Interactions with God #20
Dreams from God can be very symbolic. But he does not give you something like that without a means of understanding it, unless you are not supposed to understand it right away. Yes, like anything else, God is the one responsible to help you understand what he is saying, when he wants you to understand it. Why would he do otherwise. What good father would expect their children to understand something he communicated in a way that was over their head? What kind of father would do that and then punish them for not obeying what he said? No good father would, and God is a good father...the best actually.
Ray, the pastor from Houston, was a rather odd guy. He was somewhat charismatic, confident and didn't seem all that bothered when others thought he was odd. He started and ran a ministry for teen prostitutes in a heavily gay red light district in downtown Houston. The house, called House of Israel Church, was located on Westheimer and Montrose streets. For anyone that knows Houston, especially back in the 80's, this was a bad area. Not bad in a dangerous sort of way, but bad in that it was pretty much owned by Satan himself. When you pastor a ministry in an area like that, you are generally a little rough around the edges.
Being recently repentant for years of living in a worldly and ungodly fashion, I had quite a bit of grace for others and their imperfect walks with God... sometimes too much grace. So, when Ray came up for a visit, due to Curtis' description of him, most of the group had some issues. To be honest, they were not really that nice to him. He did have rough language. Yes, he used some foul words now and again. Something that should have been a warning sign to me, considering what God told me about foul language only a few months earlier. However, due to the others attitudes, I even extended more grace. I defended him.
This action on my part endeared me to him that night. After a rough meeting with the group, he asked me to hang with him for a while. I had nothing better to do so I rode around with him and even stayed the night at the home of a friend of his. We talked for hours. As I said yesterday, he was really into this whole demon/spiritual warfare thing. He was also really into eschatology, end time teaching for those who don't know what that means. This was already something I was very interested in due to my very first interaction with God. It was really a nice time talking to someone with a passion for the things of God. I liked this guy. Because of that, the dream I had a few days following just couldn't have been about him...or at least I didn't believe so at the time.
In the dream, I found myself standing by a big lake. In the water of the lake was something. It was white, but I couldn't make out what it was. I moved closer. Upon closer inspection, I realized that under the water was a solid white cobra with red eyes and a black diamond on its forehead. Curious, I moved just a bit closer. The snake flew out of the water and bit me on the neck. I woke up with a start.
As I said on earlier interaction posts, God dreams are different. This one was clearly from him. Seeing the obvious symbolism, Snake: Evil entity or person. Water: Large group of people. White with Black Mark: Appearance of purity but showing an obvious flaw. Flying out of the water: will attack me. Deadly strike on the neck: It would poison me. OK, yes, it is easy to see now, but I didn't see it right at all for two years, until I had a follow up dream. A clear companion dream to this one. No, I didn't get it at all. I assumed it was a warning from God to not dive so readily into this demon/possession stuff.
I was definitely wrong, not because I didn't listen to God, because I did. No, I was not supposed to understand this dream until I got the second one. How do I know. Well that story will have to wait for two years. Well, two years of interactions anyway...