me in a way that would transform my heart to be what He wanted it to be. As I continued to walk this path, He would teach me His <page 89>wisdom and bring healing. I didn’t know where it would all lead, but I trusted that He would make the journey clear in His time.
The song I mentioned in Chapter Fourteen, “Stand,” had said, “I will turn and face the darkness, waiting for my Lord’s command.”[61] For many months I had done that; now God had used the darkness to expose strongholds of false hope and emotional immaturity. At the same time, He was giving me His command, a new vision based on a fuller understanding of myself and others. I was cautiously excited to see what He would do next.
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