I’ve heard many Christians who aren’t in leadership say the same thing, and it always used to evoke the same, unspoken, response from me: “Oh really?” That is, until I began to discern God’s voice myself. Now my unspoken response is, “Let’s test and see if it really is of God.”

I’m now of the opinion that we should be hearing “God told me” more often than we do. My caveat is to be careful not to put words into God’s mouth. Don’t over-interpret what you heard. Make a clear distinction between the actual message you receive and what you intend to do about it. For instance, I once felt the Lord say that CCCC should be accessible to every ministry, not just the ones that can afford the membership fee. That was from God. I felt a Web membership would satisfy the accessibility that God desired, but how the Web membership works was actually designed by the leadership team. I made it clear that accessibility was mandated by God, the Web membership was just my idea for consideration.

The assumption is that anyone leading a Christian ministry is being led by God. The question for leaders is, “How does God lead us?” Since it is hard to lead without any form of communication, we should expect God to lead by finding ways to ‘talk’ with us.

A secondary question is, “Does God actually speak?” This question  arises because of the shorthand way that most people use to refer to God’s communication methods. I’ve not yet heard of anyone who would say they heard an audible voice, although that is possible. Some have experienced a vivid thought within their heads and described it as an internal voice, but not a real voice. Others have ‘heard’ God speaking through other people, a Bible verse, or a dream, or intuition or by journaling. It’s just easier to say “God told me” rather than go through the technical details of how you came to understand God’s message.

The two ways God ‘speaks’ to us are:

1. Through the Bible
2. By the Holy Spirit

The Bible

We have one sure communication from God that is undoubted, and that is the Bible. We can read the Bible for historical information and for theology, but we can also read it to learn about God’s plans and his character. Scripture tells us what God is up to and how he goes about it. We learn about his character, his values and his priorities. Knowing these will help us think more like God and less like ourselves. We’ll lead our ministries with a more godly character and we’ll know better how to make our plans and decisions.

The Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit gives life to the church today and resides in each and every believer as our Counsellor. Shouldn’t we therefore expect the Spirit to be communicating with us in some way? That’s part of his mission. Well, the Spirit does speak in many ways, including feelings, circumstances, visions, dreams, inspired thoughts and so forth. I’ve detailed a number of different ways in this series on “Hearing God speak” that you should find helpful.

God Told Me

However, I’ve just finished a book that I think does a pretty good job at explaining how God speaks to people. The complete title is God Told Me: Who to Marry, Where to Work, Which Car to Buy…And I’m Pretty Sure I’m Not Crazy: Learning to listen for guidance from God. The author, Jim Samra, is not a crazy person. He is senior pastor of Calvary Church in Grand Rapids, MI. His academic credentials include a Master of Theology degree from Dallas Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. from Oxford University in New Testament Theology. So he’s no slouch!!

His main point is that God doesn’t speak to us these days about moral choices, because he’s already made that clear in Scripture. He doesn’t need to tell you if you should steal or not! (I might quibble with this – I believe the Holy Spirit does stimulate your conscience.) However when we need specific, explicit guidance from God on non-moral issues, Samra says we should expect to hear from him.

If hearing God is a novel concept for you, or if you think you’ve never heard God speak, you’ll find this book very helpful. I believe every Christian should be able to discern God’s ‘voice’ and this book is an easy read that gives you both a theological foundation for divine communication and practical advice for how to participate in conversing with God.

Samra presents a good biblical case as to why we should ask God for guidance. He then tells about the many ways God speaks, and how we can distinguish his voice from all others. After that, he gets down to the nuts and bolts of preparing to listen, actively listening, lessons he’s learned and when you should and shouldn’t tell others about what God has revealed to you.

The one area I wish Samra had spent more time on is interpreting dreams. I’ve had a seminary course that included this topic, but I’ve yet to find anything written (that is credible) on how dreams from God should be identified and then interpreted. There is room for a book on this topic. Otherwise, Samra covers the ground well.

God leads his people by communicating with them. He didn’t just leave us a note about what to do, but he finds ways to talk with us each day about current events. Hearing what he is saying should be a basic competency of anyone on a ministry’s leadership team. My previous posts in this series and this book should help you develop your listening-to-God skills.

“If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God…”
James 1:5

“Book has been provided courtesy of Graf-Martin Communications, Inc. Available now at your favourite bookseller.”

