Friday, September 6, 2024

Judgment like a flood

Last night I had a dream about a flood that was coming. When I woke up from it, I got up for a minute, and when I did, I noticed that the lights suddenly went on in the main flood of the house. I went downstairs to see who was awake and found my son curled up with a blanket on the couch in a fully-lit main floor because he had a scary dream.

“What was the dream about, Son?”

“It was about a flood.”

I was suddenly wide awake. So we sat on the couch and I listened to his dream. It was a simple dream; he’d been playing with his sisters when his dad got a weather report that a flood was coming. So everyone needed to go upstairs, and when the flood came, the water went up to the top stair, but it didn’t touch any of us.

We prayed and I tucked him into my bed next to his daddy while I returned to the couch to seek the Lord. I did not remember my dream as vividly as I usually do when I receive dreams from the Lord, but when the Lord confirms your dream through your son, you pay attention.

Here is what I remember from the dream followed by the warning the Lord brought to light in the face of it:

I was visiting a city where I did not live, I was with my husband and a close friend. While we were there, a warning went out that a flood was coming, and we were trying to get to a specific place in the city to be safe. The people we were with (who lived there) seemed to be our work colleagues and it was clear that they didn’t really like us much, but didn’t dislike us enough to want anything bad to happen to us. Most of the people around us seemed to know there was a flood coming and were a bit harrowed from the bad weather they’d encountered in the recent past. There were some who were just going about their business as usual.

We were trying to get across town from where we were, and the scene I remember at the end of the dream was a place of decision. We were in the apartment complex of the people we knew because we had helped them get home; it was a building with open halls connecting the rooms like you’d find in the south or a coastal town. They were trying to get to their rooms, and the halls were filled with long, orderly lines of people doing the same. They finally said to us with a hint of worry and reluctant kindness, “The flood is almost here, I don’t know if you will be able to get back, you can stay in our room.” When we said we couldn’t do that, they offered to at least watch our stuff for us so that we didn’t have to worry about carrying anything across town.

So we handed them our bags (and anything in our purses that might weigh us down). I specifically remember asking my husband and friend if I needed my lanyard with my wallet and keys and decided that I didn’t, and I hung it around the neck of the person who was offering me help. We turned to leave and they turned to go into their rooms. As I walked past the stone supporting wall of the apartment building on my way down the stairs—the opposite direction of the people going up higher—I reached out my hand and touched it saying, “I cover you in the blood of Jesus.”

As we were strategizing about how to get where we needed with nothing but the clothes on our backs, the air around us was abuzz with hurry and worry because of the impending flood, but even with the knowledge of what was coming, not all people were preparing for it.

That is what I remember from my dream.

As I prayed and asked the Lord to reveal to me what He wanted me to know through these two dreams, He made the following things clear to me:

First, judgment is coming to the USA. This dream was not pointing to the final judgments of the book of Revelation, but instead a much nearer judgment of a righteous God on a wicked nation. There is only one way to walk through this judgment, and it is as the Israelites stood secure in their homes in Goshen through the plagues on Egypt in Exodus 7–12, and that is to be under the blood of Jesus.

Second, there is purpose behind this judgment that is not merely punishment (although we absolutely deserve only that); this judgment is to bring about repentance because God’s heart for humanity is and has always been to save them and unite them in Himself (Ephesians 1:10).

As I wrote out this dream and talked to the Lord about it, I kept bumping into the word “harrow” and “harrowed,” so I looked up its meaning. A harrow is a tool used to cultivate, it breaks up and smooths out soil for planting. And to feel harrowed means to feel plundered and tormented.

The judgment that is coming will be as if the harrow of God sweeps across the nation and it will do one of two things to any heart not secure under the atoning blood of Jesus: It will either soften your heart so that it turns to His in repentance (this is His deepest desire), or it will leave you feeling plundered because what is good will be stripped away from you (God is the source of all that is good, in the rejection of Him, you will lose whatever is of His goodness that He has graciously allowed you to hold in your hands).

I do not know what stands before us, but there will be judgment like a flood (the flood in this dream stood for judgment); cover yourself in the Redeemer’s blood. He has already finished the work of salvation for us to take part in…there is no other way to endure what is coming without Him. Repent. Pray (for yourself, your family, everyone you know and love, your city, our nation). Receive mercy. Find refuge in the God who has loved you from the beginning.

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