The Purpose of the Dark Night and Dream Interpretation

in a time where there is so much noise there's so much opinion there there are so many forces internal and external coming from people coming from media coming from principalities and powers that are trying to rile up people's souls so that they end up giving place to their souls so their soul grows stronger and their spirit grows weaker we desperately need to learn how to live by the spirit how to walk by the spirit and one of the things that god has given us and it's not something that we can do on our own it's something that he does which i'll explain in a second but one of the things that god has given us is the dark night of the soul it's an amazing gift to fast forward the surrender of our soul and the growth of our spirit if we will agree with it when it happens now there's a lot of misunderstanding about the dark knight some people when they talk about the dark knight you can't tell if they're just talking about a difficult time period maybe they had a loss and they were depressed and they felt like that was a dark night or maybe they had a major illness and they felt like that was a dark night or they had a failure maybe a marriage that fell apart or maybe a child that that went off the rails and they felt like that was a dark night the dark night of the soul is not a difficult time period in and of itself it actually has a very specific criteria to be a dark night of the soul so that we can understand it now sometimes the dark knight will happen in those difficult time periods because what happens is in difficult time periods it's easier for us to let go of the things that we used to rely on we stopped expecting things to go as they were and we used to have a way of of of engaging with life and growing in and dealing with situations dealing with external things dealing with internal things and they it seems to work but when things get really difficult we start to question those things that we used to hold on to now not always sometimes we just grab hold even harder and and some people find it even more difficult to let go which is not a good thing we actually we need to learn how to let go and always surrender anything to the lord always bringing it up against the plumb line of the character and the nature of god and seeing if it matches and if it does not match it gets thrown away and we grab only what is is plum with the nature and the character of god as he's revealed himself in scripture and so the dark night of the soul is one of the things that god has given us to get us there in in the 1500s 1600s there was a gentleman by the name of saint john of the cross commonly known as saint john of the cross and john of the cross was a mystic he was a monk he pressed into a life of prayer and mystical experiences and he saw a number of things one of his close friends saint teresa of avila was known for her ecstatic experiences her visions she was known to levitate she was known to have a number of quite interesting things that would happen around her in times of prayer and so they they spent a lot of time basically discipling one another now officially he was her spiritual director but there was definitely an interaction that happened and the the dark knight of the soul is saint john of the cross's explanation of a an aspect of the spiritual life that we all get drawn into and it came through a time of prayer and meditation as he was praying and meditating the lord gave him a poem that he wrote down and then the book dark knight of the soul is is him just going through that book or excuse me that poem line by line phrase by phrase word by word and am drawing out the spiritual truth that was found in that poem and it's all stuff that he'd experienced and studied and had but it expanded this understanding of the deeper spiritual life and it has been a classic for almost 500 years since the time that it was written so this book in it he talks about the dark night of the soul as a gift that is given to us by god now a lot of us when we hear about the dark knight we don't think of oh what a great gift but it actually is a gift and it's only given to those that are able to handle it and that are trying to go deeper in the things of god and john would say that the anybody that is seeking to go deeper in a life of prayer and union with christ will be given the gift of the dark night of the soul so what happens in the dark night of the soul well the dark night of the soul god puts his hand over our soul so that our soul can no longer experience the things that we've been experiencing specifically spiritual things our mind our will and our emotions the soul is the mind the will and the emotions what we think what we want what we feel god will we'll we'll kind of cover it in put it into a dark night plunge it into darkness so that it can't see it can't sense it can't experience things that are going on now why is that a gift because we tend to think that what happens in our soul is how we discern spiritual things and so if our soul gets moved we think that we've had a spiritual experience or maybe somebody says gives us a prophetic word and our soul gets all excited because it's something that we've really wanted we start to think that that's discernment instead of actually discerning what the lord is saying and not just looking at the movement of our soul so god removes the capacity of our soul to sense in respond to his presence and the things that he does so that we lose our confidence in the self and we start to have greater confidence in him and we no longer walk by sight but we walk by faith that word sight literally is sense sensory perception that in in an immature state we will judge spiritual activity by our sensory perceptions by the because our mind gets excited and that's intriguing and it's interesting and we want to understand it we want to know it or or maybe our emotions like we feel so much joy or we feel that that that that that beauty the beautiful crying that happens in the presence of god as we're being comforter we're being touched or or or something in the emotions begins to move or maybe our will like we we feel our will expanding our desire for the things of god growing and we're like this has to be spiritual activity but that is not necessarily spiritual activity when we think that that is spiritual activity what happens is our soul can get moved without the spirit moving and we don't recognize that it wasn't the spirit of god now this is a major issue for everyone who comes into the things of god it's not some people