Hi everyone, I want to talk today about visions and dreams from the Holy Spirit.
I would call it the language of the Holy Spirit, it doesn't mean that God always speaks through
visions and dreams, but what it does mean is in these last days we are going to see
more and more supernatural ways in which God speaks to us, and in Acts chapter 2 during
Pentecost when the Holy Spirit fell, Peter preached these words, and I think they're
prophetic for us for the last 2,000 years, but especially for us right now as Holy Spirit
filled believers.
He says, And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out
my Spirit on all flesh.
Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.
Your young men shall see visions.
Your old men shall dream dreams.
And on my menservants and my maidservants I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and
they shall prophesy.
So here, just in this passage alone, you see that with the coming of the Holy Spirit and
power upon believers, it was genderless, it was ageless, and it was classless, in other
words, it was men and women that were going to receive visions and dreams from the Lord.
It's menservants and maidservants, that means those that are slaves, so it was classless.
And it's going to be young men and older men, and young women and older women, so it's ageless.
So this is the most inclusive, one of the most inclusive statements in the Scriptures
of the New Testament.
The Holy Spirit is for everyone, even children.
And man, do I know the stories, I'm not going to go into them here, but the stories of God
giving really supernatural visions and dreams, even to kids, that were open to Him.
So visions and dreams have been a key part of God's Spirit leading Liz and I through
our missionary career, as well as being pastors and leaders.
And I don't know if you as a listener have ever had a vision or a dream, but the way
I would classify a vision is seeing something in your mind's eye while you're awake that's
very clear, and it's almost like a movie reel, something you're seeing from a movie reel.
Dreams though are when you're asleep and God visits you in a dramatic way with a dream.
And we were in Okinawa, we were just learning about these things actually, so we didn't
have hardly any experience in visions and dreams, but through the circumstances of God's
work in our lives, we were considering leaving, we had thought about leaving the mission field
and coming back to the United States.
And I knew God was calling me to be a pastor, and then one night, and Liz is going to correct
me if I get this wrong because she's better at details than me, but she had a dream, and
in the dream she was with these women in a room, it was kind of like a Bible study, and
there was a big window, and she looked out the window and she could see the Snowcap Mountains
and she could see a rodeo.
Between the Snowcap Mountains and the window there was a rodeo, and the Lord spoke to her
that he was sending us to this place, right?
And woke up, and then woke me up early in the morning and said, I think I know where
God's sending us in the future.
She told me the dream, we both looked at each other, where is that?
We didn't know.
Well, I thought it was Colorado.
You did?
I did.
Even at that point, because of the Snowcap Mountains?
Yeah.
You know what I thought of at first?
What?
Sapporo.
Okay.
I thought of Sapporo.
I can still remember distinctly thinking, by the way, Sapporo is northern Japan, it's
very snowy up there, so that was my first impression.
I mean, I knew the language, we knew the culture, it didn't seem like, maybe God doesn't want
us to go back to the States, he wants to keep us in Japan.
Well then, I'm going to say, six months later, we get a call on a rotary phone, kind of on
the wall.
I remember it ringing.
Oh.
Is that the old days?
It did no flip thing, you just take it off, it's got a little ringlet cord to it, and
this guy named Dale Landon, who was the coach of the Women's Gymnastics Team for Athletes
in Action, which is a ministry of Campus Crusade, that I had competed with, he went to Long
Beach State when I was at University of Georgia, and we had competed with AIA in Fountain Valley,
California, one summer, training for the Santa Monica Gym Festival, and trained together.
He was a parallel bars guy, and I was an all-around.
Brown, but he had gone on to become staff with Campus Crusade and coach for this women's
team and they wanted to come to Okinawa and so I said yeah, come, we'll set you up with
some meetings, some evangelistic gatherings and the way it worked back then was we would
do these gymnastics programs and thousands would come out for these because A, we were
Americans, B, it was really good gymnastics, these were some really good gymnasts from
around the country and then we'd present the gospel, but the call had come from Colorado
Springs so that was interesting.
That's just a little bit of a side point for what I'm going to share now.
