Last night I had a dream. It does not matter if you view dreams as a prophetic message or not. What I had was an illustration of a profound truth. I thought I would record it in this devotion.
I dreamt that I was a preacher. Well, that is not a new revelation. However, I was to preach in a large church that was prepared to do baptisms that Sunday. Yet there was no guarantee that anyone would come forward for baptism.
I gave the message and an invitation. I was pleasantly surprised when two people came forward to publicly profess faith in Christ and then baptism. Yet rumor had it that there was another that had expressed interest and did not come forward. We did baptize the two.
After the service we went outside where there was a swimming pool for a fellowship meal and celebration. I understood that the third person was to be baptized after the meal. So far so good.
This is where the dream became quite weird. After the meal the believers went to the swimming pool where there was a set of bleachers to watch the baptism. They sat around and waited for the others to finish eating and show up. However, the bleachers were already full. We scrambled to find a way to get everyone seated. People began to get grumpy as they were waiting for some time. Then I decided to move everyone from one part of the complex to another that had a larger seating area. I sensed that this further aggravated everyone because it was taking excess time and energy.
So, everyone moved to the other area of the campus with a larger bleacher section and a small pool. Yet people, already cranky because of the length of time taken out of their schedule, became increasingly cranky because the person to be baptized was nowhere to be seen.
Some people began to leave disgruntled. Yet before they left, they returned as the person to be baptized rushed in carrying his change of clothes for the baptism.
While waiting for him to change, I decided to preach an extemporaneous sermon on the way God directs our steps. It was that He is always in control. One of the verses that came to mind was this, “A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.” (Proverbs 16:9, KJV) I also quoted Isaiah who wrote the words of the Lord.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8–9, KJV)
The point was that God’s plans are higher than ours are and our finite minds cannot always fathom how God is at work in every situation. You see, we plan our ways, but the Lord works to move us in alignment with His perfect will.
As I concluded, I recalled the occupation of the person who was late to his baptism. He was a physician who was called to the hospital that morning and was delayed due to treating a second person. The point was this if we had not experienced all the delays after the service that Sunday morning in moving from one place on the campus to another, they probably would have left before the doctor got to the venue for his baptism
To this, I told everyone to take a chill pill and stop complaining, that God had orchestrated the steps of everyone that morning so that they and the man baptized would be blessed.
After thinking about this, I have concluded that we believers are often very impatient people. I have been in churches where people will hold up their hands pointing to their wristwatches or to the clock on the wall when you hit the 12:00 hour during a sermon. I have seen people become bitter when things do not go according to their plan or their time schedules. We need to learn to trust the Lord who works according to His good purposes and in accordance with His perfect timing.
Renewing the Heart 