OCTOBER 14 "DREAMS, DREAMS...WHAT DO THEY MEAN?"

          I ONCE had a woman cover over to my house, she wanted to "talk with me", that's always a little nerve wrecking. So I said come on over, my wife is here and we can sit down together, with my wife. Well don't you know she wanted to tell me about her dreams and have me interpret what those dreams meant. Not only what they meant, but what "spiritual" aspect was to be applied.  This is where we get into trouble as Christians; we know as Christians that we are not just functioning in the "natural" but also in the supernatural and we have a hard time knowing where to draw the lines.  Truth is, we will never know "exactly" where to draw the lines, but the New Testament does caution us to discern and "test the spirits", to discern "Prophecy's" and judge them as to whether they be from God or "the delusions of man's own heart".    However this can also lead us down another slippery slope, where the church becomes very cynical to Prophecy and there is no room for the Holy Spirit to move.  We read that when Mary, the mother of Jesus heard all these "unbelievable" prophecies spoken about Jesus, she just treasured them in her heart.  She did not go out and try to make them happen and neither did she change the course of her life because of them. She let God do all that, which He did.  She (Mary) treasured them in her heart.  That's the best we can do with dreams and prophecies.  We want to have a dream and use that dream to catapult us into our "destiny". We will wake up the next morning and quit are jobs, divorce our wives, kick the dog out, sell the house and move up to the mountains to reach.....? How about we store the dream, the prophecy in our memory bank, in our heart and allow God, in his sovereignty to bring about his purposes.  We make horrible amateur providence's. We ought to let God lead us by "divine providence".  If someone prophecies over you, gives you a "word of knowledge" store it away, treasure it in your heart and go on living your life just as you were. If you are going to change anything at all, change the intensity to which you have been pursuing God, to a greater level, you can never lose out doing that!  Do you have dreams, do you want them interpreted? Why?  Do you want a word, do you want a prophecy? Why? The answer...because I want direction, I want clarity of mind, I want to know what I am supposed to do, where I am supposed to be, I'm confused and this would help.  Would it really?

     In our text today, in Jeremiah, God has had it with these so called Prophets, prophesying out of their dreams. Surely the dreams of these men must have seemed spiritual, of some sort, for them to be prompted to prophesy because of them, but in the end, God says, "they are false, their dreams don't mean squat and they are giving the people "false" prophesies. God goes on to say they are prophesying out of their own delusions.  In other words, some of these men are flat out frauds, but even scarier is that some of them think they are prophesying something spiritual, something "right" and something God would have them to speak but yet they are so far off, what they are saying, is actually a lie".  Don't try to find God's path through dreams and prophecies. Yes they have their place but nothing replaces a vital, on-going, vibrant relationship with God when it comes to direction in life. Jesus said, "if you will abide in me I will abide in you" and if we will simply attend to that, God will do the rest, dreams or no dreams, prophecies or no prophecies God will get you to your Jerusalem, you can count on it!