Wednesday, January 23, 2008

I Had A Dream - We Had a Dream

Last night I had a dream. Actually it was this morning right before I woke up. I was in this small house and there were lots of church people there. When I say church people, I mean people from previous churches and our Cowboy Church now. We were packed in this house. I went into the bedroom and made my way through the laughing crowd of people to take some pies and put them on the bed because we ran out of room in the kitchen. There was so much love in that place you could feel it. I was trying to hurry because I knew I needed to get to the church service when I saw a woman dressed in a very expensive, beautiful dress. She was someone I hadn't seen in while so I went over to hug her and when I did I knew her hug wasn't genuine. I kissed her right on the cheek and stepped back. Her beautiful dress had become wrinkled and ugly and it was too big for her. She was still smiling like, as the girls would say, "she was all that". I told her I had to go, and as I was leaving the room she was shouting compliments at me and she said "I can't wait to eat the cheesecake!" I don't make cheesecake, I make pies.
I walked out the front door and to my left was a young girl running my direction in the middle of the street. She was slender and she had long tangled hair hanging in her face. All I could see from her face was a tootsie roll pop stick hanging from her mouth. As she got closer, she slowed down and I saw that she was filthy. I looked down the street in the direction she was walking and saw a huge stadium packed with people. Kinda funny to me that I could see lots of orange in that stadium. That stadium was our new church. I was worried because I didn't think she would be able to find her seat because she was a freshman. Weird, I know. I felt a little relief to think that the sections of the stadium were numbered, but knew I needed to go help her find her way. About that time, a very overweight boy (I watched Biggest Loser last night) came running around the corner to get to the stadium. He was filthy too. We all started running to the stadium. Then I woke up. Pretty stange dream. Strange in many ways, but one specifically: I don't run.

About five years ago God gave Michael and me a dream. A dream to be in a place where hearts were fertile soil that we could plant His Word into. We hoped it would be with people who wouldn't go to a traditional church. We have been packing 200+ people into our quadruple wide mobile building for the last month and a half. Yesterday the bank here in Ennis approved our request for a loan to start building our church to hold all this precious family. Praise You Father! I wish I could tell you all the little things that have taken place in the last 6 months to let us know God was ready to give us our new home. When we first came here, Michael took off his watch and told the people we were now on God's time. We would not step out of that. Some people left because we didn't have a building on the ground as soon as they wanted. We HAD to wait on the Lord. I'm so glad we did. After Michael talked with the bank yesterday, he called to tell me the loan was approved and that the timing of everything was continuing to show that we are in God's timing. He said that the government had even lowered the interest rate the night before. Isn't it nice that the whole country gets to benefit from us building our building when God told us to!

I don't know the significance of the dream this morning, except the obvious. I do know the significance of the dream about five years ago. Thank you Lord, for giving us your dream and for letting us live it out in real life. As we go into the building time, protect us, guide us. My prayer is that we are here in this "dream" until You call us home! You are so good to us.