One of the most poignant moments in my entire life happened to me in a dream about 6 years ago. Jodie and I were living in St George at the time and I was working for a local cotton farm. We were worshipping at the Christian Outreach Centre in St George, QLD. We had two girls at the time. My dream started with a picture of us as a family worshipping on a Sunday morning, clearly at the church we were going to at the time. In the dream we had three girls, even though in real life we only had two. There we were sitting in the chairs when all of a sudden a man came bursting through the doors holding a rifle. He yelled in a loud voice, “Everyone who is a Christian, Stand up!” Without hesitation Jodie and the girls stood up, along with most of the rest of the church. Not knowing what was going to happen if I stood up, I stayed planted firmly in my seat.
At that point the dream ended (no family members were harmed in the making of this dream!) and I woke up and started crying, realizing that this was very telling of my life at the time. I was clearly being a Sunday morning Christian and was sometimes ashamed of my faith. From that moment on I decided to stop trying to run my own life and let God do the guiding and decision making.
One verse that really came to mind was Jesus’ words in Luke 9:26: “For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels”. (ESV)
I realised that there was a whole lot more to being a follower of Christ than I had ever imagined. Going to Church won’t make you a disciple of Christ; just the same as going into a vacuum cleaner shop won’t make you a better vacuumer. It involves the entirety of our lives and our devotion. Dale