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I am using the term “hear God’s voice” in this post even though I have never heard an audible voice. What I mean is that God speaks in many ways, and ‘hearing’ God means discerning his thoughts. He can ‘speak’ to you through a dream, intuition, an inner voice, a flash of insight from nowhere, someone else saying something that you know is from God, discerning the meaning of circumstances and so forth.

Ways to Hear God

Here are some thoughts about how you can better discern God’s voice.

• This is obvious, but if you want to hear from God you have to stop talking and start listening. This means quiet time, without any distractions if possible. I find that even having reflective music in the background can be distracting, so I often am in complete silence. Once a year I do a one week spiritual retreat on my own devoted to my leadership of CCCC, and I set aside a couple days throughout the year for deep reflection, meditation and listening. But those are special times of intense listening. Listening to God should be a daily activity, actually a constant activity, and since complete silence is usually not possible, I have learned to quiet myself in the midst of distraction and open myself to God’s thoughts.
  1.  Frank Laubach wrote about unceasing prayer and how even on a busy streetcar he could silence himself before God.  I’ll put a couple of quotes of his at the bottom of this post.  A chapter from one of his books was given out in a course at Tyndale, but I don’t recall which book it came from. I’ve not read it, but Prayer, the Mightiest Force in the World: Thoughts for an Atomic Age sounds like the likely source.
  2. Distractions are not necessarily bad, sometimes they bring to your attention something God wants you to think about.  Maybe the best way to think about silence is that it is your silence that is required.  It’s really hard to stop all the sounds that are around you, although you can seek out a quiet place if you want.
  3. Unceasing prayer does not mean talking to God all the time because it includes listening.  What I strive for is a continuous awareness of God and his agenda so that his mission and character permeate everything I do as a leader.  But, like Paul, I have to say “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me” (Phil 3:12).
• Set aside time for God just as you set aside time for family and friends. It seems that the really deep thoughts I’ve had from God have come after an extended time. I certainly have heard God speak in various ways after only a few minutes of silence, sometimes virtually immediately, and sometimes he just interrupts my thoughts completely unexpectedly, but I know the most dramatic experience I have ever had with God came after almost an hour of continuously praising God in silence while meditating on his nature. I wasn’t actually listening at the time, which made the experience all the more powerful. Regardless of how much time you can spend, the main thing is to be receptive to God.
• Study Scripture to know it inside and out. That way you come to know God’s mind (as much as we can know it) and can learn to incorporate God’s ways into your leadership in real-time, as opposed to reflecting on a situation later. Also, study the biblical leaders to see the good, the bad and the ugly. That will help you understand what God expects of you as a ministry leader. I feel a tremendous amount of responsibility as a ministry leader to model Christ’s character and to do the Lord’s will. Knowing that I am still a work in process means that I am continually examining myself against God’s standards for his leaders and that feeds in to my personal development plan. You know, sometimes other people even help me see the areas that are “opportunities for growth!” The absolute best book I have read on Christian leadership is the one I reviewed in Shepherds After My Own Heart by Tim Laniak. Tim’s theological work is excellent!
• I find the most effective way to hear from God is to ask him a direct question and then be silent and wait for a response. Sometimes you might just say “Lord, speak to me about whatever I need to hear,” but I also will give God a direct question I want an answer to. Don’t just think about your question. It seems that when I formulate a specific question and ask it (almost always silently), I get a response! Just thinking about an issue without formulating a question isn’t effective, for me at least. Merely thinking about an issue means all I have is a vague notion of a question I would like to ask God someday, but I haven’t actually asked it for real until I’ve said it either out loud or in my head. I know he knows my thoughts, but I think for me at least, he wants a direct question because then I will know he is responding.
• Ask your questions before you make your plans. Don’t ask God to bless your plans, but ask God for his plans. His ways are not our ways and we can’t even conceive the depths of his mind, so even the very best of our puny plans does nothing but frustrate what God would like to do through us. The Lord broke me of planning ten years ago, and life has never been better! I do think ahead of course, and when the Lord lays out a direction, I do make plans, but I hold to them lightly, knowing that the Lord may provide something better at any time. My plans are just default plans that the Lord is free to interrupt whenever he wants.
• Reflect on your experiences. Keeping a journal or at least taking time to review your day/week/month/life is essential to understanding the events taking place in your life. Events are neutral until you interpret them and give them meaning. While writing this blog over the course of a few days, I attended church where Pastor Darren Ethier gave an excellent sermon on the power of storytelling, making just this very point. Was an event positive or negative? That depends on what you draw out of it. Since we know that God can redeem every circumstance, give him a chance to do so by reflecting on your circumstances. It is while reflecting on life that I come to see the trends, the longer term undercurrents and the deeper truths I need to know. That’s when I tend to get flashes of insight from God. (I always ask the Holy Spirit to guide my thoughts when I do reflection.)

