The House of My Dreams

I mentioned last week that I was going to be giving you a few episodes that were stand alone episodes. Episodes where I would share some much more personal parts of my story.

Revelation 12:11 NET

But they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives so much that they were afraid to die.

If, we are transformed and covered by the Blood of Jesus, our stories become powerful because they are witness of His power to redeem even the worst of our fallen humanity.

Today I want to share with you something I’ve never shared with anyone, not even Ivy.

I want to share with you how Jesus used a dream in my life to bring awareness to something I would see when I was awake.

Welcome to the ReMan Initiative.

The NET Bible (Psalm 127:1)

1 If the LORD does not build a house,1then those who build it work in vain.If the LORD does not guard a city,2then the watchman stands guard in vain.

Ephesians 2:20–21 (NET)

because you have been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.In him the whole building, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord,

Did you know that in the Bible there are 21 instances of God communicating with humans by way of dreams.

10 are recorded in the book of Genesis

1 in the book of Judges

1 in the book of 1 Kings

3 in Daniel

6 recorded in the book of Matthew

You may even remember hearing about some famous dreams in the biblical writings. Stories like Joseph’s dream that his brothers and family would bow before him

Or how the other famous Joseph, the man God chose to be a father to Jesus and a husband to Mary. He had angels visit Joseph 4 different times in a dream.

Once to tell him not to divorce Mary

Once to tell him to flee to Egypt

Once to tell him is was OK to go back to Nazareth

and Once to tell to steer clear of Judea and to instead go into the regions of Galilee.

Even the Apostle Peter in Act chapter 2 vs 17 quotes from the prophet Joel that in the last days “your young men will see vision and your old men will dream dreams”

if God is the same, yesterday, today and forever, then it should go without saying that he can still use this method to communicate his people.

This past weekend Ivy and I were discussing dreams.

Ivy has vivid dreams and remembers them well when she wakes.

She often says that when she gets ready for bed she wonders what the movie for the evening will be, To her, the dreams are so vivid, they are like a movie.

I’m sure I dream but usually I have very little recall of what I dreamt of the night before.

During our conversation she mentioned a recurring dream that she has and something she said triggered me and Holy Spirit’s voice spoke up.

He brought my attention to the only dream I can vividly remember from all my nights of sleep.

I can remember the dream because I had some iteration of this particular dream many times over and over the course of a couple of years it seemed.

In the film Divergent, the female lead- Tris gets placed into a dream like state that is part of her training to become Dauntless.

In this dream state, you must face your deepest most prevalent fears.

Normal people don’t recognize that they are in a dream state, fear grips them and they must fight to free themselves from those fears: but she isn’t normal.

She has the ability to quickly overcome her fears in this dream like state because she first tells herself, “this isn’t real” and because it isn’t real... the fears pose no real danger and the laws of physics don’t apply.

In my recurring dream I can remember being in a similar state of mind, understanding that I had been in this place many times before, that I was in a dream state and yet still feeling all the fear and anxiety that this place invoked for me. Unlike Tris’s experience, I knew there was something very real about this place I was in.

In my dream, I am in a great house, a house that I have inherited or some how come to own.

There are places in the house that are beautiful and comforting.

When looking on the house from the outside, the house looks great.

It’s looks well constructed and well designed. Everything about the exterior of the house seems to be in perfect order.

When I begin walking through the house I come into rooms that I was not aware existed. Secret rooms and secret places.

In some of these rooms there were Old Things perhaps left from a previous owner or perhaps past family members of mine who lived in the house before me.

These rooms were clutter and disorganized. Some of the items in these rooms were broken and good for nothing, just garbage hoarded and shoved into corners of the room.

Other items seemed to hold some value but were in disrepair.

Other items seemed mysterious and yet something inside of me, I knew that these items were of great value, which for the moment was hidden to me.

As I continued walking through these secret rooms, I found other rooms that were in horrible shape,. Floors that were filled with gapping holes and rottenness. If I were to step in the wrong place I would surely fall through into other lower and darker rooms it seemed.

The Walls were dirty and there was very little if any light in the room, just enough that you could see how bad the rooms were.

Fear would grip me once I enter into these rooms. I remember thinking oh my God, my house has major damage that I wasn’t aware of and the cost of repairs will be way more that I can possible afford.

I can’t even sell this house once this damage is found out. I’m stuck with a house that is in such bad shape and I had no idea it was this bad.

I would often end up in the basement of the house near the foundation and find that while thankfully the foundation was intact, the timbers that lay upon that foundation were rotting and eaten away at by termites or something other perhaps.

