Burn the Field!

Congratulations to the hip folks who know David Ingles! Edgeucate, as promised, you now own 650 points. Give them to some deserving teachers or kids at your school. Pagereader, you are sadly and badly wrong about this man being Michael Jackson pre-surgeries, but for making me laugh, you get 325 points. Put them towards something. And Anonymous person!!! What can I say? I am very happy with you. For owning his albums and singing and playing him and quoting a song line, you are the proud owner of 2750 points! I've found an oasis of love with you. And I think I might know who you are. Maybe.

And now on to other matters. In order to work up to my possibly controversial topic, I will tell you about another dream I had. God speaks to me in dreams fairly frequently. Does anyone else experience this? He chose to speak to his people in this way all throughout the Bible. I have to remind myself of that if I ever start to think I'm crazy. I love this verse in Joel: "And afterward, I will pour our my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days"(Joel 2:28-29). I always check my dreams against the Word and make sure they do not contradict it. Otherwise I might be thinking a dream is from God when it was really the fried Spam sandwich and twice-baked potatoes I had the night before. (I don't really eat Spam. I just like to talk about it.)

I've been telling you the story of my physical healing. But really, more than that, this is the story of my flooded heart. Through this journey, God has changed my heart, healed it, shown me things that needed to be removed from it, and flooded it with His light and love. As much as I love feeling well in my body, this heart change means more to me. My heart is that part of me that the Lord is concerned with the most. And any prayer request along the lines of "purify my heart or change my heart or show me the wrong things in my heart" is a prayer request that always gets answered!

These things were on my mind often after my heart encounter with God that day I told you about. You can read about it here if you don't know what I'm talking about http://flooded-heart.blogspot.com/2010/08/undivided-heart.html. One night I had a dream that God asked me the question, "What steps does a farmer take to get to harvest?" I answered, "Um...plow the field, plant the seeds, water them, watch them grow, and harvest the crop." To this He said, "You forgot one." And somehow, I knew what He meant. I said, "Oh yeah...burn the field!" After I woke up and had time to think and pray about this dream, I knew that my heart was the field we had been talking about. 

Why do farmers burn their fields? To get rid of pests, diseases, weeds, and other things that would prevent a healthy crop. If the Lord was wanting to do this in my heart, then that's what I wanted. I felt a little scared about the burning part, but my desire outweighed my fear, so I prayed that He would burn the field of my heart, so that good things could grow in there! This is a prayer that He is answering in different ways, and when I work up the nerve, I will tell you about one of them.