the Dream

I don't often get dreams that mean anything, but a few weeks ago, I had a pretty cool one.  It came the night that I was feeling so discouraged that I basically cried myself to sleep in despair.  I'm sure part of it was all the extra hormones from being pregnant, but Tim and I were feeling fairly discouraged about our duplex at the time.

In my dream, Tim and I had just picked up a huge load of fresh food from a local farm and were dropping it off to be stored.  We were leaving it at a friend's place until it ran out, keeping it in a space like a root cellar. We unloaded everything and the food completely filled up the entire space.  Throughout the Fall, as we would return to get a load each week, the amount of food never diminished.  The space was always as full as it had been the first time, just brimming with fresh, unspoiled food.  We started giving it away and sharing it with others to use it up and it never ran out all winter long.  

On the surface, this was obviously a deeply encouraging dream about God’s ability and desire to multiple resources and to bless His people with abundance.  Especially since my sister in law and I had been praying recently for God to multiply our resources.  

As I prayed about this dream, God showed me a few things.  He reminded me that He is a God of multiplication, abundance, and restoration and that His idea of restoration looks far different from our idea.  (Restoration is the theme for our church for 2010.)  When I used to think about what restoration meant for me this year, I would think about God restoring Tim into a good job, about the restoration of relationships that have faded with distance, or the restoration of a dream for a new ministry.  All I thought about was God restoring the things that Tim and I used to have.  

But His idea of restoration includes so much more!  Rather than merely restoring to us the things we used to possess, He showed me that He desires to restore us to His promises, His covenants with us.  All of them!  It’s not about restoring pieces of our lives, it’s about restoring into our lives everything that He offers us in His Word.  Every promise in it’s fullness.

He desires to fill our store house (or root cellars :) with salvation, with healing, with calling and with new ministries, with provision and abundance, and with the manifestation of every single one of His covenant promises with us.  It’s time to broaden our scope and ask with faith for the restoration of big things!

This has really encouraged me and I hope it does the same for you.