Learning to Hear God Speak

It used to be that when people said “The Lord told me…”, my response (kept to myself of course) was, “Oh yeah, sure!!” First, I was very, very skeptical of their claims, and second, I always was afraid of mistaking my voice for God’s voice, so of course I never heard from God. But then about 1993 I asked God, “Please teach me to distinguish your voice from mine” and I started to have some pretty amazing experiences. Let me just say that over perhaps about five years, the Lord caused things to happen so that he could say, “That was me!” and I knew that anything else was me talking to myself. And of course he was training me so that on May 25, 2001 when I asked, “God, why do you give me all this vision for my family, my church and others, but no vision for myself?” I was equipped and ready to receive the most direct response from God that I have ever received!! That question changed my life. Suffice it to say, two weeks later I was registered at Tyndale Seminary and three weeks after that I started my first classes and became, at 44, a full-time student. And I’ve never looked back!

To help you, I have written on this blog about some aspects of hearing God speak. I wrote about dreams, about designing a spiritual retreat, about developing intimacy with God, about how your personal spirituality affects the public (your staff for example), and about discerning your call. Richard Foster wrote a good introduction to the contemplative life in Streams Of Living Water and a practical book on discerning God’s voice is Listening Prayer: Learning to Hear God’s Voice and Keep a Prayer Journal by Leanne Payne. It’s been some years since I read this book, but I recall it was pretty good. And of course, the one book that stands out above all others for guiding you into a more intimate relationship with God is Space for God: The Study and Practice of Spirituality and Prayer.

Frank Laubach wrote in 1930,

For the past few days I have been experimenting in a more complete surrender than ever before. I am taking by deliberate act of will, enough time from each hour to give God much thought. Yesterday and today I have made a new adventure, which is not easy to express. I am feeling God in each movement, by an act of will—willing that He shall direct these fingers that now strike this typewriter—willing that He shall pour through my steps as I walk—willing that He shall direct my words as I speak, and my very jaws as I eat! You will object to this intense introspection. Do not try it, unless you feel unsatisfied with your own relationship with God, but at least allow me to realize all the leadership of God I can.

A few days later, Laubach wrote something that, in each word, resonates with my experience over the past ten years:

I feel simply carried along each hour, doing my part in a plan which is far beyond myself. This sense of cooperation with God in the little things is what astonishes me. I seem to have to make sure of only one thing now, and every other thing “takes care of itself,” or I prefer to say what is more true, God takes care of all the rest. My part is to live in this hour in continuous inner conversation with God and in perfect responsiveness to His will. To make this hour gloriously rich. This seems to be all I need to think about.

1 Thessalonians 5:17 – Pray without ceasing.

Amen.

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My hero-in-the-faith, John Richardson, was called to ministry in 1959 at the age of 47. This wasn’t quite a mid-life career change since today he is a very healthy 97 year-old, but it was close to mid-life. (Pastor John passed away October 21, 2012 at 100 years of age.) CCCC members will remember John as the banquet speaker at the 2007 conference.

John was a senior manager at a textile company and could see that the industry had nowhere to go but to decline. While quietly looking for another management job, he was asked by the pastor of London Gospel Temple to come and help him at the church. John had no plans at all to enter ministry. He had no Bible college education or any other experience that would qualify him to be a pastor other than he was a man on fire for God. A call to ministry was really out of the blue for him. But when he considered his options, John discerned that God was indeed calling him to leave secular employment and enter full-time pastoral ministry. He prepared his family for a change in lifestyle, resigned from the textile company, and moved to London, Ontario.

Pastor John served in several churches over the next twenty years, but never sought a church in his career; all his pastorates were offered to him. I met John in 1981 when I joined the last church that asked him to come and help. He retired while at that church and he still attends every week to this day.

