For the month of November, I was in Nepal. It was familiar and felt so much like home as I lived there one summer with my family. The ministry time there was doing construction and getting to know our partners there. While I could focus on lots of different parts of that month, I want to focus on how God prepared me for what was going to happen while I was home for my birth mom’s funeral.
While in Nepal, my team read through the book of Daniel. While we were reading all about the dreams that Daniel kept having and how they got interpreted, I found myself being a little skeptical because I have never had any kind of dream like that. Does God really give people dreams like that? I doubted.
As my team prepared to leave Nepal, I left to come home for a week for the funeral. After the funeral I had two more days before flying to Vietnam to rejoin my World Race team.
During that time, God revealed Himself to me and broke through my doubts. I had a dream. It was vivid and it shook me. I immediately woke up and wrote every detail down that I could remember. The next day, still shaken, I asked my parents if they thought God could speak through dreams. Of course they said yes. So I shared my dream with them. We prayed through it, and God used them to interpret it with me.
Here’s my dream:
I was running from some men in a place that was really familiar to downtown. As I was being chased I climbed to the top of this building but I was being followed closely. I made it to the top and the guy that was chasing me was there facing me when I turned around. I jumped from this building fearlessly and started to fly. I was flying with 6 fingers- three on each hand. I continued running from people. I was speaking a different language as I flew around. I was flying in a place that was really familiar but still being chased closely by someone. When they got closer to me the scenery changed to sort of this playground/ airport. As I continued to fly away I got slower and slower and less powerful. When they caught me I started to fight them with tons of strength and power. Then eventually I was grabbed by 3 men- One grabbed my left shoulder. Another grabbed me another place that I can’t remember. The last man really violently grabbed me in a very personal place… and I quickly woke from my sleep.
I immediately started to pray and remember the book of Daniel where all of these crazy dreams happen and he interprets them. I didn’t know what part of Daniel to go to so what came to mind was the numbers that I remembered in my dream. “6 fingers, 3 men”.
So I read Daniel 6:3, but I doubted that wass for me at all. So I went to other places in Daniel.
As I shared this all with my parents, we had a worship session as God started to reveal things to me about my life. It was overwhelming!
Here’s what He showed me through that dream:
Those people that captured me are the things in my life that are holding me back from experiencing the fullness of the Lord and accepting the gift that he has giving me of life abundantly. Things like sexual sin, lustful thoughts, and not seeing myself the way God sees me.
God wants me to focus on Him and trust exactly what He has given me and telling me and nothing more. Not letting my thoughts or other things distract me from that. He is greater and has a greater plan for me then I can even imagine.
I second guess what he is telling me often as if he can’t speak to me in that way. My prayer since I have started the race is that God would help think outside of the small box that I have placed him in. Thinking that he can only do the things that I have seen him do and I wrap my prayers around those things. God’s grace is so amazing because even through my doubts, unfaithfulness and unbelief He is continuing to make this box that I have placed Him in bigger and bigger. This dream that I had, God is speaking to me through.
A fear of mine is public speaking because of my insecurities of not being smart enough or having the right words. I did a listening prayer not long ago and I had this vision of myself on a stage with a microphone. I immediately put God in a box and thought of my strength and how God could use that so my mind went to me being on a stage making people laugh. Then I saw myself teaching/preaching and that scared me because of my insecurities.
After sharing this dream with my parents that day and them helping me interpret it, my mom pulled out her computer and read me this email that was sent to my dad back in 2012 on the day I got baptized that she hadn’t shared with me until this moment. She had been saving it until God told her to share it with me.
September 16, 2012
“It has been a long time since I have been as blessed as I was by the baptism services this morning…
And then the young black man gave his testimony… So dude, the REAL blessing was not just his testimony, which was so Holy Ghost filled and powerful, but the realization that you were the Fosters he was talking about. And listen to me Todd – the way he looked at you when you baptized him – that boy loves you. Probably more than you could understand.
As he was speaking the Lord impressed me that He has amazing things for him. I saw him in my spirit, someday standing and speaking to thousands telling them his story – which has become HIS story – so that it can change other people’s stories. I saw him full of courage and compassion – and speaking from a heart strong and saturated with the Word and the Spirit.
Which simply means that God will use you, through him, to touch the world.Who would have thought…
I believe it is true,
Watch it happen.
God is truly dazzling…
Wasted on Jesus!”
This was the email my mom read me. And I became wasted on Jesus in that moment!
Daniel 6:3 says “Daniel soon proved himself more capable than all the other administrators and high officers. Because of Daniel’s great ability, the king made plans to place him over the entire empire.” I was so afraid that God had given me that dream and that verse, that I didn’t even mention it to my parents when I shared my dream with them. I shared other verses in Daniel instead. But God…
I still have no idea what that means for me, but I do know one thing. I am lot more believing in God using dreams. I am a lot more grateful for this experience of The World Race. And I am a lot more excited for God to continue speaking to me and revealing His plans for my life.
So the race continues in Vietnam. I am listening and believing in all God has for me!
Daniel 2: 20-23
“Praise be the name of God for ever and ever; wisdom and power are his. He changes times and seasons; he deposes kings and raises up others. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning. He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what lies in darkness and light dwells with him. I thank and praise you, God of my ancestors: you have given me wisdom and power, you have made known what we asked of you, you have made know to us the dream of the King”
ps. I promise to try to post more. I am so thankful for your prayers and support!
