Calling dream
Hannah, a practising Christian, now 55, works in a healing profession. She was about 35 and already a leader in her church, when she had a powerful visionary dream. It has always remained with me, she says, because of its significance, the visceral experience it imprinted on me, and the quest it sent me on. At the time I was at a crossroad in my life, unsure of the way forward, and feeling some internal unease.
Dream report: Called into Healing Work
I was standing behind the pulpit, preaching to the congregation. In the middle of the sermon, the Holy Spirit picked me up out of the pulpit and transported me over the heads of the congregation to a large room at the back of the church. I understood this to be a gathering of emotionally broken people, waiting to be prayed for. Jesus was standing on my left side with His hand on my shoulder. He didn’t speak to me but communicated with His eyes. I will never forget those intense eyes. I just looked at Him and seemed to know what He wanted me to do. He indicated that I pray for the first person in what became a prayer line. I reached out my hand and touched her, experiencing a surge of power which went from Jesus, through me, to the person I was praying for. I was a sort of a conduit. At the same time as I felt this surge of power, I also experienced an intense pain in my chest. I imagined that I had been hit by someone, but there was no one else there. I looked at Jesus and He gazed at me with enormous compassion and understanding, as though He knew. However, He motioned me on to pray for the next person. Exactly the same scenario was repeated three times. After the third time I experienced the power and the pain, I woke up sobbing and saying out loud, “I can’t do it, whatever it is you want me to do, I can’t do it.” I was left with the sense that there was something Jesus wanted me to do, but because I couldn’t cope with what I imagined was physical opposition, I couldn’t do it. I felt very disappointed with myself, yet buoyed up by this powerful encounter with Jesus.
The dream sent me on a quest to find out what the pain was. Several people suggested that it was an intercessory pain, but that didn’t seem to fit; others suggested spiritual opposition, but that didn’t feel right either. I shelved the dream and kept on with my life.
About a year or thereabouts after that experience, I had a waking vision. It took place when I was in a church meeting and I had asked someone to pray for me. It was a time in my life when I was experiencing a lot of distress and couldn’t understand it. As I was prayed for, I had this vision:
I was standing on the shores of a very wide, deep, inky black lake. I t was so wide, that I couldn’t see the edges. It was so dark, that I couldn’t see into it. I seem to remember that it was also at night. I felt the coldness of the air. Again, Jesus was standing beside me. I felt mesmerized by the lake, and felt a great deal of unease as I looked at it. I asked Jesus, “What is it?” Again, he didn’t speak to me, but I just knew what He was communicating: “It’s the sea of your pain, and you must go through it.” I leaned forward for a closer look and felt a scream rising up from the depths of my being. I hastily pulled back, telling myself “Don’t go there!” and the vision ended.
At the time I did not make any connection between the dream and the vision. The vision propelled me into my own therapy. One day after I had begun therapy and was praying by myself, I was taken back into the first dream and felt the pain again. It suddenly dawned on me that the pain which I felt in the dream was the internal pain I was feeling as I worked on my own issues. Finally, and rather belatedly, I joined the dots!! I had to do my own healing first.