This gifted pastor discerned his call to ministry based on love for God, personal circumstances and opportunity. This will be a long post. It has taken a lot of time to write it and I don’t want to break it up into two posts because it is one big thought. So please be patient as I think you’ll find it helpful. There are learning points below, but the story of my call precedes them in order to demonstrate that your call doesn’t have to be just like someone else’s and so that I can refer to my story in the learning points.

My Call Was Different

My call to ministry was not like John’s. I knew from my preteen years, I think almost to the time I was saved, that somehow God was going to use me some day to serve his church. I don’t know why I thought that, I just did. I continued to have that thought many times over the years, but I had no idea how one serves the whole church. A church or a denomination, I understood, but the broader church? I thought it quite presumptuous to even think about it! Who am I? So I just went on with my life.

But on May 25th 2001, I asked God a question, “Why have you given me so much vision for my church, for my clients, for everyone around me and nothing for me?” The answer was so clear that I pulled over to the side of the road in shock. I knew instantly that God had given me a call and the call was still valid this many years later! I went home and told my wife I was going to go to seminary to prepare for whatever God had in mind for me. She instantly agreed without reservation (now that’s confirmation!). I met with trusted people from my church who supported my sense of call to ministry. (Thank you Marshall, Jim, Ray, Laurie and Walt.)

Two weeks later I was enrolled at Tyndale Seminary and two weeks after that I started my first two courses during the summer term. I was not then aware of a call to CCCC, I was just being obedient in taking the next step in preparation to serve God.

When my wife and senior pastor saw the job ad for the executive director of CCCC, they both recommended that I apply. God orchestrated events in a marvelous way during the next six months. The key for me was a one-week spiritual retreat that was part of my MDiv program. The issue I brought to the retreat was whether I should pastor a church or lead CCCC, which had been offered to me subject to one more interview. I thought one was a test for the other! The spiritual director said something life-changing and liberating. “Why do you think God has only one perfect plan for you? Don’t you think in his graciousness God may give you two opportunities, equally pleasing to him, and then take delight in watching you make your choice?” He suggested a prayerful walk in the woods during which I realized that neither ministry option was more spiritual than the other, they just fulfilled different purposes in God’s plan.

I came home and conferred with Marshall Eizenga, then associate pastor at my church, who had watched my spiritual formation for fifteen years by that time. He confirmed the appropriateness of CCCC for me.

So my call was discerned based on a clear call to prepare for something (I didn’t know what) coupled with opportunity and guidance from several people that all aligned with a long-standing feeling I had as to God’s plan for my future. The other half of the equation is that the CCCC board independently discerned that I was called to lead this great ministry. My denominational advisor also agreed it was a good use of my gifts. We were in agreement and God’s call was confirmed in community.

Everyone Has Their Own Story About Their Call

As I travel for CCCC and visit our members, I always ask people how they got into the ministry that they are now in. And every time, I get treated to a unique story of how God worked in someone’s life. I’ve never heard the same story twice, and since God works in different ways with different people, I don’t believe there is a formula for discerning your call. What we learn from those who have gone before us is: 1) to be open to God working through us in unexpected ways; and 2) that we discern his leadership by engaging in Christian spiritual practices and spiritual reflection.

How to Discern Your Call

Here are some observations you may find helpful.

