Grateful for Dreams

The Spirit of Truth is with us constantly. All of my life, I have known about this. I was raised in a home and a church family where the Spirit’s active involvement in our lives was a given. Words can’t describe how grateful I am to God for the generous gift of surrounding me with spiritual people.

Far from perfect by earthly standards, my community has always nurtured in me an expectation that God will reach out to me regularly in unseen, intuitive, inner, and spiritual ways. I don’t often pause to be thankful for this. But, lately, I have been thinking a lot about how I have been blessed spiritually by others.

One of the gifts that I have loved from my earliest memories is the ability to dream. Though I have always had vivid dreams, it has only been in recent years that I have become open about sharing them. Over the past few weeks, I have been realizing that I really do love experiencing, sharing, hearing about, and interpreting dreams.

I am not completely sure why I need to tell you about it. But, I do. I need to say it. I am a dreamer… always have been… and I have been helped so much through dreams.

About a week ago, I realized that I need to write and share more of my dreams. So, I am working on that and plan to share them here. It all feels like a mile marker or a place of remembrance to me on my journey.

Thanks for letting me share this with you. It feels important to me and I would love for you to be encouraged to take your own dreams more seriously. On that note, if you have been wrestling with a dream and what it means, I have been learning for many years and would love to hear. I am convinced of this… Your dreams are meant to help you discover more of God’s goodness.

You are a blessing!

God never had to discover you…

The Lord knows us completely. There is nothing that is hidden from him. More than that, he never had to discover you. He knew you before you were in your mother’s womb. There is a reason why you have been set apart. God has appointed you for his purposes.

These were all foundational to my journey in the prophetic. Lately, I have been led to take another look at the way I have told my story to myself. The Holy Spirit has been encouraging me that there are keys and treasures in the ground of our stories if we will allow him to transform our perspective.

Speaking of the people of God, Isaiah declared this prophecy, 
“Then all your people will be righteous
and they will possess the land forever.
They are the shoot I have planted,
the work of my hands,
for the display of my splendor.
The least of you will become a thousand,
the smallest a mighty nation.
I am the Lord;
in its time I will do this swiftly… 
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the Lord
for the display of his splendor.” (Isaiah 60:21-22, 61:3)

As sons and daughters of God in Christ Jesus, we have been planted by God. His desire and intention have always been to grow us into productive “oaks of righteousness”.

The Lord interrupted my thoughts last week. I sensed that he was saying to me, “I have driven you into the rock like an anchor. I have done that to make you a blessing. By driving you into the ground, I am able to cause shakings and at the same time provide stability to those around you.”

While I meditated on what that could mean, I was led to the image of the tree from Isaiah’s prophetic writing. I am beginning to understand that the Lord faithfully heard my “Yes” to him and in turn, planted me deep in the ground. Throughout the years and experiences, the Gardener has never stopped taking care of me.

I am planning to share more of what the Lord teaches me in this process over the next few weeks. I am hoping that it encourages you and helps you appreciate just how committed Jesus is to you as you live for the “display of his splendor”.

You are a blessing!

My Story #6 – Grade 5 Sunday School and Weapons of War

I had a memorable dream several years ago. I was part of a group being led on a tour of a historic battleground. As we made our way along the smooth paved pathway, there were carefully placed stacks of weapons all along our route. I saw piles of rifles, automatic weapons, along with swords, shields, maces, axes, etc.

It seemed to me like there were weapons from the different ages of world history.

As our tour guide was in the midst of her rehearsed speech, she made a special announcement. She explained to us that this was a special day at the battlefield exhibit and on this day we would each be allowed to take one of the weapons of war home with us. It wasn’t going to be the weapon of our choice. But, she and the staff would give each of us their choice of weapon for us.

I was handed a leather bound book, it looked like a journal. I was immediately disappointed! A book?? Out of all of epic weapons stacked all around us, all they could manage to send home with me was a book? In my bitterness, I decided to untie the case and look at the book.

As I looked inside the leather cover, I discovered that it was a bible. But, it wasn’t just any bible. It was a gift edition I had received from my Grade Five Sunday School Teacher, Mrs. Sears. It was a reward for memorizing and reciting the books of the Bible. I knew that’s what it was because the inscription inside the cover had the words she had written there in her own hand writing:

“Sin will keep you from this book, but this book will keep you from sin.”

