Old Men Will Dream Dreams

I watched "The Freedom in Christ Course: Session 5 - The Battle for Our Mind” Friday evening and later went to sleep for the night.

Acts 2:17
‘And in the last days it will be,’ God says, ‘that I will pour out my Spirit on all people, and your sons and your daughters will prophesy, and your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams’.

I had a weird rambling dream early Saturday morning.  The dream ended in a catastrophic tsunami flood type event.  I, in my SUV, was fast being swept toward certain destruction. I was making split second decisions on how to escape including the futile effort of getting out and pushing my floating SUV to higher ground at which time I woke up. I realized the dream was an attack by the enemy and the Lord was showing me that I should have immediately called on the name of the Lord - Jesus. The tsunami in the dream was the roaring lion trying to freeze me in my tracks with fear so that I could be devoured by the tsunami.  I needed to stop focusing on the fear object but rather focus on the truth object, Jesus Christ. At the first sight of the huge and overwhelming tsunami I should have called out to Jesus, “Save me!” Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. Jesus is the Word of God. I needed to immediately take my focus off of the tsunami and place my entire focus on Jesus and His Word - the truth.

James 4:1–7
¹ Where do the conflicts and where do the quarrels among you come from? Is it not from this, from your passions that battle inside you? ² You desire and you do not have; you murder and envy and you cannot obtain; you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask; ³ you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, so you can spend it on your passions. ⁴ Adulterers, do you not know that friendship with the world means hostility toward God? So whoever decides to be the world’s friend makes himself God’s enemy. ⁵ Or do you think the scripture means nothing when it says, “The spirit that God caused to live within us has an envious yearning”? ⁶ But he gives greater grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.” ⁷ So [humbly (by crying out)] submit to God. But resist the devil and he will flee from you.

James 4:5 (James B. Adamson, The Epistles of James. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1976), 170-173)
Or do you suppose it is an idle saying in the scriptures, that the spirit [not the Holy Spirit] that has taken dwelling in us is prone to envious lust [spiritual idolatry]?

Steps to Take

1. Cry out to Jesus (humbly submit to God)
2. Answer the fear object or anxiety, out loud, with verbally spoken appropriate scriptures - the sword of the Spirit (resist the devil)
3. Stand firm. (the devil will have to flee from me)

Humbly Submit to God

Psalm 3:4
To the Lord I cried out, and he answered me from his holy hill.

Psalm 18:6
In my distress I called to the Lord; I cried out to my God. From his heavenly temple he heard my voice; he listened to my cry for help.

Psalm 120:1
In my distress I cried out to the Lord and he answered me.

Resist the Devil

Ephesians 6:17–18
¹⁷ And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit [our only offensive weapon for actively resisting the devil], which is the [spoken out loud] word of God. ¹⁸ With every prayer and petition, pray at all times in the Spirit, and to this end be alert, with all perseverance and requests for all the saints.

Stand Firm

1 Corinthians 16:13
Stay alert, stand firm in the faith, show courage, be strong.

2 Corinthians 1:24
I do not mean that we rule over your faith, but we are workers with you for your joy, because by faith you stand firm.

Galatians 5:1
For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not be subject again to the yoke of slavery.

Ephesians 6:14–18
¹⁴ Stand firm therefore, by fastening the belt of truth around your waist, by putting on the breastplate of righteousness, ¹⁵ by fitting your feet with the preparation that comes from the good news of peace, ¹⁶ and in all of this, by taking up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. ¹⁷ And take the helmet of salvation* and the sword of the Spirit [our only offensive weapon for actively resisting the devil], which is the [spoken out loud] word of God. ¹⁸ With every prayer and petition, pray at all times in the Spirit, and to this end be alert, with all perseverance and requests for all the saints.

1 Thessalonians 3:8
For now we are alive again, if you stand firm in the Lord.

2 Thessalonians 2:13–15
¹³ But we ought to thank God always for you, brothers and sisters loved by the Lord, because God chose you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth. ¹⁴ He called you to this salvation through our gospel, so that you may possess the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. ¹⁵ Therefore, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold on to the traditions that we taught you, whether by speech or by letter.

Summary

Continuous freedom comes from exposing our sin (Eph 5:11) by confessing our sin (1 John 1:9) and renouncing our association with sin (Titus 2:11–12) and repenting (2 Pet 3:9) of [turning away from (James 5:20)] our sin and continually submitting to God and resisting (James 4:7) further temptations to sin and believe lies by taking every thought captive to Christ (2 Cor 10:5) and diligently standing firm (Gal 5:1, Eph 6:14) in our new freedom while continually thinking about these things: whatever is true, whatever is worthy of respect, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable and if something is excellent or praiseworthy (Phil 4:8).

See Related Blog Entries

Trusting God
We can't totally surrender to God unless we can first totally trust God.

Brokenness and Fruitfulness
Is brokenness designed by God to be a major event in a Christian's life in order to make us more fruitful for God?

Surrender and Submission
Total surrender and submission brings us to the place in our walk with Christ where we understand that "apart from Christ we can do nothing".

Sin Confess Repent Resist
Breaking the sin-confess, sin-confess endless cycle.