So we get there, we do these events and we take them up to this Baptist retreat center
in a beautiful part of northern Okinawa and we're sitting out on this veranda of the retreat
center and I just asked Dale about what it's like to live in Colorado Springs, so I was
just making conversation, wasn't even thinking about the dream or anything, I said tell me
about Colorado Springs and this is what he said, he said well, if you were living anywhere
in the sea of Colorado Springs and let's say you had a big window and if you were looking
out that window, 90% of the year, he might have said 80% of the year, you see snow-capped
mountains and I was like okay, and then he said the craziest thing, which you would think
he would say the Olympic training centers in Colorado Springs, he didn't say that, he
said the rodeo hall of fame is in Colorado Springs, so he mentions the mountains, hello,
he mentions a window, hello, and then he mentions a rodeo, so then Liz said remember the dream,
yeah, she elbowed me like this, like that's what women do to their husbands in our church
at the road when I make a point about the men, the women all, so she elbowed me, I was
like oh yeah, the dream, so that really got our attention, it didn't conclude or make
our decision on anything, it just was like whoa.
Right, I'd never been to Colorado Springs and you hadn't.
Yeah, I'd never been there either.
We had been speaking one time after we got married and we were speaking across the country
and we were up in Fort Collins, that's the closest, in Boulder, it was the closest we
had ever been, so never been to the city or anything, so that got us thinking, God had
definitely gotten our attention, well then we go to Atlanta for a furlough and while
in Atlanta I have this dream at night and in this dream I see this guy on a stage and
he looks like, I'm going to mention a name, probably most of you, if you're under 60,
which is the majority of you, don't know who this person is, but his name was Garrison
Keillor, Garrison Keillor used to have a radio program called Prairie Home Companion, it
was the most popular radio program in America, probably in the 80s and 90s, so I saw this
guy, he looked like Garrison Keillor and he, with big glasses, big glasses, thick glasses,
he told me to come forward, he told people to come forward and then I came forward in
the dream, this is still in the dream, he lays his hands on me and the power of God
hits me and I wake up, that's it, that was the dream.
Well we're in Atlanta and we're at this Presbyterian church of all places, a charismatic Presbyterian
church, in which they supported us financially, so I just met with the leaders and they said
you guys should come on Sunday and hear this guest speaker that we have named Michael Cotton
from North Carolina, he's going to be ministering here and we didn't even know much about prophecy
or prophetic people.
We were just going because they asked us, we weren't that interested.
But it was within 48 hours or so of that dream, so I know I was a little curious, like hmm,
but that was it.
So then we got finished speaking at this one church, I spoke at a Sunday school group or
something and then we jumped in the car, drove across town, went to this Presbyterian church,
we walk in, it's super crowded and I look up at the guy that's on the stage and it's
the dude in my dream, he looks like Garrison Keillor, he's got the glasses and I'm like,
Liz, that's the guy in my dream.
So we ran out, we didn't stay.
Yeah, we just said forget it, we're out of here, couldn't be God, no, so we were like
super curious at that point and we hadn't been there 10 minutes when he said if you're
wanting prayer, come forward, exactly like in my dream.
So then I come forward and to make a long story longer, he prays for me, he prophesies
some stuff over me that nobody knew about except Liz and me, nobody else knew this stuff,
he just read my mail.
I start weeping, and then in my spirit,
in my spirit I hear resign, resign, resign.
I hear the word resign three times.
And I knew the first resignation was to resign
from Campus Crusade, from being a missionary,
and come back to the States.
I just knew in my spirit that's what God was saying.
And then there were two other resignations
that followed in the next year.
So there were three resignations in my life
to get me back to the States.
Then we start going to Fuller Theological Seminary,
in Southern California, in Pasadena.
And I won't go through, there's too many.
There's like 35 different times that people came up to me,
or there were circumstances where God spoke
for me to go and plant a church in Colorado Springs.
So, why?
Why all that?
Why so much commotion?
Why so much commotion spiritually?
Why all the visions and dreams?
Well, what we didn't know until the last year,
we were in Southern California,
were the opportunities that were afforded to me
to stay at the Anaheim Vineyard.
I was working as an assistant to a man named John Wimber.
