Dreams that stay

This dream kept repeating. Day after day, after another day, and after yet another day, the exact same dream kept coming to me while I slept. I remembered every detail vividly as if I lived in the moments. 16 years later the dream began to unfold. Like a seed that germinates and a flowers that unfolds, the fulfillment is in the place and time purposed for it.

The year was 1996, the place, Eastern Cape, South Africa. I had a dream as I slept in the night. It was a lovely dream, very beautiful indeed. I was in school, more accurately, in college. I sat in a lovely environment where I learned. When class was over I took my books and started off as if to go to my residence, then I woke up.

I wrote my dream in a journal that went missing on one of our many relocations, however, I remember the details as if it was yesterday. The school was a colorful place, and beautiful environment. Believing it was a one night dream I lingered on it for a while, wishing indeed, I could go to school.

I have always desired to study. As a 5 year old I followed my dad to school. I sat in the pupils' chair when he was teaching his class and drew or wrote on pieces of paper he gave me to scribble on. I grew up with this amazing depth of interest for the written word. I longed to be able to read for myself. I remember the day I was finally able to read for myself. I spent the whole day going over the words I mastered. I wrote them again and again until I was too tired to write, and fell asleep.

I grew up with few hobbies. Making music was one of those. Writing and reading were the most cherished of the gifts I received from the Creator. Whereas people will speak about the writer's block, I always have something to write, even when I don't really know what I want to say, I always have something to write. Why should I not have something to write? Unlike the spoken word, the written word exists at the tip of the pen. It is there, you only have to put that pen to paper and let go.

It is rare for dreams and hobbies to cross paths. When they do, it is amazing the joy this provokes within the heart. Dreaming of doing something you really love to do is very much like drinking the refrigerated water on a hot day, or walking with the love of your heart. It is exhilarating. Many wake up from sounds and sights of dreams, and some too there are who live in their joyful hobbies, who work in the field of their dreams. Few there are who experience the joy of dreaming and experiencing the fullest joy of spiritual fulfillment this experience brings. Dreams are spiritual.

If dreams were not spiritual what else would they truly be? When a man is asleep, the Creator makes it possible for the inner person to arise and go to places unknown to the man that walks by day. Such places are too glorious to disclose, too real to be untrue. Such then are dreams, not mere clouds of the sleeping mind but the reality that escapes the waking soul. When we dream, we live. When we awake we sleep to the true reality.

I wanted to go back to school, to learn, to teach, and to learn some more. My life took a different path than the one I truly longed for. Deaths in the family meant I had to work more, and earn more to be able to support kids left by their parents. As far as it was humanly possible, I gave my energy to be a pillar for their support.

I was in South Africa, far displaced from home. I put away my thoughts of going to school and focused on working. The passion for books was never further than the pen in my hand at any point in my life. However, the place and time did not match, nor did the opportunity present itself in such a fashion as to be recognized in that day in 1996 in Whittlesea.

Day after day, after another day, and then another, I had the same dream: I went into a classroom, sat at my desk, learned, wrote, read, submitted my work, left the classroom, walked through the flower garden paths, and woke up. I could not remember seeing any of my teachers, neither could I figure out the subjects or lessons I was covering. However, I went through the same experience in this heavenly place. There was no fanfare, no choirs of angels singing grand heavenly music, no preachers, just simply school, University to be perfectly clear, and the flower gardens and waking up in a bed in South Africa.

At first I was happy to dream such a lovely dream knowing full well there was no way I could fulfill the dream or live in its reality. It became like a drug a person takes to be high. I was on no drugs. My drugs were prayers to the Living God. I always valued working as a prayer warrior. My prayers never ceased to ascend to Heaven.

My excitement turned to despair as I tried to figure out why this dream was recurring in my present life. It was happening at a time I was completely unable to do anything to help myself live in its fulfillment. Do philosophers not say God helps those who help themselves? Is it not some preachers' doctrine that we have to help God by doing our part to fulfill His calling on our lives?

My countenance turned from excitement to despair, to hopelessness, as my thoughts finally internalized the dire impossibility of my dream. When I saw the exact same dream the tenth time in three weeks, I knew it was a very serious statement indeed. But I was totally dull to fully know what to do.

What do you do when you receive what you believe to be a revelation three or four times? Do you not make the move towards its fulfillment? If you dream of winning a jackpot four times with a set of numbers, do you not go over and buy those numbers and enter the contest? If you dream of a girl so many times and you are a young man ready to engage, do you not proceed to launch your manifesto?

Fulfillment is of God

My situation was very complicated and difficult. I was living hand-to-mouth, check to next check. I was far from any college and employed in a very busy laboratory. I could not get away from work, neither could I enroll in a distance education college. Besides, I had lost the will to go to school. I had the feeling you get when someone tells you how good fasting is to get you closer to God, if you have no inclination to get closer to God. Those are the times of great dissonance when nothing makes sense, even those beautiful things that come your way pass you by like trash - not interested whatsoever.

I poured my heart out to the Living God. At first, as I said, in sheer excitement, celebrating and asking the LORD to show me the college to enroll and to put it in my heart to desire to go. When that did not stop the dreams or pacify my turbulent heart I pleaded for direction from the Living God, "Help me Lord, show me what to do," I prayed. When that all seemed to bounce and my worries piled up on top of each other it was time to fast.

I slept on the bare floor and pleaded with God to spare me from the pain of seeing what I could not own, and experiencing in dreams what I could never be in this life. I was aware at all times though, that the dream was not a mere show of prophetic power of His Spirit, I knew it was a real speech from God's heart to mine. Finally, one night, I resolved to be still and to simply listen and say nothing. That is what I did.

The dream stopped, for a very long season. The next time I experienced the same dream was more of a reminder friend to friend, of a promise. I learned that sometimes God just wants to be a friend, to share a little secret, a thought. Then, as at no other time, He is really saying, "It is not in your hands to work this plan out; it is not about you, it is about the One who died at Calvary."

If we live by His word which says, "Seek first His Kingdom and Righteousness and all these things will be added to you," (Mt 6: 33), so it will be. In His time, He makes all things beautiful.

Fourteen years later, in a different place, and very different circumstances, God meets with friend as if to say, "I am still here to fulfill my word to you."

Through there are storms of life, trials, and temptations along the way, He kept my dream alive. Although it lay dormant for a decade, it lived in the bottom of the heart. One day, on a dark and stormy night in June 2010, I enrolled in college. If there was a wrong time to enroll in a program June 10th was it.

Unemployed, wife very sick, feeling alone, far away from home, facing certain loss of home, and everything I owned, at that point in my life I found the strength and path to follow the dream that lay dormant for decades. To say God was in the storm with me is an understatement. He sat in there and waited upon me.

Jesus knows how much I love writing and reading. He gave me the perfect dream many years ago, enabling me to live the life of a student, life I loved so much. Jesus knows too that above all else He is my true love. Should doubts linger on the horizons of my faith I know that I can go back by the route of fasting to the source of all my spiritual strength and inspiration, to be re-energized and go on my way to give Him the Praise.

There is yet a higher ground just ahead. When this life is done, I will ask in heaven to continue as a student, to learn all there is to learn about Him. I will sit at the feet of my savior with others who truly search for His appearing and together we shall write assignments and debate the issues of the blood He shed on the Place of the Skull.

I have seen glimpses of the dream that was recurring nearly two decades ago. The glimpses I see are the tail-end, the fulfillment, a reminder of God's faithfulness, that no matter what happens if we fix our eyes on Jesus, He will see us through the storm and keep alive the dream that is dormant because it will not go away until it is fulfilled.