deal with this and some people don't with deal with this everybody that comes into the things of god deals with this because none of us come into the things of god in a mature state every single one of us when we come into the things of god we come as a baby we come as an infant we've just been born anew maybe our spirit has just been brought alive and there is a process of growth and think about a natural baby and it will help you to understand the growth that we go through in the spirit and natural baby when it's first born all it knows is its own needs i want comfort i want food i want my diaper changed i want comfort i want food i want my diaper changed i want i want i want and the prayer life of someone that is just come into the things of the spirit it's always about i want i want i want meet my needs these are my needs meet my needs and we will run towards people that have gifting that meet our needs our perceived needs not necessarily our real needs but our perceived needs whatever it is that's riled up our emotions we we will run after that thing and we will look for what's comfortable and when we're not comfortable we just cry and wail until we get what we want that is normal activity for an infant that's normal that's not a bad thing it's just normal when a baby is a baby now it can be frustrating when they're waking you up at three o'clock in the morning and you need to go to work the next day but it's still it's a beautiful thing because there's a bonding that happens as the baby learns to receive what it needs from their parent and so there's a bonding that happens with us as we learn how to receive what we need from abba from our father god and as he comes and he begins to meet those needs we begin to bond with him but we also mature we begin to grow and we become a toddler and we start walking in things and and sometimes we trip and fall and then other times we seem to be doing okay and we're exploring and and anything that we can grab hold of anything that seems like spiritual activity we're grabbing it we're putting it in our mouth because we want to taste it we want to experience it because we're we're just growing we're learning there's this whole world and everything is new and everything is fresh and we have to experience it all because this is so amazing that this this this time period again it's a beautiful time period in the growth of a baby as as they become a toddler as they begin to grow as they begin as they become a pre-adolescent and they're they're beginning to develop strength and they're beginning to really develop even more the personality that that was showing up as a baby that that's even becoming more pronounced and more set in and and they start to learn who they are and they start to learn their place in the world and and what they can trust and what they can't trust and they begin to touch things and maybe they get hurt and they learn not to touch that and or maybe they get disciplined and they learn oh maybe i shouldn't be doing that and there's that growth in that maturity but then they become a teenager so you know apply this to the spiritual life because this is discussing what it's like to grow in our life with god when you become a teenager all of a sudden you want to become your own person you start to realize that you have been put in this world for a purpose and you want to fulfill that purpose you start to have these these pictures of what you're going to do and what that's going to mean and how you're going to go off on your own and you're going to do this ministry and you're going to walk in this gifting and you're going to walk in this anointing and you begin to show off what you can do anytime you get a chance you're oh let me pray for you you're going to get healed oh let me give a word for you you're going to hear from god and we begin to come into this place where we realize that we have a gift and we just want to bless everybody with a gift hey you know hey let me let me pray and we're going to intercede and god's going to change this situation oh let me tell you about what i was learning let me and it's no longer necessarily like you've got to meet my needs god everybody exists to meet my spiritual needs we start to think of ourselves as ones that we're we're here because we have something so valuable and we're going to give it to other people and this is generally where the dark night of the soul comes in because we have to grow past that we actually have to grow through difficulty in someone that's a teenager one of the best things that they can experience when they become a young adult is having to struggle through something and find out that they actually don't have as much capacity and don't have as much strength as they thought that they did because it breaks the presumption and it breaks the arrogance that is natural for someone that discovers strength and if that doesn't happen for someone that's growing in the spirit they they begin to create an ethos around them they begin to gather people around them that all they will do is tell them how gifted they are and and they create a life where all they do is do what they want to do they're operating in their gifting all the time now they're they're not doing the other things that's necessary they're they're at church and they have this gift for intercession and so they want to lead prayer meetings but the church desperately needs somebody that's going to come in and clean the toilets but i'm too gifted for that i i need to spend my time doing what i'm really gifted to do i don't have time to do that and they begin to create this this dynamic that if it's not broken will hurt them and hurt a bunch of other people because they will tend to create a uh an atmosphere an environment that's the word i'm looking for an environment around them that is all about their gifting and then they will actually compare other people's gifting with their gifting and so maybe they're prophetic they will start thinking of prophetic people as the in crowd and then you know those people that they they operate in healing but they're not that prophetic well they're not as important they're not i mean it's really good i mean we need to have that but they would be really mature if they really learned how to hear from god like i hear from god and this pride needs to be broken john of the cross talks about the seven deadly sins in their spiritual counterparts now i actually i haven't spent the time to try to memorize the seven deadly sins so i'm probably going to miss some of them but a couple of them that i can