And there was a really sweet offer made to stay there
and be on staff at the Anaheim Vineyard.
And I think I would have taken it if we had not heard
37 different times that we were supposed
to go to Colorado Springs.
So, I declined.
I said no, very lucrative salary with a house
and just tons of stuff involved with the Vineyard Movement
to go to Colorado Springs with nothing, zero,
and build a church from nothing, zero.
But we knew.
And so, I think, men and women,
God uses visions and dreams to bypass our logic.
I think a lot of times that's what it is.
God's bypassing our logical thinking
to give us a supernatural word that we would not believe
if it didn't come that way.
At least that's the way it's worked with us.
And then Liz and I have been married now 37 years,
and we've had these big changes, probably like six.
I think there's like five or six things
where there was an alteration of our direction,
and it's been through visions and dreams.
So, like we're in this season right now
where we've had five or six pretty significant dreams,
and we were telling the staff team the other day
that to us means Lord's shifting something.
He's trying to get our attention
about something new that he wants to do.
And that's what Acts 2 is about.
This is a shift.
This is a big paradigm shift.
And some would argue that this was the beginning
of what we call the church era
and the end of the Jewish era.
You know, for you that are history buffs,
you may know that in Matthew 24,
Jesus predicts the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
So he probably gave that prophecy around 30 to 33 AD.
So some 37 years later.
The Romans are gonna surround Jerusalem and sack Jerusalem,
and he's prophesying about that.
And many would say, and I would agree with this,
that historically that was the end of the Jewish era,
was the end of the sacrificial system of the Jews
in the destruction of Jerusalem, the temple in 70 AD.
Well, this is the beginning of the last days.
This is the beginning of the last days church age,
and we're still living in the church age.
And Peter's saying, God speaks through visions and dreams.
So it's the Holy Spirit channel.
So one of the Holy Spirit channels that we can tap into
if we have the Holy Spirit is visions and dreams.
And if you've never had a vision or dream, ask God.
I mean, ask God to start speaking to you
in the night season when you're going to bed.
Ask him, keep a journal by your bed, write down stuff.
You'll say, well, how do you know the difference?
You don't, okay?
You don't know the difference at first.
But the more you have dreams and visions from God,
it's very clear.
For me, I think Liz, you would agree, right?
That it's something different about it.
It's just, when it's from the Lord,
you remember the details of it really clearly.
And it's-
And it will fit with scripture.
And it fits with scripture and truth.
If you're going through struggles in your marriage
and you have a dream about divorcing your husband,
that's probably not from the Lord.
But for us at least,
it's often been when God is kind of giving us
a right-hand turn or a left-hand turn
on something in our life that-
that I'm not sure logically we'd be willing to think about.
Well, I would say the Holy Spirit is a great encourager,
and he's a comforter, he's a teacher,
and if we're available, he's gonna show us what to do.
He's gonna guide us and show us something encouraging
because he loves us, and he's wanting to use us,
and we're not just here randomly.
And a lot of times, I would say,
a lot of times he comes with power
when we're kind of at the end of ourselves,
and we're ready to hear something new.
Those are the best times that he'll come
and he'll speak something through a dream or a vision,
or it can be through a scripture,
but even today, he may be speaking,
he may be wanting to speak,
especially if you're going through a hard time.
And I think we get so busy, you guys,
that we just don't, we're not willing to hear something
that's not sort of in line with what we're already thinking.
And the scriptures are really clear
that some of the best people that God can speak to
are the people who are available.
They're not necessarily the most gifted,
they're not necessarily the smartest,
but they're available to God,
and they'll do whatever God wants them to do.
So the challenge for you is,
are you willing to do whatever God tells you to do?
Are you willing to go anywhere,
talk to anyone, and obey him,
knowing that he'll empower you supernaturally,
not using your natural talents
as much as the supernatural work
of the spirit in your life.
If you are, he is going to speak to you.
He is no respecter of anyone special,
whatever your gender, whatever your age,
however long you've known the Lord,
whatever your socioeconomic status, God doesn't care.
He just looks at your heart,
and if the direction of your heart is toward him,
he'll speak to you and he'll guide you.
So God bless you, I hope that's helpful to you.