A DREAM ABOUT MY PROPHECIES

I had a dream last night. I woke up disturbed in a kind of peaceful way.

Here it is:

I meet one of my leaders, a friend, from when I pastored my last church, a Vineyard church. This friend was friendly with me but very angry at all that happened. Our church went through a devastating church split, then eventually, through attrition, we lost so many people. Our community was dynamic and drew a lot of attention from around the world. We received, as a pastor and leaders, and as a church, countless prophetic words about how great we were going to be and so on. My friend was angry that all of it was bullshit. All of it. We were mislead with false hope. Or we allowed ourselves to be taken in by it. None of it was true. All of it was bullshit. As this friend was talking with me, it was like a light came on and I realized, “Ya! It WAS all bullshit!” It was a kind of sad confession, but peace-giving at the same time.

I woke up feeling like I pealed back another layer of accepting my past. I was a pastor in a culture that highly valued prophecy. Our church was well known for its quality of community. But it was also radical, offensive, and judged a lot. But we got a lot of attention from “prophets”, and the words were spectacular!

The weird thing is, you can’t win with prophets. If they give you a grandiose prophecy and it doesn’t come true, they will say it’s either your fault for preventing it from happening because of sin or lack of faith, or that it won’t look like you expect and you need to look with eyes of faith.

But it took a kind of courage for my unconscious self to inform my conscious self that it’s okay to realize a lot of it was bullshit, and that it’s okay to be angry about it… angry at them for duping me, and angry at myself for allowing myself to be duped. It was a game we all played, and I don’t have to play it anymore.

And that feels really good.