I had an incredibly vivid dream the other night, and when I awoke from the dream at about 4:30 AM, my heart was beating so fast, I truly thought it might beat out of my chest. Now, before I reveal the dream and how it all unfolded, let me give a brief preface.
I am not a mystic, nor am I making any sort of claim about a direct revelation in this dream…I know there are stories throughout the Scriptures where God appeared to people in specific ways or revealed particular prophecies/visions to people within their dreams, and I want to clarify that this is not what I believe happened to me. However, I do think that the Holy Spirit is completely capable of using any number of mediums to get our attention and reveal truths to us, even if that takes place during a REM cycle through our subconscious dreaming. And I do believe that this particular dream was used by God to get my attention in a big way and put things into perspective. Again…not saying this is any sort of specific revelation, but definitely something that God used to reveal a general truth about the world to me. All that said…here it is.
I believe we were in Canada. The “we” I am speaking of refers to myself, my wife, and both of our families. Now, for some reason, it felt like the dream was taking place before we were actually married…and I think that’s why my brother was behind the wheel (although, we were driving my Red Kia Spectra…so how that got to Canada is unknown). It was my brother and I in my car in and Amanda was in the car behind us. We were driving on a winding highway, lined with large trees on both sides, creating a sort of canopy over the highway with all of it’s twists and turns. As we progressed down the winding road (not sure where we were going exactly) I started to notice that there were pieces of some of these trees on the road ahead of us. There were rather large pieces of bark that had apparently somehow fallen from the trees, apparently randomly strewn about, which made navigating the narrow road difficult as we had to swerve around these pieces. As we continued on our journey, these became increasingly common, to the place where our hearts started racing. I looked over to Jared and he was leaning forward looking up instead of watching the road. I yelled out to him, “Jared watch the road!” and then I looked up for myself and realized, these trees were all currently dropping these pieces of wood. Not only were we trying to swerve around the pieces on the road, but we also had to dodge the falling pieces of trees. Oh…and it should be noted, these trees were all alive, and the pieces falling from them were not dead portions falling, and the weather was completely clear, beautiful, and sunny. It was as if the trees were intentionally shedding these pieces for some reason or another.
Finally, the road appeared to be impassible and Jared did a quick swerve and turned around. For some reason, I was compelled to get out of the car and try and run to safety and did so as he stopped into the turn around (not something I would likely do in reality, but apparently in my dream, I had to get to wherever we were headed). So, I’m looking up, fearing desperately for my life trying to dodge these huge falling pieces of trees. And when I looked forward at the road ahead, I noticed something. I saw that the trees were not all apparently throwing pieces down on me as I had thought. In fact, every single tree was actually bending, completely down to the ground. They weren’t just bending, though…they were bowing. There was utter humility exhibited by these trees, I know that’s anthropomorphic language, but I realized that all of these trees were bowing down for their Creator. My heart continued pounding, in fact, it was racing faster and faster; no longer for fear of getting hit be the debris and losing my life, but because I was witnessing the creation worship it’s Creator. I threw my hands up into the air and began sprinting forward, running in a state of awe and worship of my Lord! I joined in with the rest of the creation in praise, and I ran on the highway until the tree line ended, opening up into a clearing. And there was all of creation, bowing down and worshiping Jesus Christ, by whom and for whom all of it was created (Colossians 1:16). The trees! The mountains! Even tornadoes were swirling in adoration (not damaging or harming anything) As I continued running in the direction of where all of the worship was directed, all I could see was the radiant glory of Jesus Christ. I could not see Him, but I knew it was Him…and He was being worshiped as He rightfully deserves to be. And then I awoke.
It was 4:30 AM, and there in our bedroom, my heart literally felt like it was about to beat out of my chest. I could feel my heart racing, and I was overjoyed! I felt like I had just experienced a glimpse of something that is true of all of creation. I felt like I was experiencing something similar to a fulfillment of what Paul describes in Romans 8:19-21 – “The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”
As my heart race began to slow back down to a somewhat normal pace, I was overwhelmed with this incredible sense of the glory of God and how all of creation recognizes the Lordship of Christ. Even thinking about the fig tree that Jesus caused to wither with the words of His mouth…Jesus is Lord over all of creation, even over those who try to deny His lordship by suppressing this truth in their wickedness (Romans 1).
So here is what I feel the Lord was impressing upon me and revealed to me through this. This life is too short for me to focus on anything other than glorifying Him. Why do I waste my time and energy on trivial pursuits instead of focusing my energy on bringing Him praise…because ultimately, we were created to worship and to obey (Genesis 2:15)…and this is what God is calling us to do. And as we strive to give Him the worship that He is due (giving ourselves as living sacrifices)…then we will begin to experience the abundant life which is only given by Christ Himself, and only experienced when we live in submission to Him. And I do believe that all of creation will one day bow before it’s creator…and be restored just as the Scriptures say. So now, I’m just going to try to live out the implications of the dream that I had…just living the dream.