remember one is gluttony and and somebody that is in spiritual gluttony they are always looking for spiritual experiences that are sweet that that meet their their their perceived needs in the moment and they tend to go away from those things that are difficult they begin to steer away from disciplines they begin to call somebody that that calls to fasting or or to denying yourself oh that's just religion and they begin to fight against anything that doesn't feed their perceived appetites in the spirit they're constantly looking for a church that makes them feel good and as soon as they don't feel good as soon as their needs aren't being met they judge that church is not as good and they go find something else and the problem is they will never find what they're looking for that will last because they will constantly end up being disappointed because sooner or later god will bring them into a situation that requires them to grow up but as long as they stay in spiritual gluttony they can't and so they either excuse me they either have to run and ignore god or they actually have to do the hard thing and mature and grow up spiritual gluttony spiritual envy spiritual envy is where you're constantly looking at other people's spiritual experiences or maybe you're you're in you you have some people around you that and you're pressing into the prophetic and one person in the prophetic they get this astounding prophetic word and and everybody in the group starts talking about this prophetic word and how helpful it is and how important it is and something in your heart is is bothered like well why didn't i get a word well i gave a word last week and they didn't respond like that like i hear from god too why aren't they paying attention to me and that envy when we hear about somebody having an experience and we start well why doesn't god love me enough to give me an experience like that i should i should have experiences like that is there something wrong with me or or there's something wrong with them oh they're just faking it that's not real so we begin to judge and we begin to point so that we can make ourselves feel better because we're looking for our value and our worth from our experiences and we we we're comparing ourselves with other people to get that that's spiritual envy and in the dark night of the soul god begins to break that and we can grow up and when we mature we celebrate when we hear about someone that has these astounding experiences we're so excited for them and when somebody gets a prophetic word and it begins to to be talked about and heard about we begin to champion that prophetic word because we recognize god's spirit on it we're like that's that's the word of the lord and we begin to champion them instead of being envious of them how about a spiritual sloth or laziness slothfulness this is another one where we're constantly not willing to do the hard work we're just we're just going to get by i mean grace covers it i don't actually have to do all that to grow in the spirit like the god's grace just means that he's going to do what he wants to do and maybe we'll tend towards a theological viewpoint that that says oh well god just does it all i don't actually have to do anything i'm just and i'm uh what's the word i'm looking for not innocent bystander but i'm just being moved upon it has nothing to do with me which there's a truth and it has nothing to do with us as far as earning but i love dallas willard's phrase grace is opposed to earning but it has no problem with effort grace is opposed to earning but it has no problem with effort and so god puts us into the dark night of the soul where we're no longer comfortable and the pain of staying where we're at is greater than the stain the pain of moving forward and unthankfully most of us we will wait until the pain of staying where we're at is greater than the pain of change before we change we resist change we hold back we want to keep things as they are and we stay we stay in an immature state there's a phrase that became familiar i think in the 90s the failure to launch actually launching out in your own life and becoming an adult and growing up and maturing in the things of the spirit and when it comes to the things of the spirit we're supposed to mature and grow and so in an infant state we're in this place where it's all about me oh god oh god save me oh god help me oh god i need this oh god bless me and then we we begin to mature we begin to grow and we start to realize that we have gifts and we move into what what's called the blessing stage and in the blessing stage it's like oh look what i can do for you let me pray for you and you're going to get healed let me give you a word you're going to hear from god but the goal is that we grow beyond that to what we call the building mentality or the building stage in the building stage it's not so much that you want to operate in spiritual giftings so that you can demonstrate that you have spiritual giftings but you want to help somebody else grow in their spiritual gifting and so you come in and instead of trying to say hey let me prophesy over everybody now wasn't that amazing wait till i come back next year i'll prophesy again and then you can hear god for from god for again instead you come in and you say here let me show you how to hear from god so that you don't need me now this becomes difficult for people that are in ministry because they build their ministry off of people's perceived needs if you don't need me you might not invite me back and if i haven't dealt with the orphan mentality i will actually believe that and i will create a ministry that's all about me proving to everybody how gifted i am so that you want me to minister so that you can have access to the gifting but a building mentality actually becomes a father where they they begin to move out of the the the adolescent and the teenager stage where it's all about me and let me let me show off and see how gifted i am into a father that is longing to raise up children that learn how to operate in the things of the spirit the goal of parenting is to raise adults that do not need you because there's going to come a time when you're not going to be there and this is the goal in spirituality that we actually grow to that place where we teach people here let me show you how to pray for the sick because you can see sick people healed you don't need me to come and pray you can do it yourself let me show you how to cast out demons because you don't need me to come and cast out that demon you can cast out demons when