“Let me hear what God the LORD will speak,
for he will speak peace to his people, to his saints;” (Psalm 85:8a, ESV)
Have you ever awoken at night, startled by a sound, lying tense and poised, ready to grab the bat? Then you remember. Slowly, calm rolls down your body. The sinister shadows in the room reveal themselves as merely that—shadows. You heard the noise in your dream. You are relieved. You aren’t about to be strangled, and none of the dreaded scenarios you had created in your head the past 15 seconds will be played out. You are safe. It was just a dream. But don’t make the mistake of thinking you didn’t actually hear anything. You did hear something—you just heard it in another world, another reality.
Much of our life is lived in this weird, misty space. We listen for the voice of God, and we know He speaks in ways different from the constant noisy assault of pushy salesmen, mindless chatter and marketing schmuck. His voice is different. It comes from a different place, and it speaks a different way. In fact, it is so different that if we don’t hold tightly to what we know—what we have “dreamed”—we will begin to think it wasn’t Him, we never heard it at all.
But we did. He whispered words of stillness and quiet. He reminded us of our true name, and He beckoned us to follow Him back into the world where His voice is clear.
If you have ever attempted to journal your dreams, keeping track of those wild stories that rise and evolve and morph on the midnight stage of your inner-consciousness, you know how tricky it can be. Even if you wake at the right time (which can be quite a feat), holding on to them long enough to grab your pencil and journal is difficult. Those first few waking moments hold the dream with a firm grip—you just experienced it. You still feel the tingle in your spine.
But in mere seconds, it slips, the moon fading into the rising orangey glow. It melts, dissolves and recedes into the other world, the shadow world. Most often, it is gone. And then you begin to wonder, “What did I dream? It must not have been what I thought.”
And so it is often is with God’s voice. He speaks loudly, clearly. But it begins to fade, melt, dissolve. We begin to question. Was it Him? And we often allow His words to slip away into the shadow world … until He speaks again.
Dig Deeper:
Prayer:
Dear God, thank you for speaking to me. Your words are precious and comforting. Please continue to speak into my life today.
