Lesson from a Child’s Dreams

Uncategorized 4 Minutes

How beautiful on the mountains
     are the feet of those who bring good news,
who proclaim peace,
     who bring good tidings,
     who proclaim salvation,
who say to Zion,
     “Your God reigns!” – Isaiah 52:7 NIV

One morning when our first-born, Joanna, was little, she woke up crying. When I asked her what was wrong, she told me about two dreams she’d had.

The first was about a man who was going to die. “He said he was willing to die, as long as the children would get to live.” I knew right away that this dream was about Jesus, who willingly gave up His life to give life to us.

As I was still processing what my small child had said, considering the depth of her understanding at such a tender age, she cheered up and went on.

“Then I dreamed I had beautiful new purple slippers.”

At the time I was taking a class at church in biblical dream interpretation, so my mind was processing the details. Slippers – footwear. “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news … who proclaim salvation … ” Missionaries … Evangelists …

I hadn’t spoken these thoughts out loud, but just then Joanna grew thoughtful and said, “Mommy, all I really want to do is be a missionary.”

>Bingo!<

As if to give one more confirmation, the children’s Sunday school class that morning was learning about “Having your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.” (Ephesians 6: 15)

Yes, I thought, she will have beautiful feet – in the purple slippers – the color of royalty. And I doubt she realized she was tying the two together when she said she wanted to be a missionary – an ambassador of the King of kings. Out of the mouths of little children … 

Since then, Joanna has been on just one mission trip, with a youth group that included a young man named Sean, who later became her husband. Sean served as an Army chaplain for several years and has been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, while Joanna stayed home, “holding down the fort.” She is now a busy mother of three, who are being raised “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” (Ephesians 6:4) For now, this is her “mission field,” and of her three little converts, she has at least one child with an impressive grasp of spiritual things and a constant hunger for more of God.

If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you are called to be a missionary.

This may or may not involve traveling to the remotest parts of the world; our mission field is all around us. Many, many people still don’t know about the saving work of Christ, even with all our high-tech methods of communication. In fact, the more means of communication, the more numerous conflicting and confusing messages are. If you know Jesus, you are called to make Him known to others. Your mission field will be as unique as you are. Your experiences, your testimony, your perspective, your gifts, your contacts, your personality, your lifestyle, even your weaknesses and struggles will all be used to reach those people in your life that only you can reach. The message is the same, but the ways of telling it are as vast and varied as the people God has saved – and wants to save.

If you are not a believer in Jesus Christ, let me be the first (or second, or twentieth, or hundredth) to tell you the Good News.

God, the Creator and Sustainer of the whole universe – loves you! He created you to be unique, and He has a unique place for you in His kingdom.

But first, some bad news. Even though I don’t know you personally, I know that you “have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” I can tell you that confidently, because we all have. (Romans 3:23) Since God is perfect and His kingdom is perfect, in order to be part of His kingdom we have to be perfect, too. Otherwise, as soon as we get there, it’s not perfect anymore! But since we are all sinners, the only way to be made clean and whole again is to have our sins wiped out – eliminated.

(Forgiven.)

The only way for that to happen is for someone to pay the price. And “the wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23a) But that verse goes on to say, “the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23b) We will either pay the price for our sins with our own death – eternal death – or we can place our faith in Jesus and the price He paid when He allowed Himself to be crucified for us. His life was so pure, so holy, so selfless, that His death was enough to pay for the sins of all of us. And because His power is greater than death, He was raised to life afterwards!

When so much of the world is living in darkness, fear, grief, pain and despair, with no hope for anything better, this is Good News!

So, what do we do with this Good News? First, we take hold of it ourselves. We confess to God that we are sinners with no way to save ourselves. We ask Him to forgive us, save us through the death of His Son Jesus, and help us to become what He created us to be.

As soon as you’ve done this, meaning it with all your heart, then comes the fun part – watching what He’ll do with your life! We each have different callings, but one assignment we all have in common – tell others! Whether that means putting on your beautiful purple slippers or your indestructible combat boots, the world is waiting to hear and receive what you have. Jesus is the Man who died so the children – all of us – could live. Pass it on!

Prayer: Lord Jesus, how can we ever thank You enough for paying the penalty for our sins? Our eternal destiny is forever changed. We not only thank and praise you for it, but we also yield ourselves to You. Send us where You want us to go. Let us encounter those You want us to encounter, and speak the words You give us to speak, in Your name. Amen.

Published by seekingdivineperspective

I am a forgiven sinner and adopted child of God, seeking to see life from His perspective - as opposed to the world's flawed perspective - and living my life accordingly.

Published

23 thoughts on “Lesson from a Child’s Dreams”

  3. Great post, Annie! Today we had the guys down on protest corner just holding up a “Jesus” sign. I really appreciate them! Back when covid hit it was illegal to have kind of gathering, including church….. except for protests. That’s because we had a lot of riots and demonstrations going on of a politically approved nature, so there was an exemption.. So this guy at our church just made us a bunch of protests signs that said things like, “smile, Jesus loves you.” It’s kind of spread, so now and then you’ll see somebody just sitting in a lawn chair on the sidewalk waving a Jesus sign.

    I am so grateful for the missionaries who stay home, who stick around here in this mission field. Looking after kids is a really important job because they aren’t actually “kids,” they are really eternal souls. It probably feels a bit thankless at times, but it is really an investment in eternity that has a huge impact, not just on the kids, but on those around you, too.

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    1. True all that, I. B.
      I heard of one group that was told they couldn’t meet for worship services, so they started calling them “worship protests.”
      Of course, as long as we have internet, we can be missionaries anywhere God wants us to be, can’t we? It’ll be exciting when we get to heaven and hear all the stories of how the Lord worked through us when we weren’t even aware. 😊

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  5. brother!, as others have said, excellent post! So glad your daughter remembered those dreams when she awakened – no coincidence that you were learning about Biblical dreams!
    No doubt your daughter’s feet are beautiful and bring good news. May the Lord water every seed she’s planted.
    Press on sister, have a good weekend!

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    1. Yes, she did. And she married a man with all the qualities she had prayed for – even the red hair she wanted when she was a little girl. (Her favorite cartoon character was a strawberry blonde, so she figured with her blonde hair, if she married a redhead, they would have strawberry blonde kids.) She pretty much forgot about that over the years, but God didn’t. 😉

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    1. Sure, tell me about them! But first, please do as I do and pray that you will remember ONLY the dreams you need to remember. My dream journal used to be cluttered up with what our church counselor called “enchilada dreams.” (Just meaningless dreams that were the result of eating something weird at bedtime.) I was wasting a lot of time on them. Since I’ve started praying for that filter, I rarely remember my dreams, but when I do, I can tell exactly what they mean. If you pray in that way, you may well be given the interpretation without any help from me or anyone else.

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  10. Thank you for sharing that precious story about your daughter! Isn’t it amazing what insightful truth can come from young children? Some people say that preschoolers are too young to understand the way of salvation, but based on my own experience at age four, I’d disagree. If a child grows up in a Christian home, and is also influenced by other believers in her extended family, at church, and elsewhere, even to a four-year old it seems the most pertinent thing to do: ask Jesus to forgive for the naughty things we do, accept his gift of eternal life in heaven, and enjoy his presence forever starting now. You provided that for your daughter, now she’s providing that for her three. I wonder where THEIR mission fields will be?

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