you understand your authority when you begin to recognize and so we begin to mature and grow and it's in this dark night of the soul that god takes us from the place of blessing to building and he begins to move us out of that infant immaturity where it's all about me into the place where i i begin to love and to serve and to bless and then mature where i'm blessing people but i'm also teaching them how to be a blessing and not just waiting on me to do it and this is the goal so this is what god's doing in the dark night of the soul there's a spiritual maturity that comes and then as we begin to mature the soul gets more and more submitted to the spirit and we stop judging our spiritual maturity we stop judging our relationship with god on how we feel on what we think or what we want but we begin to actually walk by faith we trust that what jesus christ has done is enough that we actually have been brought into relationship and and whether or not we feel it or we don't feel it we know that it's true because he said it's true and and being in that place that firm foundation is so important because until we're in that place situations and circumstances are going to move us when something happens our it's going to feel like our life is falling apart why because we're losing our foundation your life falls apart feels like it's falling apart when you lose something that you built as a foundation but here's the thing if jesus christ and jesus only is your foundation your life can't fall apart you can lose everything around but you will still be you and you will still be in relationship with him and this is what god wants for us he wants to bring us into that place of maturity and stability so that we can grow yes just looking at some of your comments and seeing yeah somebody said so we we we co-labor with god and this is this is the goal at one point we're we're just watching and we're learning there's not a whole lot we can do when you're a toddler i mean if if you're building a tree house and you've got a toddler there's not much you're going to let them do i mean they're they're going to pound their fingers with a hammer they're going to step on a nail they're going to get splinters in them but there there's also you i mean there you can let them maybe observe watch maybe give them pretend hammer and pretend nail and pretend wood and they can play around with it and they can grow but as they grow up as they mature then you start now be very careful and you watch every movement making sure that they're not going to do something that's going to create permanent damage but then you give them a little bit more freedom and a little bit more openness and we mature into that place and and that's what god wants us he wants us to mature into that place where we're no longer having to have him tell us every little thing but he's trained us in righteousness and and we actually live out that life in in in our lives and so as we go through the dark night of the soul the stability and the maturity that god intends for us expands exponentially now we go through multiple dark nights in our lives some of them are shorter and some of them are longer it's not just a difficult time period it's when god removes the ability of our soul to experience spiritual stimulus and then we have to trust it feels like god is distant but it's because we've trusted in our feelings and it's not true he is not distant because he promised i will never leave you or i will never forsake you before we go through the dark night of the soul we believe that because we feel it after we've gone through the dark night of the soul we believe it because it's true whether or not we feel it because we can look back and say well i didn't feel like he was there but he was clearly there i know he never left me and that creates a foundation of stability where our spirit strengthens and our soul weakens and our soul becomes submitted to the things of god and it's the goal is not that our soul dies and it's gone and never comes back if the goal is that our soul dies so that it can be resurrected is in the kingdom there's resurrection and so the soul dies so that it can be resurrected so that we can come into that place of life and then our thoughts are ordered by god we think like god we we see like god we we we begin to have the mind of christ and we perceive and our capacity to comprehend is is much more than what it ever was before our emotions are led by him we feel what god feels we feel about situations the way that god feels about situations and so this is this is one of the things and then the other thing is is our will our desires our desires aren't just whatever it is but our desires actually begin to be ordered by god and we we actually begin to desire what god wants us to desire instead of just whatever and so we don't lose our soul it just gets settled into the place where it's able to accomplish what god wants us to accomplish and that is maturity so fun stuff huh i mean dark night of the soul sometimes we we we have this this negative sense of this negative feeling when it comes to that but we need to realize it really is a gift because the fruit of the dark night of the soul is so worth it and when we recognize the fruit of something and we value it because of what god's doing through it we've found a level of maturity that we're growing into um so somebody is asking can you go through the dark night of the flesh in the dark night of the soul at the same time i i don't believe so now i can't say that i know that i know there's no way for it to happen but they're they're dealing with two very different things the dark knight of the flesh is because you've made a mistake and you're paying the price for that mistake and so there's a wilderness you feel distance from god because you're ignoring him because you want to stay in your sin not because god is hiding himself from you and often in the dark night of the flesh we actually can hear god's voice now usually he's calling us back to himself so he's not always saying what we want him to say but he's he's he's he's calling us in relationship and the difficulty that we're going through is self-caused difficulty in the dark night of the soul the dark night of the soul is not necessarily have a self-cause so usually in the dark night of the soul it's not because we've done something now sometimes things have happened that make it easy for that but it's because we have actually passed the test and we're ready for promotion and so the dark night of the soul always comes right before promotion when