Again, dread would grip my thoughts.

That sort of dread that says, oh crap!!!! What am I going to do.

I can’t hide this forever.

I can’t ignore this or the whole house will collapse and when it does, all is lost, even the parts that are beautiful.

What am I to do?

Then I would wake up, still having that since of dread but knowing, whew it was only a dream.

There were days that I wondered why I had such a dream over and over again, but I wrote it off as a personal distaste for Home Improvement Projects and the DIY channel that my wife often watched.

When Ivy and I were talking, I realized that I hadn’t had that dream in years.

It was so common to me and filled my sleeping hours for years of my life and now, I had gone quite some time without it.

A certain gratitude filled me but I wasn’t sure why I was so grateful until Holy Spirit took the opportunity in that moment to speak.

What he said still deeply stirs me even as I take time to share it here.

He said “ Joe, you are the house” and I thought of how David must have felt when the prophet Nathan came and told David the story of the rich man who stole the ONE lamb a poor man had, killed it and fed it to his guests, when as a rich man he had MANY sheep of his own. David was furious with this man and then Nathan looked at him as said, “David, you are that man”

For many years, the exterior of my life may have looked like it was well built, but once you got past the facades that were in place and you got past the rooms that were the normal living quarters, what you found was rooms filled with items that needed removal, items that needed restoration and items that need a deeper understanding to fully realize the value they held, an understanding that only the one who built those items would be able to explain.

The rooms that were in complete disrepair and looked beyond help, were parts of my soul that I ignored and places in my heart that I kept closed off because I didn’t want to look at the damage.

The rotting timbers laying on the foundation were my own works that I had tried to build upon the foundation of my life which thankfully was Jesus, my Rock and foundation.

It’s great mystery and one not understood by those who are not in Christ, but the foundation was laid by another hand and not my own. It was laid in place by the Father before I even knew one of my days. I had nothing to do with how the foundation was put in place.

What was built upon it was failing at it’s very core. The life I had been building was my own doing. I had not surrendered my life, this house to the Lord completely and because of this, the building was rotting away from the inside out.

The exterior may have looked righteous and well constructed, but that was not case at all.

The reason the Holy Spirit said, that I was no longer having the dream was because by His work in me, I had finally surrendered the building of the house to Jesus.

And for years, Holy Spirit has been helping me clear the cluttered rooms, he has been restoring the things of value to their proper glory and place, he has begun to reveal the mysteries and value behind those items that were before mis-understood or improperly valued.

He had begun a complete restoration of the structure of the house. The foundation timbers were replaced, the structural integrity of the floors and walls was repaired, better than I could have ever imagined.

The dread I had before was well founded. The damage was great and I had no resources within myself to make such massive repairs. The house was falling in on itself because the Lord had not built it. Sure, there were religious materials in the construction that I had attempted, but those materials were a cheap inferior imitation of what Jesus offers.

Once I accepted the Lord’s offer to build this house, to restore this house that is my life, I found that the unimaginable cost that I knew it would take was already paid for.

That all that was required of me was to trust the Master builder and his desire to see this house stand as a tangible witness of His greatness and His power.

As soon as I abandon the desire to build something where others would praise and recognize me and conceded to allow Jesus to get all the credit for whatever came from this house, this life; that’s when I stopped having the dream.

My life was being lived in Vain and Jesus needed me to see the truth that I was not willing to see in my waking hours.

This life that I now live has true purpose and has become a place where others may find the presence and peace of the Master builder Jesus

I echo the Apostle Paul who commented to those under his care in Galatia

in Gal 2:20

I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So the life I now live in the body, I live because of the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

By the love and grace of God this house, this life stands and will continue to stand for generations to come, dare I even say for eternity as a visible proof that Jesus is the Son of God, that he is the Chosen and Anointed King of the Cosmos and that his love for mankind is genuine and marvelous, That he stands ready to start the renovation of men’s lives today, to those who are willing to give him the keys to the place.

Here’s praying that some of you listening today will become aware of the internal damage of your life, your house and will find hope for the complete renovation of that life in Jesus.

That Holy Spirit would use my personal witness to the truth of the claims of Christ to stir you to hand the keys of your house over to Him and allow him to restore you to what you were originally meant to be.

It’s worth reading again

Psalm 127:1-2

1 If the Lord does not build a house,

then those who build it work in vain.

If the Lord does not guard a city,

then the watchman stands guard in vain.

Until next week

May the Lord bless you

and protect you.

 May the Lord smile on you

and be gracious to you.

May the Lord show you his favor

and give you his peace.’ 

God Bless Brothers