As we were riding along to church this morning my 6 year old daughter asked if she could tell us her scary dream she had last night. "Sure" I said, while continuing to put on make-up and half listen as I waited for another story that was so far fetched we could easily tell her that would never happen and not to worry about it. But as she started talking she caught my full attention. Read on for her dictation of the dream:
"I had a dream that there was a small fire under my bed. It didn't spread it just burned in one spot. We were all playing in the play room and noticed smoke so we ran to my room to find the fire. When we were all in the room a snake that was dark red with black spots on its back came into the room. But it was weird, it started talking to us like it was a human. It said "God doesn't love you" then disappeared. None of us said anything but just had wide eyes. We left the house and when we opened the garage another snake appeared but this time it turned from a lizard into a snake. We ran back inside and found that red snake back in our house, it had come in through the front door. Ellie said to me "Livvy you know how to get rid of the snake, you have to pick it up and throw it outside!" So I walked over to the snake and touched it. It hissed at me then went out the front door and didn't come back."
As you can imagine this left me almost speechless. Call me crazy but this was not just another scary dream. This was one of the best visual illustrations of how satan sneaks into our lives and tries to whisper lies. Just like he took the form of a snake to get Eve to believe a lie he tries to disguise himself to get us to believe lies. He whispers things like: God doesn't love you, no one loves you, you aren't good enough, you aren't thin enough, you aren't smart enough, you will never be enough. We have all experienced his lies at some point in our life and unfortunately we don't often recognize them as lies.
We spent time talking with Livvy about the meaning of her dream but at the end told her to ask God to teach her something through it. When I picked her up from her class at church she ran out the door to me and said:
"Mom, God spoke to me about my dream! Our lesson in church today was about not being afraid. I felt God say that was for me about my dream. I don't need to be afraid because He is with me. Just like when I touched that snake and he left. He hissed before he left because he was mad he had to go. But mom, God showed me I have Jesus inside me and because of that satan had to leave! Mom, I'm just so excited that God actually spoke to me in real life!".
Now do you see why this is a dream I will never forget? Not only did I leave with a visual of how very real satan tries to manipulate us and get us to believe his stupid lies but God used this nightmare of my daughters to teach her that He still speaks today.
As I tucked Livvy to bed tonight she said "Mom, I just know that I am going to dream of rainbows and princesses tonight because last night was a learning dream and I don't have to be afraid anymore."
Wow, just wow. You are so cool God.
Do you have an area in your life you may have believed a lie? Ask God to show you. He longs to bring freedom to every area of our life.