we come out of the dark night of the soul we come out of it with a higher level of anointing a higher level of sensitivity to the presence of god that's not necessarily the case with the dark knight of the flesh so i can't point to any scripture that says it can't happen but i don't see how it could happen so i would assume no somebody says can you go through the dark night of the soul more than once yes you can i've had a couple of them now i had one that when i talk about my experience in the dark night of the soul i go back to one it was about 18 months of extreme difficulty there there were many different things and there were some outside circumstances that were happening but i was i i had lost the self-confidence i i came out of that dark night of the soul and this this is why i say it's beautiful like i i don't want to have to go through the difficulty that i went through during that period of time but if i could get the fruit that i got from that dark night i would do it in a moment because i came out of that when i went into that dark night i was so amazed at my gifting i mean i was starting to operate in miracles and doing all kinds of stuff and i was seeing stuff happen and i knew that i i was a gift that god had given to the body of christ when i came out of that dark night i didn't believe that anymore i came out of that dark night not knowing if i could do anything just asking god god please let me be faithful if i could just be faithful today i just want to be faithful and that was the greatest gift that i've ever been given that i i was the disillusionment of my own gifting in my own capacity and absolute trust in him i know now that my gift can do more than what god wants me to and so i'm not trying to do anything out of my own gifting i'm trying to do things out of obedience to what god has given me to do and that alone if nothing else because if i wouldn't have that dark night at that period of time i don't know that i'd be in ministry today i was in i was going down a bad path and it wasn't necessarily that it was sin it was ariel i mean it is sin but it's not sin like we think of sin like we we have a problem if somebody is you know sleeping around but we're fine if they're operating an outburst of anger or arrogance but they're equally sin and they should be dealt with the same way i was clearly in arrogance i was i was so full of myself and i didn't even know it i didn't even realize it but god removed all of you know what what the ancients would call consolations those nice feelings that come he got rid of all of them and just left me with the word what he says is true period and he's going to fulfill the destiny that he gave me through me in spite of me not because i'm so gifted not because i'm a great gift to the world but because he said so and so it's going to happen period and i know that that i know that so the dark knight can come and go it can be multiple seasons but when you've gone through there'll usually be one that marks you and the rest of your life you you limp like jacob who struggled with the angel and when he was finished he limped for the rest of his life and he he he lost his arrogance and he lost his i'm gonna do god's god gave me this destiny i'm gonna make it happen and he just trusted he put a simple trust in god and his kids they were they were still trying to make everything happen they did not understand that simple trust but it changed everything um should one refrain from ministering in those seasons or be open and transparent about it no you don't necessarily have to refrain from ministering it's astounding you you probably won't feel especially gifted you probably won't feel like you have much to give but when you're just faithful because you love people and because you're obedient to god god still shows up and he still does stuff and it's surprising so in that dark night for me and specifically in in the realm of miracles i saw a lot less miracles but it was because of my response to the dark knight not because god removed that from me um i was just dealing with disappointment so i drew back from putting myself in a place where i would see that as much so i i had to deal with that i had to deal with my head i actually was during a time period i got to sit down with bob jones the only time i i had a one-on-one with with bob jones and i get into his house and and sit down and he looks at me he goes well it's gonna be the worst year of your life i'm like what a great word thanks yeah yeah yeah yeah see it right there on the top of your head that demon he was going after your faith but he just got your mind oh man how true that was that's exactly what happened he was trying to get my faith he didn't get the gift of faith but he did affect my mind and i had to fight through that so yeah you can still minister in those times but you probably won't want to which is probably a good reason to do it because it's not about your feeling anointed and it's not about you wanting to it's about you doing what's right because it's right see somebody i i've heard this a couple different times and bill johnson's taught this and i i've just i grabbed hold of it because it's so true he says some people will only worship when they feel like worshiping and they're like well i didn't feel like worshiping i didn't want to be a hypocrite worshiping when you don't feel like worshiping is not hypocrisy that's called maturity see ministering when we don't feel like it that's not hypocrisy that's called maturity we do what we're supposed to do now that's different than god telling us no because there is a time we don't just do whatever is in front of us all the time jesus when he started his ministry he's in capernaum i think it's in mark one or two he's in capernaum all these people have gathered there's this line everybody that was sick everybody was demonized he'd healed a couple people and they just started to gathering and and he he actually leaves he leaves the crowd there gathered in the house this whole line of people that are sick and demonized needing help and he goes out to pray and he spends time with the father and and when when when the disciples they're finally they're like hey these people everybody's asking where he's out let's go find him they go and find jesus they're like jesus everybody's looking for you are you going to come back are you going to finish this thing he goes no let's go to the next town because that's where the father is sending me and he didn't surrender his gift to need he surrendered it to the father and that's one of the things that