• God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways are not our ways (Isa 55:8). You cannot plan your way into a call from God. If you are asking God to bless your plans, you are probably not going to live out your highest and best purpose that God has in mind for you. At one point while at seminary, I thought God had forgotten me, so I helped him by getting some job interviews with Christian ministries. At one interview, the Holy Spirit clearly indicated to me “This is not what this is all about.  Withdraw all your applications!” My plans were frustrating God’s plans. His direction was to stop planning, sit back, and watch what he would do. I would do nothing but respond to what others initiated. It reminded me of the truism “Let go and let God.” Experiencing God is a great book that says God never asks people to dream up what they should do for him. You can’t call yourself. You are called. Are you asking God to bless your plans, or are you seeking God’s plans?
• What if God seems to be silent about your call? Whenever there is silence, the standard advice is to check for sin first and deal with that. And if sin is not the issue, then keep doing the last thing God told you to do before the silence and wait for him to initiate change. And lastly, if you’ve never felt you had a personal call, perhaps the general call that all believers have is your only call (in which case, see the next bullet point). While at seminary I had no understanding of what kind of ministry God was leading me into. God seemed quite quiet. All I knew was that I was done with secular work.  I also didn’t know how I could finish the degree as a full-time student with no income. Yet in spite of all the things I did not know, I did know with certainty that God wanted me in that MDiv program and that is what I hung on to. I said to myself many times, “But this one thing I know…” It was the last call that I had from God that gave me the fortitude to persevere and push through some tough circumstances.
• There are different kinds of call. A corporate call is shared by all believers while an individual call is for one person alone. Os Guiness says the ordinary (or corporate) call is to a life response to “Follow me!” A special (or individual) call is a clear communication from God to a task. Some people have no sense of individual call, in which case they live their lives following the call they share with all other Christians, believing that God will use them ad hoc as they live their lives. They are fully living a called life by doing so. I don’t know that we can say everyone needs an individual call. I do question Guiness’s definition of the individual call as a call to a task. I prefer to think that God calls us to a particular part of his mission. I feel called to the mission of equipping God’s church, more particularly the leadership of churches and Christian agencies. I am currently fulfilling that call through my role at CCCC because the board and I both feel that this role, with me in it, serves both my personal mission and CCCC’s organizational mission. If my time at CCCC ends, I am sure I would still feel called to serve the church but God would be leading me to another means of doing so. In my opinion, discerning your call usually means discerning two things: 1) what mission you are called to; and 2) with whom you are called to do it. 
• Sometimes we are in circumstances that we don’t understand. At one point I was really, really mad at God because I was doing everything for him and he was doing nothing for me. I came home late one night on a real spiritual high from a three-day retreat of silence and solitude to discover I had received a fax from someone whom I had forgiven in my heart for some really bad behaviour a few years before. The person came to mind during the retreat and I wrote out a script about how I would tell the person of my forgiveness. So when I read the fax and saw the same bad behaviour all over again, I lost it with God. I composed my own imprecatory psalms that night!!!  But God was big enough to bear my complaint and revealed to me that these circumstances were building character, to help me become the person he needed. Had I truly forgiven the person in my heart? This was something of a test. Far from doing nothing for me, God was actively working to make me more useful to him. When you don’t understand your circumstances, ask God to show you his perspective on your circumstances and follow through on what you learn. If circumstances do not support what you feel called to do, then it might not be the right time, so continue doing what you are already doing.
• Os Guiness, in his book The Call: Finding And Fulfilling The Central Purpose Of Your Life

  

  , says that you should do what you are. He believes that God’s call is normally in line with the gifts that you already have. “Normally” is an important concession, because God might call you to something outside of your abilities and interests, and give you the passion, grace and gifts needed once you start work. I’ve heard many stories where this has happened and people are doing things they never thought they would have the slightest interest or skill to do. Much of my life has been fighting against who God made me to be, in particular a voracious reader and researcher. We tend to devalue the things that come easiest to us and admire in others what we find difficult to do ourselves. There are many reasons why I feel my role at CCCC suits God’s call on my life, but one of the unexpected benefits is that it also allows me to use the talents and interests that come easiest to me and that I had devalued: my love for reading, researching, thinking, reflecting and writing. Does God give gifts to support a call or does he call according to the gifts he has already given? I suspect the answer is both, but normally you already have what you need. Perhaps it just needs developing.
• Sometimes when people feel called to a mission they mistakenly think they are also called to create or lead an organization that pursues that mission. For example, someone might feel a call to full-time evangelism, but it is a very different thing to be called to be an evangelist than to be called to lead an evangelism ministry. And it is quite a different thing to be called to lead an existing organization and to be called to create a new one from scratch. An evangelist and an executive director have two very different sets of skills and gifts. It also takes vastly different skills and gifts to build on what someone else has founded than to be a ministry entrepreneur. Paul recognized these distinctions (1 Cor 3:6).  So, are you called to do the work itself or to lead an organization that enables others to do the work?
• In The Soul of Ministry: Forming Leaders For God’s People

  

