Something rocketed me from my sleep this past evening. Well, maybe not rocketed; that might be an exaggeration. I woke up; that’s about it. But something woke me up and that’s the point.
I don’t think I’ve ever had God speak to me through a dream before. I thought that was reserved for Bible characters and people looking to use God to pursue their own personal agenda, but I think I had a good talking to in this past dream. It’s what woke me up in fact. I didn’t pop straight up like a jack-in-the-box or anything like in the movies and scream some nonsensical phrase, but rather my eyes open and I immediately felt convicted. Before the dream, first some background.
Lately I’ve had my desires in the wrong order. Desiring God was well behind the lead. There was a conscious decision to rectify this hierarchy of desire, but my mind would not let go of the old system. I get in these moods or stages or what-have-you’s where I know the right thing to do, but I cannot get my mind to make the switch. It takes some sort of shake up to get things straight again and this one was no exception.
The dream started out with the object of my desire ending up in someone else’s possession. The remainder of the dream was spent with me getting extremely jealous as I had to witness this person do all the things I wished I could do, but could not. Then I woke up. Not too exciting, but extremely poignant.
Immediately, at somewhere between 3 and 5 am, I was convicted of my idolatry. I knew this jealousy is what God feels when His desire, us, chooses to be with someone else, somewhere else. This jealousy, I believe, is best demonstrated in the book of Hosea.
Recently I’ve been reading through the Minor Prophets. Partly because they are short and I can get through a book in one read, but also because I have not read them very much and I was looking for some new perspective on God and His character. Hosea has to be one of my favorite books. The story goes, roughly, that God calls on Hosea to marry a prostitute to represent the relationship God, then, currently had with Israel. (Think of God asking a modern pastor to do that today; how would that go down? Something tells me this pastor would no longer be a pastor.) Throughout the book Hosea’s wife runs off and he has to buy her back. How often do we run off on God only to have Him buy us back time and time again? God’s jealousy is demonstrated with Him breaking all the things Israel would put in His place. Never has an idol of Israel outlived the wrath of God.
In my dream I felt extreme jealousy and God has this same jealousy for us when we create substitute gods. I’ve since asked for forgiveness and since struggled to change the mindset to desire God first and foremost, but it’s getting there.