we have to realize we we want to have the compassion i mean because there was times i mean jesus he in his soul he wanted some time alone because he just heard that his cousin had died and he knew who john was and what john was and so he's trying to go off just so he can have some time to grieve and everybody shows up and he realizes oh this is god and he ministers to them he didn't leave him that time he ministered to this so you can't just say well you know just because people want you to that means you shouldn't no no no no we respond to god but we're not going to be able to hear god at that level if our soul is still strong which is one of the fruits of the dark night of the soul because it weakens our soul and we stop thinking that what our soul is saying is spiritual so he says though he slay me yet i will praise him yes the dark knight of the soul it's as if god is not silent but my soul is being torn um torn crucified uh it's it's actually hopefully dying because that's the goal it's interesting in i always forget if it's matthew but it's the passage where jesus says that he who seeks to gain his life will lose it but he who loses his life for my sake will gain it it's interesting the greek word that jesus uses because it's not really the word for life both times says he who seeks to gain his soul will lose it but he who loses his soul for my sake will gain it so we lose it we we crucify it crucified with cross pick up our cross daily we we die daily letting our soul die so that we can gain our soul not so we can be without a soul the idea that we just no longer want anything we no longer have any emotions and and we only think you know scripture or what god puts into our head that's called buddhism that's not called christianity zen buddhism is an emptying of self you can't have any attachments because if you have any attachments and your next reincarnation you're going to come back here and you're not going to go off into paradise and it's only when you remove all attachments that you'll finally make it to nirvana and so they they teach you how to to to shut off any desires and any wants and any emotions and and and to think nothing the whole thing of buddhist meditation is to empty the mind but in christianity we feel it we're not trying to get rid of the soul so we don't have it we're trying to bring the life that it has of itself from the fall to death so that god can give it the life that he intended from the very beginning because god gave us a soul and the soul is a good thing yea the dark knight leads you to the crucified life a life of death to self so we can live fully for him that's exactly exactly it gloria that that is exactly the point of it well guys i hope that was helpful i want to i want to interpret a couple dreams so here in just a second i'm going to interpret some dreams while i'm getting ready to do that i i want to give you guys an update a few weeks ago and if you have not seen this video yet please take a look at it we've got a video called local expression global reach um we started letting you guys know about something that god has called us to we want to provide resources like this we're doing these weekly videos we put up the dream elements we do the dream labs the conversations that we have with various people and and we're able to reach into places that are not able to have meetings i mean we we have some friends that are in india and we've done we've translated some of our material into hindi and we were able to release a small group study called hearing god's voice which is john paul teaching on hearing god's voice and we developed a small group workbook based off of that we got it all translated into hindi and it got released in india just before the whole lockdown happened and there are a number of churches that that because of their economic status because they're poor they were not able to do virtual meetings they they they did not have cameras they didn't have the audio they couldn't just live stream a service or do any of that it was all phone calls and trying to keep up with each other but this because this came they were able to get on the internet on their phones and we've had thousands and thousands of people that have taken the hearing god's voice small groups some of them churches that that's what they're doing as a church to disciple in this period of time and people are growing and people are learning and so we're we're making these things available we've got china we were almost ready to release a book that john paul wrote called needless casualties of war in chinese in china we're going to make it available as a pdf and it's free anybody that wants it can have it it's in chinese we still have the english version which we're going to continue to sell because it enables us to do stuff like this but we want you guys to be a part of it so we want you to help us so that we can continue to do these videos and continue to reach more people and that's what local expression global reach is about we've had to upgrade our cameras and we're trying to upgrade our technology upgrade this facility so that we're able to do even more training than what we've been doing and it's going to take us about 35 000 to do all that we're trying to do now we've raised almost half of that i think we're we're a little over 17 000 it may be more now i haven't heard from for a couple days so i'm sure i'll be getting a report later this week but we we're we're a little we're right about halfway there and i just want to invite you guys to help us out so there's going to be a link in your comments that you'll be able to follow go to streamsministries.com and you'll be able to donate right there just make sure to put global reach on there and we'll make sure it goes to the right place if you're on our app you can get right on our app you can donate directly on the app make it easy again put global reach and and pray about what god would want you to do i admit some of you you can do 35 and that would be an astounding gift to be able to help us some of you you could do 35 a month for the whole year that would be very helpful some of you 350 would be something you could do some of you you could do 3 500 or maybe even finish off what was trying to raise ask the lord what he would have you do and whatever that is do that and if you feel any pressure at all don't do anything because we want to make this this is a gift but we get to allow you to be a part of the fruit and the lives that god is changing by letting you partner with us as we do this so we want to give you that