I have discovered that book several times throughout my life and fondly remembered Mrs. Sears. She was a tough cookie and you didn’t mess around in her class. But, she poured out her love on us and into our lives. I have often read these words she wrote more than thirty five years ago. I can still smell that musty classroom and the wooden folding table and I can remember her distinct voice. I had no idea at the time that she was spending her time with us every Sunday morning because she loved us and wanted us to never fear this world knowing that the Lord would never leave us or forsake us. She volunteered her time and energy and endless patience in order to open our eyes to the best thing in life… “Because of Jesus and all He had done, we could be friends with God.”

I’m still not sure exactly what she meant by the words on the inside cover of my gift Bible. But, I do know about sin and the hundreds of times I have failed and how much darkness has made me feel separate from my Creator.  And I have learned that my only hope for survival in life is knowing what God has stored up in His word for me.

Yeah, I do believe that the Bible is God’s word. But, I don’t want to ever forget that it  would have no power or authority unless it had come from God and unless it leads us to know Him in a deeper way.

So, I guess the moral of my dream is that the best weapon of war I can ever take into my life and my home and be skilled in using is God’s word.

This life is war and we can’t be surprised when we have to fight for our lives against ruthless enemies. We never know when hardship will strike and try to take us out. But, our God does something crazy for us along the way if we will open our eyes to it. David talked about it when he penned the words in Psalm 23:

 “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.”

Thanks King David and thanks Mrs Sears. You both helped to change my life!

My story #2

My dad, John Lamos was a pastor in a city church in Springfield, Ma. The church wasn’t located in the suburbs but in a multi racial inner city neighbourhood. He was raised in an Adirondack Mountain town in New York State called “Long Lake”. So, he brought his hard working blue collar attitude and his “fight to the death” loyalty to family and friends attitude to our city life.

It is hard to imagine today, but he was a full-time Junior High School teacher in a town about a 20 minute drive from our house and he served as a pastor in his “free time”. Oh and he was a husband and a father to five children… Darlene, Darrell, Dawn, Danny (or Dana depending on whether we were at a school event or not) and Doreen.

For my dad, mom and our family, God was in charge of it all. And like most Christians living in New England in those times, we understood God through our religion. Ah Religion… that Goliath of a giant is another story that we will get to another day.

From my earliest memories, I have believed that God exists and loves all of His creation. I have known that He created humans as the only creatures that could choose whether or not we would live the way He does and choose not to violate any of the house rules of the universe. Pretty heavy stuff for a little kid, right?

I also have known that Adam & Eve and all of the rest of us can’t seem to help ourselves and we break the house rules pretty much every day.

Here’s where it got freaky and scary for me. This might take me some time to sort through, so please be patient…

Remember this is a story and not a text book on Theology.

As a young boy I believed in heaven and in Jesus, God’s Son. I knew that He was “standing at the door of my heart” knocking in hopes of being invited in. That didn’t seem right to me to leave him out in the dark and cold night. So, as a young boy I invited Him in. That was awesome! The bible promised me that He would come right in, hang out with me and even eat with me. I always hoped that he would bring something amazing to eat, like popcorn and Chocolate Almond Chip Ice Cream or something like that.

But, I also knew His Father. Together they were kind of confusing to me. His Father would never stand at the door and knock. He would probably blow the door in or just walk in whenever He wanted. What He said was the rule and I was required to ask “How high?” whenever He said “Jump”! Somehow I felt that Jesus understood this and would be there as my older brother and buddy to help me deal with His dad and the rest of life.

I didn’t really get what heaven was going to be like. But, I pretty much figured my family would be there and they would work it out and I would be fine as long as I stayed with them and of course, my dad and Jesus would take care of us.

I also wasn’t convinced I was going to like heaven with an eternity long church worship service. After 10,000 years we would still be singing Amazing Grace… Wow! I was afraid that was going to be a little much for me!

And then there was hell…

to be continued

If you are new to my blogsite…

Danlamos.com is dedicated to helping people discover and live in their God given design. If you are new to my blog, I invite you to look back through some of my posts from the past few years and let me know what you think. Love to hear your comments and feedback. A simple way to sort back through some of my older posts is to choose by category or click on one of the tags in the list in the right column of this page.

Click on the following title for a sample of a post from 2012: 

Serving a Life Sentence – Telling My Story