  , Ray Anderson says, that in deciding what ministry to do or how to make decisions, don’t be guided by the past but by God’s eschatological preference. In the midst of the now and the not yet, the Holy Spirit is guiding us to be the church Christ wants when he returns, not a copy of the one he left. Therefore, you should expect that your call will contribute to the church moving forward in some way (or at least the particular segment of it that you will lead). Being oriented to the future will help stimulate creativity while discerning your call. Gary Harbaugh echoes Anderson’s future-orientation. He wrote in Pastor as Person

  

  that pastors are called by God to lead God’s people into the future. This involves choices about change that must include risk. Don’t follow your instincts, he says, follow your faith. You aren’t called to maintain a church but to lead it forward within the context of our culture and society. What attracted me to CCCC was the realization that it already had a great ministry, but there was a lot of room to expand its work. At one interview, the board said my mandate is to explore to the edges the full mandate of CCCC. This is a ministry that is not resting on its laurels but seeking God’s direction as it strives to fulfill its mission. Perfect! I can, with God’s help, lead CCCC into that future.
• It is crucial that other Christians who are close to you are part of the discernment process. You might get away with missing out on one of the above points, but this one is critical. The corroboration of your call by other mature believers is central to correctly discerning God’s call to ministry. We serve, even if in different ministries, as fellow-workers. We bless each other through the laying on of hands, prayers of dedication and so on. We work in community, not as lone rangers. Some people think they are called to ministry leadership, but if no one else supports that understanding, you must seriously question whether you have properly heard from God. I tested my call with my wife, my pastor, my prayer partners, some mature Christian friends and a few others. Along the way I had guidance from my professors at Tyndale that was invaluable. There is wisdom in receiving advice from counselors (Prov 13:10).

So, assuming God is calling you to some particular part of his mission, he will do it in some way that is likely to be unique to you. You’ll have the delight of seeing God give you your own story of how you were called. But these tips should help you be ready for the call when it comes. May God bless you richly with a satisfying life of service, whatever your call. Would you like to share the circumstances of your call? I’d like to hear it.

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God Uses Dreams

It is important that you consider the possibility that God might use a dream to say something significant to you. I took a life-enriching class at Tyndale Seminary called Foundations of Christian Spirituality taught by Dr. David Sherbino in which we had one lesson on dreams and then some practice sessions at interpreting them (there was no textbook for this). Here are some key points I learned.

• A dream is generally the creation of the dreamer coming out of your experience, that can be used by God.
• The Bible has 130 references to dreams. Dreams are an important way that God communicates with humanity.
• Most of our dreams are objective dreams (also called association dreams). These are related to real life experience.
• Some dreams are subjective dreams, where the meaning is below the surface. Your mind is at work while you sleep and uses dreams to tell you something about yourself that you do  not consciously know. These dreams will raise your self-awareness if you pay attention to them.
• Then there are spectacular dreams. In these prophetic dreams, God speaks directly into the context of your life. In my experience, these are very rare, occurring only a couple of times in my life.
• No person or book can interpret another person’s dreams. All a person can do is ask questions to help the dreamer interpret his or her own dream.

I pay attention to any dream that is particularly striking or vivid. I don’t have them often, but when I do they are virtually always of the subjective type and are helpful for my development.

Interpreting Your Dreams

Dr. Sherbino gave us eight questions to help understand a dream’s meaning.

1. What is the major feeling/emotion in the dream? Pay particular attention to your emotional state when you woke up. The most significant clue to what the dream is really about is the emotional element. Were you afraid? Confident? What caused the emotion?
2. Does any of this dream remind you of anything yesterday? If yes, then it is an association dream.
3. Where does it take place? What does that place remind you of? Does it have any special significance to you? How did that place make you feel emotionally? Is it a safe and loving or a dangerous and threatening place for you?
4. Can you quickly summarize the dream? Do not reorganize the dream to make it make sense!
5. Focus on the major characters – who do they remind you of? What feelings did they give you? What part of yourself is in that person?
6. Unless it is a very rare spectacular dream, a prophetic dream, the dream is about you, not the other person, so don’t try to apply your dream to someone else.
7. Look for symbolism. Do you have any idea what the symbols mean?
8. How does this impact your personal growth?
9. What spiritual potential of yours might the dream be about?

Ask God to reveal the meaning of the dream to you and then reflect on it. As we see in Genesis 37 (Joseph’s dream of his brothers bowing to him), a dream from God does not necessarily mean you actually dream that God is speaking words. Joseph’s dream was symbolic and had to be interpreted (although the interpretation was pretty obvious).