opportunity all the information is there and i'm going to take a look at some of these dreams you guys have have put on here let's see ela ila gam i'm at a friend's house some kids went to the bathroom and peed in the tube when i looked into the tube i saw one big turtle and two small ones and some black lobster i asked if they were lobster or scorpions but she wasn't sure so at a friend's house kids are using the bathroom and then you see turtle and lobster and you're not sure if the lobster is a scorpion so the friend one so it's a friend's house so it's something about relationships now you are doing the acting you are seeing your friend you are looking at the toilet all of this um and so the these are it's a something about the relationship with your friend but i don't know that it's actually your friend so the toilet represents a way to deal with issues and and um let's see what's the word i'm looking for p is about getting out something that's inside and so there has to be a way to deal with the things that are inside but the people that are immature when they deal with them what's coming out are turtles and lobster but is it a lobster or is it a scorpion now scorpions are clearly a demonic reference i'm going to give you authority to tread over serpents and scorpions turtles they hide in their shell so it's withdrawal and just drawing back and and so what this is talking about is you you are you're in relationship with someone who in their environment they don't have the capacity to really deal with issues people are trying to deal with issues because of their immaturity they're actually not really dealing with them they're withdrawing and there's actually a demonic root to it so this is an invitation to pray this is an invitation for you to pray and intercede that god would help to process these issues and give these people a place where they're able to actually deal with it and get rid of it flush it away so that there's freedom from these things so that is an interesting dream let's see we've got a lot of them on here gotta have the coffee okay jp so jp i keep having dreams of me carrying a bag of clothes that have fallen out and i'm trying to put the clothes back in the bag to get to the place that i need to be and i'm usually missing out or late because of it so clothes will a lot of times talk about gifting or ability capacity and so if you're having a dream about clothes now it's clear they're yours you're responsible for them so these are gifts these are things that you're equipped with that you're going to be able to walk in um but they keep on falling out so you you feel like you're losing or or um losing the ability to walk in these things and you know that you have a destiny but this issue is creating angst now couple things about this dream one when you look at these dreams these dreams tend they they don't have a lot of light in them now i'm i because i i feel like i can feel this dream and so you can please confirm this in the comments let me know we'll make sure to let me know if jay makes a comment about this but um it feels like from the emotions in the dream and this whole thing it feels like this is what we would call a soul dream so it's not god saying this is the way it is but it's your soul making you feel like or revealing not making you because you already revealing that you feel like you you've got something important to do but what you've been given to accomplish it you you keep on losing and trying to deal with all the little issues that come up are holding you back from what god wants you to do so that's what that dream means so realizing that that's that and then just ask god god is that what you're saying to me is that your perspective because if that's not your perspective i don't want to have that anymore i want you to give me your perspective and let him bring healing to that place and bring some perspective to that place so very fun okay let's see buffy buffy hess i dreamt mommy and i was at a grocery store with beautiful black family mommy passed last year she told me to get wine cheese and grapes someone handed me 999 million dollars that's a good dream [Laughter] no so here's here's a couple things you've got grocery store it's where you go to get food food usually talks about spiritual nourishment spiritual teaching and so there's some there's some stuff from your inheritance what you've inherited from your mom that has led you to the place where you are getting spiritual nourishment and it's good like the wine the cheese the land flowing with milk and honey and the grapes the the the potential for even more there's fruit that's there so this is good stuff the wine of the spirit the milk of the word in the the grapes which are the fruit of the spirit that's growing and maturing and you're going to find yourself being given extravagant favor that you don't comprehend and the extravagant favor now 999 nine a lot of times we'll talk about evangelists or talk about the journey that we're going on so this is an evangelistic gift you're going to find yourself having extravagant family extravagant favor with others to draw them into the kingdom and to give them this good food that god has given you so that is an amazing dream and what a beautiful inheritance that you've been given from your mom awesome okay so let me see if i can read this name neil lam bicadan n-e-e-l-a-m-b i-k-a-d-h-a-n so i have no idea if i said that correctly or not but if i didn't please forgive me but here we go i have seen a very big yellow and brown anaconda swallowed someone and gone under the earth through a hole i saw him going away from my side so snake some type of either lie deception or high level spiritual being the enemy is called a serpent he shows up in the garden as a serpent as a snake anacondas don't actually live underneath the ground anaconda is the largest snake in the world so the largest snake ever on record ever found was an anaconda at least the last time i looked so i don't think that that's changed but i'm pr but that is accurate and they actually can swallow people um so what you've got here is you you are recognizing a high level demonic spirit that is attacking people and and it's hiding underneath the surface trying i mean well actually i'm just going to leave it because it doesn't say what it's trying to do so i don't want to add something to the dream i almost almost started to add something but you want to keep the dream interpretation the dream interpretation if you get something else you can add it separately but i was i was just processing in my mind i