People Dying
PEOPLE DYING
// Does God Tell Us When People Are Dying //
People dying,” is always an interesting title to start a blog with. But, as with the topics above, I am trying to discuss issues that I don’t see discussed in your normal, run-of-the-mill dream books and blogs because I don’t want people to shy away from these topics. If you have these encounters you need some Biblical context and you need to share these experiences with others, no matter how awkward or weird you may feel.
Personally, I’ve had a handful of dreams in which I’m told that an individual will die. But where it gets confusing is when you think the dream is from God. I wish I could give you a canned set answer into how it works and a clear path that the Bible delineates, but that’s unfortunately not so easy. The Bible actually gives us numerous examples of where God showed his prophets that a people group or individual was going to die, but then gave them no set instructions on how they were supposed to respond to this judgment. You’ll find that God’s prophets actually responded many different ways to these types of situations. I do believe a lot changes after the cross, so I will do my best to frame my beliefs on this topic through that veil. But, at the end of the day, I’m not going to be the one accountable for how you respond to God so I would really recommend for you to go to God and Scripture on this topic.
The first time this occurrence happened to me was about a year and half after we had our first child. As some back story, before my wife got pregnant with our son, we were told by doctors that she had cervical cancer and her cervix was needing to be completely removed. As you can imagine, we felt destroyed and had no clue what to do. We really wanted children and that report felt like a death sentence for us as well. As we were fighting through the guilt of not doing the surgery immediately we talked with several doctors and ended up finding a doctor willing to do a surgery that removed the malignant cervix a bit at a time. Luckily for us, after a couple surgeries the cancer was completely gone!
At this point we were extremely happy that she was cancer free but we were still told it would be nearly impossible to get pregnant. We really believed the surgeries success was an answer to prayer and further believed that children would be the same. It was only a few months after her last surgery that we found out she was pregnant. Over the next two years God gave me several dreams and promises about my son, who he was going to be and how to raise him. Life was going well and things were finally looking good for us until I had a dream.
In this dream, I was standing before God talking about my son. He was asking me if I was willing to give our son to Him. Naturally, I said I yes. But then God precedes to tell me that my son would not live past his second birthday and then the dream suddenly ends. In the middle of the night, I awake from the dream and try as quickly as possible to forget it. I am so confused and I am really not sure what to do with it. So, I do the right thing and just go back to sleep. In the morning, I wake up feeling a bit more resolved but still disturbed. To this day, I have no doubt the dream was from God. However—how I interpreted what God said was completely dependent upon my understanding and view of Him.
Luckily for me, during this season God had been preparing me for this very test. He had given me several dreams and Scripture before this experience that began reshaping my view of how He talks to us. At the beginning of my book, Revive The Night, I gave an analogy, from the second chapter of Hosea, where God told His people to no longer call him Baali
but to call Him Ishi. Baali means master. Ishi means husband. In a master-slave relationship, Baali
model, you would have no say in decisions and no voice in the relationship, but in the case of a Ishi, husband-wife relationship, you have a voice and a say in the decisions made. There are actually multiple cases, even in the Old Testament, where God’s people make decisions apart from what it appeared He was asking them to do. I listed several examples below. Please look up the references and read each one.
Judges 6 Gideon asking for fleeces and more confirmation.Exodus 32 Moses asking God to spare His people.Genesis 18 Abraham asks God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah, which then saves Lot and his twodaughter’s lives.
From these examples there appeared to be a back and forth interplay between God and man. However, the most interesting case of this type of dialogue is found in Genesis, chapter twenty-two. Here, God asks Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. Now, fast forward a few verses, and listen to Abraham’s response to his servants, which travel with them to the mountain where he will sacrifice his son. “Stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad will go over there; and we will worship and return to you
(emphasis added).” Look closely, Abraham tells his servants to wait at the base of the mountain and then says, “we” will return, eluding to him and Isaac. Abraham then says to Isaac, “God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.”
This is such an interesting passage for so many reasons. Why would Abraham make these two statements when God just told him that he was to sacrifice his son? Either Abraham lied to both his son and servants about them both coming back, or Abraham truly believed God was going to provide another sacrifice. Remember it was God, from the beginning, that promised Abraham a son. In ways, Abraham was actually believing God’s original promise over His second command, to sacrifice his son. Further backing this analysis is the book of Hebrews narrative on this passage concluding that Abraham believed God would bring Isaac back from the dead.
There are so many amazing scholastic studies on this passage that wrestle with these same questions and even elude to the whole passage being a prophetic picture of God providing the ultimate sacrifice, Jesus. Read it again, Abraham says God will provide the lamb. Jesus, of course, is referred to in many passages as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Also, the same mountain Abraham was to sacrifice his only son on is the same mountain range where the Lamb, Jesus, was crucified on a cross. This is just two of many parallels that can be found in this narrative of Isaac and Abraham.
Either way, Abraham viewed God differently than I did and his faith and actions reflected it. How else could Abraham insinuate the will of God without God illicitly stating it. If anything, from this story you can begin to see how our faith and view of God plays a role in the outcome of our interactions with God. Just as in the chapter, Discerning His Voice,
in, Revive The Night, we learn that how things are said are just as important to understanding the command as what is said.
After a couple weeks of mulling over what I had been learning, I timidly came back to God with a reply:
“You are God and can do whatever you want to do. So, if it’s your will to take my son I will give him to you.”
At this point I’m balling my eyes out as I continue; “I believe you have been teaching me to know your heart and I believe your will is always for life and life abundantly, so I believe you actually were the scape-goat for my son. I believe You are actually testing my heart, now, to see how I view You. So, I believe what You said and promised me about my son will happen. He will live a full life and that is Your will, not for him to die.”
This was a revolutionary stance for me to take. It was a shift and a stance with God I had never taken before, but I truly felt the faith to take it. Since that encounter, I’ve had several other dreams where I’ve made the same declaration. I believe God desires to make decisions with us, not just for us. The same is true of any father, the goal is to raise future fathers that know how to make strong decisions for themselves, not just sons that do everything they are told. Amos 3:7 states, “Surely the Sovereign LORD does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets” (NIV).
My son has now passed his sixth birthday, in very good health, and we have another son as well, whom I and friends have already had several dreams about.
If you have these types of dreams, just know, it is an invitation to know God more. Ask God what to do with them and expect Him to answer. I know His heart is always for life and that “no one should perish.” I believe that was His heart from the beginning of time. I am not telling you that this is a set response though. But, this is the main difference between being a fortune teller and a prophet (son/daughter) of God. A fortune teller might be able to predict the future but as a son and daughter you are actually invited into changing it.
There have been times God has told me to do things and I was supposed to simply obey, and there have been times where I felt the invitation to interact with and even amend His direction, with His full blessing. Again, the point is relationship, so don’t let me get between your journey and process with God.
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Genesis 22:5, Genesis 22:8, Hebrews 11:17-19, John 1:29, John 10:10, 2 Peter 3:9
