I had a dream last night. I dreamed that I was in one of those mega churches – you know, the kind that looks like it meets in a hockey arena. The regular pastor wasn’t going to speak, and somehow I knew this so I started walking from the middle of the congregation to the front. I was taking off my coat and I noticed I was carrying a bowl of cereal with me (I will come back to this later, but at least now you can really tell it’s a dream). As I started up the steps I saw my husband sitting on the stage smiling at me. As he did, I started to speak the following message (embellished a bit for you).
I said, “We all have things in our hearts, and some of those things are ugly, such as the virus of mean and hateful thoughts, the cancer of un-forgiveness, the brokenness of loss, the disorder of disobedience, the sickness of hope deferred. All of these illnesses are diseases of our heart and they cause dis-ease in our spiritual walk. Each and every one of these diseases are curable by our Father, who can take his precision scalpel and carve them out of our heart to make room for His desires for us such as peace, joy, health, hope, and purpose. Let your heavenly father perform surgery on your heart to remove the disease (dis-ease) so that He can fill it with His healing desires for you and you can have beautiful, healthy heart and hold onto the desires He has given to you.”
It was a dream about the so-called “desires of our hearts.” Lately I’ve heard a lot of speaking, encouraging, and teaching on these desires, which, when they line up with God’s will, are most definitely from Him. But I’ve also had many conversations with people lately about the specific desires placed on their hearts and the doubts that they feel as to whether they actually come from God.
Proverbs 13:12 states, “hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.” I believe that this speaks to the hope of wanting a purpose, and of wanting to know that God has a plan for you. When you recognize that the very desire you have in your heart is from your loving Father, you have that hope. And, as the proverb says, you have life.
Think about your desires. Some of these desires are probably HUGE and take your breath away. These are the things that you want to do, but that you might feel you aren’t qualified for. These are your life-long dreams, but you might feel you aren’t prepared or equipped to even attempt them. Well, as the scripture so often says, “do not worry and do not be afraid.” Our Father never purchases anything that He can’t pay for. Because He has placed the desire within you, he has a plan to see it through, and he can already see you fulfilling your own dream. He knows the end way before you do.
The enemy places fear, frustration, impatience, and doubts in our mind to keep us from recognizing and pursuing our God-given desires. But if you let God take his scalpel and remove the dis-ease from our spiritual beings, these desires become brighter and supernaturally attainable. His plan is perfect, and it only requires your faith in Him to carry it out. Stop and pray to God to remove the diseases of your hearts so that you can know with certainty that your dreams and desires are from Him, and that, with His help, they will most certainly come true.
Now back to my dream – did you figure out what the bowl of cereal represented? Well, I decided that it represented a tasty morsel of encouragement from God. I was eating it in the dream, and now, by reading this, you just ate it, too. I hope you enjoyed it!
Why did God have me eating cereal in my dream? Why not cake? Well, I have a theory on that, too. I’ve been limiting dairy and grains in my earthly diet lately, but this week I broke down and had cereal with milk for dinner. Honestly, it was heavenly.
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