Two Examples of Dream Interpretation

Now, here’s a quick overview of my two dreams and how I applied the principles and questions above to interpret them. In each case, I could have simply said to myself, “That was an interesting dream” and left it at that. But I sensed there was more to the dream than just an interesting scenario and it was as I prayed and reflected that the underlying meaning came clear to me. In both dreams I am captain of a large cruise ship. I haven’t been on a cruise ship since 1972 (alas!), and have never dreamed about them other than these two dreams. There was nothing at the time in my life to cause me to dream as I did, so these are not association dreams. By the way, here’s a picture of me at the helm of the MS Gripsholm in December 1968. (The ship was on autopilot, so they told me not to worry about messing up!)

The Captain and the Pilot

The first dream was in early October 2001. I was in my second term at Tyndale and had decided to go full-time, which meant shutting down my business. It was a scary time for me (but my family was supportive). God had already told me in other ways to stop planning my life because his ways are not my ways and his thoughts are so much more than my thoughts. All that my puny plans did was inhibit the Lord’s plans for me. In the dream, I was captain of a cruise ship and could make it go anywhere in the world. But when I entered a river leading to a harbour, a pilot came on board. He didn’t provide me with suggestions for how to navigate the river; he took over and gave direct orders to my crew while I stood to the side. I gave him command of my ship because I trusted him. I was confident that he knew the waters better than I did. It was clear that it was still my ship, I was still the captain, but the pilot was giving the orders.

In my dream, my emotional state was full of confidence and trust. I felt safe and secure. Since he was working with my permission, I did not feel usurped. In real life, I was quite nervous about my situation and had no idea where God was leading me. All I knew was that I was done with secular work. Upon reflection I realized that God was telling me to trust him. I was to stop planning and let him lead me. He gave me a picture of me blindfolded, hanging on to his sleeve. When he took a step, then I could take a step. This is the way it is to be forevermore, and I have resisted committing to a specific plan ever since. I now think about the future every day, but any plans that result are subject to change at any time if God leads otherwise. I am committed to our mission, not a particular means of fulfilling it. Our action plan is the default plan if nothing better comes up.

Captain’s Quarters

The second dream took place two years later, in January of 2004. I was still new at CCCC and focused on the needs of the organization. I dreamt that I was a new captain and reporting to my first command. The cruise ship had a small cabin just off of the bridge for the captain. It was very tight, the length of a bed and just a foot or two between the bed on one side and the washstand and desk on the other. I thought it was pretty spartan, like you might see on a battleship, but I accepted it.

After some months had passed, the chief steward asked why I hadn’t moved into the captain’s quarters yet. I had only been on the bridge or in my cabin the whole time and didn’t realize there was more than the cabin available for living quarters. The steward took me to a massive and luxurious two-storey apartment. The first floor was a huge room the full width of the ship with windows on three sides. This was for entertaining people. The personal living quarters were upstairs. It had everything you could want and I could entertain a hundred or more people there easily.

The steward said the crew was disappointed I was only using the captain’s duty quarters because the captain should be entertaining the passengers and acting like a captain. I felt like I couldn’t use these quarters because they were too grand, but the steward assured me that this is part of the role of being a captain. I was not only to lead the crew, but also fulfill the expectations that the passengers had of their captain.

I hadn’t realized there was more to being a captain than supervising the bridge. It was clear that the spacious quarters were given to a position, not a person. I didn’t personally deserve the quarters, the position that had been given to me required them.

The major emotion that I felt was a combination of wonder as I discovered the full extent of my role and also the feeling that the captain’s quarters were too much for me to accept. With prayer and reflection, I realized that God was calling me not just to leadership of CCCC, but was also giving me a platform to serve ministry leadership teams with the unique blend of gifts, education and experience that God has blessed me with. This dream meant that I could not be content merely to be an anonymous leader within CCCC, but needed to humbly fulfill a more public role as well. My research, doctoral thesis, writing and this blog are examples of the result.

Listen to Your Dreams

So, the next time you have a vivid dream, before you slough it off as just another dream, make it a matter of prayer and reflection to see what it might say about your development as a person or as a leader. It just might be a message from God!

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