Another dream. I'd been out working with a young man (some type of mission work, no less).  I was tired and looked forward to relaxing.  But when I returned home, there wasn't a door on the house--just an open rectangle.  My husband was on his hands and knees applying some type of gooey substance to the tile floor.  I felt burdened that our home was filled with overwork.  I'd literally be glued and stuck there by the gooiness on the floor--rest impossible.

Over my years in interpreting my own dreams, I've learned from the late John Paul Jackson of Streams Ministries to "flip" the dark ones.  In other words, when the dream is shadowy and gray, what would the opposite dynamic be?  In this particular dream I felt smudged with dread, confidence in self-effort and performance-based acceptance (mission work), guilt, shame, weariness, powerlessness and hopelessness.  The flip, what God would have for me is:  hope for the future, awareness that I'm the beloved of God with unconditional acceptance, consciousness of grace and forgiveness rather than sin consciousness, rest, peace and holy confidence that Christ is in me and I in Him.  The "flip" is a way to create a door to keep the distorted and shadowy thinking at bay.

As I thought about the content of the dream, what I most craved there was rest.  Often, too, in my everyday life that is what I ache for as well. But what does living a life of "rest" really mean practically?  I do have to work a lot.  I deal with disappointments and real fatigue.  I procrastinate and console myself with sugar.  The world we live in seems to dictate that one is either working tirelessly and expending all one's energies, believing that their worth is dependent on how hard they are working.  And rest is doing nothing--sitting on one's duff or lying on the beach in a sort of stupor because they've worked sixty hours during the week.  But I sense God is challenging me on this extreme, unrealistic notion.

His rest is our inheritance 24/7, no matter our circumstances or how difficult the job and tasks we are called to.  Because we are accepted unconditionally by God, we have the confidence to work happily in our gifting, and that makes us more efficient. We do more in less time.  Because we are loved by God, we are magnets for His grace and favor--and this glorious reality brings joy.  His joy is our strength.  Because we have the availability of His supernatural peace, we think clearly and attract His wisdom for any and every circumstance.  Remaining in our protected spot in HIm, we begin to disengage from performance-based thinking, sin consciousness, feelings of guilt and shame, perfectionism and dependence on self-efforts.  And it is in this place that we receive from Him and are our most creative selves, calm and relaxed. And it is in this place that we soak up much of His light and life that spills over to others.  This is rest.  ~I am the door~John 10:9