While Nelson tries to assess his current situation, his mind is well focused and logical. But his dreams aren’t always as reliable and can be upsetting, as he describes in this entry.
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September 25, 2022
I had the same dream again last night. I was to preach but couldn’t find the notes and didn’t have the right clothes. Lots of people everywhere. I think it was one of the Johnson boys’ weddings [The Johnson boys are cousins.]
Then it changed to an Asian couple. They were dressed up like it was the hunger games… huge glasses, elaborate costumes, the works. Pastor Lutzer was there too. I came up with the wilderness and the trip through it when I couldn’t get it together.
The microphone didn’t work right, and once I started, they cut me off with a song. When I wanted to just sit down, they showed me notes people were taking and wanted me to finish. It was so stressful. I had no shirt for a while too. Couldn’t find one, no one would lend me one. Sort of like the story of the Bible where the guy climbs into the wedding by the wrong entrance and gets booted.
I’m so glad I don’t have any preaching gigs right now. In the dream it was so bizarre and was impossible to succeed. I’m still hung over from it, sitting here at the kitchen table trying to have my usual quiet time before Annso and baby Will get up.
Reading in Hebrews about unbelief. God was offended by the unbelief of Israel in the wilderness and told them they would not enter his rest because of their unbelief:
“See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today,’ so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end.” (Hebrews 3:12-14)
It talks about falling away because of the deceitfulness of sin. I see that with money, with the content we put into our minds, with the things we go after. We are prone to wander, and but for the grace of God, we will drift away. I pray, Lord, you would help us to hold firm to our “original conviction” to the end. It’s hard to do it.
I was thinking about tithing. There is the temptation to back off or to hold back. I pray Lord, for the conviction in those things that are important to you. Help us not to major on the minors, to strain out a gnat and swallow a camel, but to follow your leading in everything we do, even if it hurts.
Thank you for the house, for the blessing it seems you are giving us, the project, the influence, the change of location so we are right by the Mayo, a place to live that’s just as cheap as where we are now and probably a whole lot safer.
Thank you that you trust us with it like you trusted us with the church and Hale Ola. Thank you for our church this morning and the people who are in it and for their help. Thank you that I’m not at the hospital today, that we can be together as a family and go to church.
I pray for our visit with Mark and Brenda, and we are grateful for friends like them who travel to see and encourage us. I pray for wisdom to know what to be involved in and what to sit out, so I am not sitting here regretting going too hard later on.
We are fragile and we need your wisdom, God, in what to do, in all sorts of areas. We think we know what to do and how to spend our money, but we don’t. You promise you are willing to give us that heavenly wisdom if we ask, believe, and don’t doubt, so I do that now. I ask for that heavenly wisdom. I pray the house can be a blessing and that we are not consumed by it, making it a hindrance. Amen.
(…to be continued)
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“He leads the humble in what is right.” (Psalm 25:9)