Nightmares. Nobody's fond of them.
They can be everything from mild to horrific. Some happen while we are awake, most while we sleep. Last night I had a nightmare.
It was of being in what began as a normal time of getting out and driving around. Although I wasn't doing the driving. We were in a neighborhood looking at garage sales. It began to rain. I ran into a house nearby and then quickly exited largely because I never asked to enter. It was a downpour. I am running towards where the car was left. A mudslide was beginning and the one I was there with was in the car. I was jumping from mound to mound to get to the car. They got out but the onslaught was still coming. We went into a building for shelter but it kept coming. I was throwing trash over our heads trying to make a path to get out. Then thankfully I woke up.
Being in a trapped situation is perhaps in the top 10 nightmares. Not knowing how to deal with the situation. Not knowing how to get out.
Read the following from Dr. David Jeremiah "Morning and Evening"
And [Joseph] was there in the prison. . . . But the LORD was with Joseph and showed him mercy, and He gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. GENESIS 39:20–21
A famous preacher tells how, when he was a child, his mother paid a neighbor girl to walk the eight blocks to school with him and back each day. He finally convinced his mother to let him walk to school and back alone. Years later, at a family party, he bragged about his independence as a child, how he had walked to school alone. “Did you think you were alone?” his mother asked. “Those first few years, I walked behind you to and from school. You never saw me, but I was there every day just in case you needed me.” That preacher’s mother might have taken a lesson from the experience of Joseph in Egypt. When Joseph was thrown into prison, being falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife, the Bible says that God was with him during his two-year imprisonment. When we find ourselves imprisoned spiritually or emotionally by our circumstances, we need to remember that God is with us. Though it is dark in prison, pray anyway, every day, for God is near you and listening to your prayers. You cannot be in a place where God isn’t. The day you stop believing God is with you is the day you stop believing God.
A very big take away is that you cannot be in a place where God isn't.
But what is a deeper truth is many trillions of people have tried to believe otherwise. They try to ignore what He has made plainly evident. All the evidence points to Him in this physical world. From sub atomic atoms to the Sun itself. The wonders of the cosmos speak to His hands in creating it all. Yet people deny it and live a nightmare that rather running from they embrace.
I am not seeking anyone to psychoanalyze my reasons for my nightmare. I know what caused it. It wasn't something that I ate, although I do still have some digestive distress. I am feeling hemmed in on many sides by life. Change happens but right now changes are occurring on all sides of me at once. Things that used to be stable and that I could count on are shaken.
But there is a worse nightmare than what happens in dreams or even reality. The never ending nightmare of closing your eyes here and opening them in Hell.
God is there as much as He is here, as much as He is in Heaven. He is omnipresent. Satan is not, and cannot be. He isn't sitting up on some lofty throne made of red fire. He isn't sitting with a trident in his hand, all dressed in red with horns. The Bible says he used to be the most beautiful of Angels. He disguises himself as an angel of light. He goes around disguised as one of the Good Angels of God!
The nightmare in Hell never ends, at least not in any way that improves upon that tormented condition. At the end of the age of mankind's physical existence, Hell will be cast into the Lake of Fire. People who rejected Christ will be given a perfect body that will be in torment for eternity. Certainly something worse than Hell is now.
Rejection of Jesus is the beginning of the worst kind of nightmare. It never feels like it at all in the beginning. No nightmare ever does.
Joseph probably thought he was living a nightmare at more than a few points in his life. His family sells him into slavery. He is falsely accused of rape. Thrown into prison. Lives his life caring for prisoners. Feeling forgotten by those he helped for several years. His one thing was his faith. He clung to his relationship with Jesus. Nothing of his life remained after years away from his Father and his family but his understanding of the language they spoke. Yet God remained with him.
I indeed am feeling overwhelmed in many areas of life at once. That's the reasoning behind my own nightmare last night. But I too know that my Savior is with me. Regardless of what it is, I still come to Christ in prayer. Every morning I pour out my heart in prayer. I know He is with me.
Just as He was with Joseph.
You, my Friend, if you haven't chosen to receive the free gift of Salvation in Christ Jesus, could be getting ready to live a nightmare of your own choosing. The gift itself is free but the choice to turn your life over to Jesus is on you. You have to believe to receive. You must admit you are a sinner in need of His Salvation. You must ask Him to forgive you of your sin and be your Savior. You. In this you are the only one who can end your pending nightmare before it happens.
If you are in Christ and are feeling like I am, pray. In all things we are to offer up prayers. Praying without ceasing. In every aspect of your life Jesus is with you. It may not be your ideal situation but that never implies that you were ever left alone.
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