The hallow echo’s of the pounding fill my heart…I can hear God pounding on the box pleading with us to let Him out. I would be rich if I had a dime for everyone who said, “Let God out of the box”, but from the same heart comes judgment of what that looks like and it confidently declares, “That’s not God”.
God has always spoken through metaphor and still does. This post is not to explain all the ways, the whys and the how’s. Instead, I hope to provoke you to consider that God can use anything to speak to us. Thinking God only uses symbols in the bible is simply religious and presumptuous thinking. The bible itself declares that Jesus did so many things that all the books in the world could not contain it.
We just held our first annual Dream Extreme conference and, knowing it would be controversial, we had an image of a Phoenix on the banner. The message of the Phoenix is simply that of bringing something back to life. In preparation for the conference, we felt that was the main message…that God wanted to bring so many of them back from a place of ashes to a place of spiritual flight. He wanted to resurrect areas of their spiritual gifting.
Just as I suspected, many judged it as not being “Godly”. I suspect the reason is because the image comes from mythology and it is not in the bible. Are we to tell God He cannot convey a message that is in keeping with His nature – that of one that He is able to resurrect things in their life – because it’s done with a symbol we’d prefer He not use? If this is the case, you will forever have difficulty interpreting dreams, visions, natural and spiritual experiences.
I want to share a few examples with you where God revealed He can speak in ways we don’t expect. He can find good in anything He wants to. I remember a friend from Stream’s Ministries who had a dream about jelly beans. I don’t remember the fullness and all the details of the dream, but in essence, she had jelly beans and people were picking out the black ones. She was sad and said, “but I like black jelly beans”…and she heard God say, “I do, too!” The message came because many were thinking that the color black was always bad in dream interpretation and God was revealing to her that it’s not that way at all. And, in fact, I have found black can represent strength, justice, & creativity.
On a more recent occasion, I had a dream and I was interpreting dreams within the dream (This happens to me frequently. This is one of the ways God shows me how to interpret…He gives me understanding of how to interpret while I am in my dream). I have long wondered about spiders in dreams and their meanings. I was taught that it meant the occult, and many times it can and does. However, I was asking God about it because that meaning didn’t always seem to fit and a dream soon followed. In this dream, someone had spiders in their dream and I was helping them interpret. They said, “It means the occult, doesn’t it”…and I said – having knowledge that I knew came from God while in the dream, “It CAN mean the occult or deception (a web of deception) but if someone has a pet spider, it may be a good symbol for them!” I woke up and knew that God was reminding me that there are no absolutes and not everything we perceive as being negative, is negative.
I was at a local event fairly recently that was led by Brad and Jill McClendon and Jill was speaking about dreams. She also offered a great example that drives this point home. We are taught that snakes are always a bad symbol in dream interpretation. She shared that Brad had been having dreams with lots of snakes in them and it clear that they were warning dreams of negative things so they prayed. He finally had a dream where a King snake ate all the other snakes! Who do you think is the King? If you look at the attributes of a king snake, you will find they eat the bad ones. This King snake was Jesus!
Throughout scripture, God used metaphor and similes to convey the attribute of a thing or situation so that you could wrap your mind around the message He was trying to make. He wants you to look at the purpose of an object, symbol, animal, etc., to convey a specific message to you. In the Hebraic Scrolls, Jesus is a lion…the lion representing the “King” (king of the jungle), courageous, bold, fiercely powerful, etc. But if you’ll also look, satan is compared to a lion…prowling around looking to destroy and intimidate. There are hundreds of examples like this. Keep all things in context and look for the attributes when interpreting – and most importantly, remember God’s nature. He is a good God – and He can do ANYTHING He wants to and use anything to convey a message…
Let God out of the box – you may think you have, but you may have just created a slightly bigger box.
