Christmas Dreams

How Josephs faith and obedience led to salvation for the world

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G’day “Holy Go Crew!”

Welcome back to another week of Great Commission inspiration and training! I hope you are keeping up with the weekly challenges as these activations are the best way to grow in discipleship and evangelism.

This week we are getting in to the spirit of Christmas and looking at Dreams and the Gospel! Enjoy!

Equip

One of the things I love about the Christmas story is how God speaks through dreams.

In Matthews Gospel, Joseph has multiple dreams. He starts off by having such a crazy dream it’s remarkable that he paid attention! In the dream he is told:

• to marry Mary

• even though she is pregnant

• The Holy Spirit made her pregnant

• the baby is to be called Jesus

• and He will save the world!

Of course, all these things turned out to be true.

I love how this demonstrates a God who is actively pursuing people. God communicated to Joseph about Jesus - the Saviour of the world and invited him to partner with Him to see the whole world redeemed!

Warning

One morning I woke up after having a vivid dream. I immediately shared the dream with my wife. In the dream one of my friends was in danger. The dream felt very real and extremely urgent.

I explained to my wife that I wanted to contact my friend, however I had not spoken to him for ages. He had walked away from Church, changed his phone number and didn’t want anything to do with us anymore.

While we were still in bed we prayed. We prayed that my friend would be ok, and if there was anything we could do to help, that we were willing to be involved.

As we said “Amen” the phone began to ring…
It was a number I didn’t recognise.
Tentatively I answered…
It was him!

Excited to hear from him we arranged to catch up that night. When I saw him I explained the dream to him and he confirmed that it was all true. He was in a bad place and it was only getting worse.

I shared the good news,
that Jesus was the hope of the world,
and that Jesus was the one who could rescue him.

My friend responded. He called upon the name of Jesus and his turned his life back over to God.

God gave me a dream.
I recognised it was from Him.
Then I partnered with Him.
And my friend came back to Jesus!

Dreams

When it comes to the Great Commission and evangelism we can sometimes forget that we are joining God at work. We sometimes think it all depends upon us. But what is consistently shown throughout Scripture, is that God is calling us to join Him in what He is already doing!

This Christmas, may we be alert to all the different ways God wants to speak to us. May we remember that God is pursuing our friends and family. And may we be like Joseph, who recognised the dream was from God, took a step of faith and joined God at work.

Josephs faith and obedience led to salvation for the world.
Your faith and obedience can do the same.

Activate

This week’s challenge is to record your dreams.

Not all dreams will be Holy Spirit inspired, but if you want to catch the dreams from God, then you need to catch them all. Here’s what you can do,

• Keep a notebook beside your bed and record your dreams when you wake up. (I sometimes record them on my phone if I wake up in the middle of the night.)

• Give your dream a title. (E.g “Danger!”)

• Record how you felt. (Scared, excited, sad…)

• Pray over the dream, and ask God for an interpretation. I like to use a Christian Dream Dictionary to help interpret, however you can do the same by asking God what each part of the dream represents.

• Step out in Faith and obey.

Not all dreams will lead to others coming to know Christ. However, these dreams will give you opportunities to join God at work. So dream away and may His Kingdom come and will be done this Christmas!

Let’s Go