didn't actually have anything else to add so you're seeing a high level demonic spirit that is consuming people and it's hiding underneath the surface this is what we call an intercessory dream you were shown this so that you can pray pray one that people don't get swallowed people don't get consumed pray that god would reveal it that he would bring it to the light that it would become obvious and that he would deal with it and remove its influence from the environment that you're recognizing so that is that's very helpful when we get dreams like that because when god is showing us how to pray and we pray those prayers we can have extreme confidence that those prayers are going to be answered so pray that prayer please we need it and we'll join you and those of you that are feeling that you can even right now just join in that intercession for god to bring that safety and revelation so that things come to the surface okay let's see wanda richard wanda in a dream i was in ocean water like the whole world and i turned because i heard a rushing sound and i turned and it was a dragon coming out of the water this is the same dream as the other one that we just did so the the ocean the whole world now if you go to revelation it talks about the sea of humanity which is talking about unregenerate people so the nations of the world and those that do not belong to the lord the ocean the sea represented that and the dragon actually came up out of the sea and so you're recognizing that in the things that are going on in the nations right now that there is a spiritual root to that that the dragon is agitating this there's a rushing sound so there's something it's being agitated it's stirring things up and the enemy is trying to stir things up and so again this is a call to intercession pray that god would stop what the enemy is doing to stir things up to rile up the people and the nations and bring peace ask for his kingdom to come for his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven but these prayers that we've been given and we pray to god and and you don't have to necessarily rebuke this spirit unless it manifests where you're at just because you recognize something in a dream doesn't mean it's there you can you can tell us a spirit to do something but if the spirit's not there it's just a waste of breath it can only be one place at one time so you you know it doesn't do any good to say devil i rebuke you the likelihood of the devil being where you're at is really really small because he can only be one place in the world at one time and i think he's got some bigger fish to deal with than you or i like there's other things that he's trying to influence and be involved with then than you or i and so if we recognize a demon in our environment we tell it to go we tell it to stop but if we recognize that there's a demonic undercurrent to something that's happening in the world we ask god to remove it because god's where we're at and if we ask god and god responds because it's in his will it's going to be dealt with and we put our trust in god and his ability not in ours and if you're not really familiar with that concept check out needless casualties award the book it's it's amazing very helpful if you want something shorter you can go to our dreams and mysteries youtube channel and look for the mystery of spiritual warfare and john paul teaches through that in about 30 minutes goes through and gives the basic foundations of that which will be very very helpful for you okay so let's see we're going to do one more before we call it a day i know we're running a little bit late but hopefully you guys are here and if you're not then i mean feel free to go as you want to you can easily come back the great thing is the video stays there so you can come back in here later so tammy tammy scott my daughter brandi and i got on a train she had earbuds in her ear listening to loud music the unseen conductor said on a speaker turned down the music and i motioned to her to turn the music down so here is what's going on with that one train it's a group of churches a group of businesses that are all connected together going in the same direction can talk about a denomination can talk about a move of god can talk about an organization but it could also just talk about the kingdom of god so you're you're you're in you're moving you're moving from where you're at to where you're going the unseen conductor i believe is the lord he's the one that's conducting this so he's taking you someplace but your daughter is allowing the noise to be too loud in her input giving her input and so god is letting her know to turn the music down because the noise is affecting her and so this is an invitation this is an invitation one depending on your relationship with your daughter you may or may not be able to talk to her about the input that she's allowing depending on where that is i everybody has different relationships but you don't want to go too far and end up losing the influence but you can definitely pray and how does god want you to talk about that now again i'm not assuming anything but i'm not assuming anything so i don't know where you're at you know where you're at you know the relationship that you have with your daughter and how you can present this to her in such a way that she can receive it but either way be praying be praying for the input that she's receiving that's not part of the environment that god has put her in that it she would be able to turn that down that it would not have so much of an effect on her and effect on the environment around her so guys god bless you thank you so much for joining us we will be back i believe we're going to be back next week i'm not going anywhere so don't have a trip scheduled so looking forward to next week we'll be back on wednesday we'll do this again and if you are not already subscribed to our youtube channel make sure that you click that subscribe button and if you click and tell it to give you notifications whenever we go live you'll get a notification letting you know that we're live so you can join right in and if you have our app you'll get a notification right on our phone because we just we pop out a notification just letting you know when we're gonna go live so make sure you download the app if you haven't already bless you guys we'll see

Channel: Streams Ministries

Views: 8,238

Rating: 4.9516616 out of 5

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Id: Pc90v0_gqyU

Length: 63min 26sec (3806 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 29 2020