Reflecting on Faith, Hope & Love

I am in the midst of a 9-month discipleship program through Frontier Alliance International, called Emmaus Online. In this week's lesson, which was on the interconnectedness of faith, hope and love, one of our instructors, Stephen Struebing, shared about a dream he had, which reminded me of a dream I had in August of 2015.

In the first part of this dream, I was in a church. I think it was my or someone else’s birthday and we were having a worship service instead of a typical birthday party. I went to the basement of the church and there found a few friends from my old life, drinking, and smoking. They asked me to stay there with them to party. I begged them to come upstairs with me to the service, but they wouldn’t come. I left them to go back upstairs and the moment I walked back into the sanctuary, the entire church lifted from the ground, leaving the basement part behind, and lifted into the sky. My vision changed at this point like I was in space and could see the church lifting above the world, into space. I could see two forces, almost like giant arms, hands, take hold of either side of the church and they began shaking it back and forth, like a tug-of-war, on one side bright light and the other darkness. Finally, the church was released and dropped back to earth, the building completely destroyed, but everyone inside still worshipping, unharmed, as if nothing had happened.

Then my dream switched scenes entirely and I was in my car driving on this really windy road and it was incredibly dark- none of the lights were working on the sides of the road and there was no light at all coming from the sky. I was listening to “I Surrender” by Kim Walker and worshiping to the top of my lungs. I have no idea where I was going and felt a little lost, but at the same time okay because I could feel His presence so strongly. All of a sudden my car lifted into the sky and the same thing happened except this time I could feel the shaking as if I were sitting in the car while this was happening. Then my car was released and dropped back to the ground. The lights and everything stopped working- I couldn't see anything and kept going off the side of the road, ran into someone's house. I could see wolves running around and past my car, but they did not come near me. I got out of my car and in the distance, I saw a dim light coming from what appeared to be a gas station. I approached and saw people standing around. Some were clearly intoxicated and strung out on drugs, some were clearly prostitutes. I was sobbing at this point and asking for someone to let me use their phone because mine was dead. I was worried about my car. I kept thinking “I can’t afford this, what will grandma and grandpa say? I haven’t paid it off yet”. One by one people were walking up to me and asking me for things, pulling at my clothes, my arms, asking for a number for an addiction hotline, etc. They wanted help. They said they could help me if I had a number and told me to look in my bag. I didn’t even know I had a bag. Then a man came up and started taking everything I had. I had vitamin D and soap and gum in this bag and he kept taking everything. I felt so overwhelmed and covered my face with my hands and wept. The man pulled me aside and removed my hands from my face and smiled at me. He smiled at me as if He was amused, but I didn’t feel like He was mocking me. His smile was full of love and understanding. All of a sudden it was light outside and he said, "I had to test you I'm doing this to test you. It's all a part of the test. I have to get inside and test you before I know you're ready.” Then we started to walk in the light.

I feel like God is shaking us (His body) right now, and that we don’t even realize He has already given us everything we need for what is and what is to come.

His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 2 Peter 1:3

For this season, right now, for every person He brings across our paths. Stephen talked about control, about how God used the dreams he talked about to break his fear of death, calamity, and failure, to show him that once he surrendered his inability to control the outcome, he would no longer fear failure. He also mentioned that darkness and perversion are mounting on this earth, and it is, we can feel it. But God has prepared and equipped us for such a time as this. The victorious church will prevail at the end of the age when we walk forward in faith, hope, and love. Because we cannot operate with one in the absence of the others. This world needs us to love them enough to hope for better and we cannot do that without faith, because we know the answer and His Name is Jesus. And according to 1 Peter 3:15, we should always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks for a reason for the hope that is within us!

James 2 tells us that faith without works is dead; if we say we have faith, our actions should demonstrate this. Hebrews 11 tells us that it is impossible to please God without faith and that faith is the tangible now reality of what we hope for. I love something Stephen said- “We get to live in the future hope, through faith today”. 1 Corinthians 13 tells us that we can do good to the point of laying down our lives but if we do not have love (even if we have faith), it is all for nothing. It also says that love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. If you put all of these together, we see that all three are required and one without the other makes even the ones you think you are doing well with, void.

How can I demonstrate His love if I have no faith to grab onto the hope of what is to come? Because I already know Christ has won even if in my right now, I don’t feel that. But those who do not yet know Him, they don’t have this hope. And it is hard having faith when you have nothing to hope in or for. Because I know He loves me and because I love Him, walking in this love is choosing to hold onto faith and hope and surrendering control so that He can do whatever He needs to do in me to cultivate this faith so that I can walk it out and bring hope to a world that is completely hopeless without Christ.

Lord, help us to walk in faith, hope, and love...to bring Your freedom and salvation to a hopeless and dying world.