Tag Archives: dream

You Feel The Power

You Feel The Power

I was in Luke today and I hit the woman with the flow of blood. Twelve years of that curse, no cure from the physicians, and she comes up behind Jesus in the press of the crowd and touches the fringe of His robe. The bleeding stops on contact. Jesus stops the whole parade and asks who touched Him. Peter, doing what Peter does when he is looking at what his eyes can verify, tells Him the obvious thing. Master, this whole crowd is pressed up against You. Everybody touched You. That is what a crowd is. Jesus does not take the correction. Someone deliberately touched Me, He says, because I felt power leave Me. The Greek is dunamis. The English is power. They are reporting the same event. He is not describing a word of knowledge that the Spirit slipped Him like a note under the door, although a word of knowledge was available to Him, since He was anointed by the Spirit the same way we are anointed by the Spirit after we receive what the Father promised. He said He cast out demons by the Spirit of God, and that this was the kingdom of God arriving on top of people. He operated as a man born under the law, empowered by the Spirit, standing in the same category we stand in. That is why the story is usable and not a stained-glass souvenir. The thing He bothers to say out loud is that He felt it. Power went out of Him, and He knew it by the feeling of it leaving.

Vincent Cheung calls this spiritual physics, and that is the right name. God, by His own sovereign design, created us in such a way that a Spirit-filled man can sometimes feel the power. Think of electricity. You can feel the energy. You can feel the charge. The spiritual side has that too. Both the woman and Jesus felt it on that street. She felt the surge when the curse broke off her body, like spiritual electricity finding a live wire, and He felt the spiritual power of the Spirit leave when her faith drew on what was already in Him. There is such a thing as spiritual force, and the Bible is not embarrassed to say the people involved felt it. For ministry this matters more than the faithless want it to. Feeling the power is normal. It is not proof you have slipped into emotionalism, and it is not proof you are ahead of the brother who felt nothing that morning. Jesus felt it. Luke keeps recording that Paul was filled with the Spirit in ways that were tangible, something moved and something felt, and then a judgment miracle came out of his mouth and a governor got saved. The warning, is that you do not decide whether power is with you by what you feel. Faith is the real issue, and it is only a mental assent and agreement with God. The anointing presence is a real mode of the Spirit, and we seek it on purpose, but if you only move when the goosebumps have already filed their paperwork, you have handed the devil a veto he was never issued. As odd as it sounds, if you rely on the feeling of spiritual power or God’s anointing presence to act, or to feel confident something happened or a prayer was answered, you are being unspiritual and limiting the Spirit of power. We eagerly seek it, but the foundation is faith. Think about this for two seconds. It is by faith you first received the baptism of the Spirit of power. It is by faith you are saved; it is by faith you command a mountain to move. When you use faith to receive the Spirit, you don’t wait on a feeling. If you do get a feeling of spiritual power, it is because you received the Spirit by faith first. You continue to grow in the operation of spiritual power by faith, not by something else. Faith is the foundational issue. Feelings of power are nice, and they can confirm that the circuit opened and connected for a moment. However, feeling does not authorize the mouth. The mouth was already authorized, because you are a royal priesthood in Christ. It is who you are. It is not something you merely do; this authority is you.

Last night a dream woke me. It was vivid, and it was not the kind of dream you shrug off before your eyes are open. A small bear was trying to come through the side door. In the dream I took the .22 I keep by the bed and I was shooting, trying to put it down. I thought that was the end of it. Then a giant bear came through the front door, and I was running for my mom’s bedroom, yelling for her to get the shotgun. I woke up after that. When a dream lands like that I do not pretend I have a perfect method for sorting a bad meal from a real warning. Sometimes it is something you ate. Sometimes it is more than that. I do not need a finished taxonomy before I am allowed to use the authority I already carry. Waiting until you are 100% sure is how your sword gets rusty from underuse.

On the drive home today, a good hour, I had worship on and I was praying in tongues. I was glad to be doing it. I was not running on emotion. I was tired from a long day at work. I was numb. I was not feeling the presence of God in any way I could point at and call a surge, which is the relevant part of the testimony, because of what happened the moment I decided to take authority. I decided, just in case it was more than a dream, to take authority over the thing I had seen. Isaiah 54 was already sitting there, the way it always is. If anyone attacks, it is not from Me; whoever attacks you shall fall because of you. Every weapon formed against you shall not succeed, and you shall declare guilty every tongue that rises against you for judgment. That is the inheritance. That is the legal right. Not God. You. The older rendering that has lived in my mouth says you will condemn, and the doctrine is the same either way. Jesus did not say God will speak to the mountain while you watch from the boat and call the silence humility. He said you will say to the mountain, be lifted up and thrown into the sea, and it will obey you. If you sit there waiting for God to condemn the weapon He already assigned to your mouth, and the weapon formed against you smacks you in the face, that is on you. He told you whose job it was.

So I opened my mouth. No bear. No jaws of a bear formed against me, against this house, against my mom. The moment the first words left, every hair on my body stood up. The whole car charged. I am talking about that skin-tight goosebump surge, except it was not a mood and it was not the worship track doing emotional work on a tired man. I felt power released, and I felt resistance on the other side of it, the way you feel a fence wire you did not know was hot the second your hand closes. I had been numb five seconds earlier. I kept the confession going. I condemned that situation in the name of Jesus Christ and said it will not succeed. Then I prayed in tongues some more, and I had the sense from the Spirit that what I had said was good and that I was not done. So I spoke again. Not only will the jaws not enter this house. They will not touch this house. They will not come near this house. I will see the defeat of my enemy from afar. The power came over me a second time, on me and around me, hair up again, resistance again, and I had to press through it. The .22 in the dream had been cute. The Name was the shotgun. After the second pass I felt a release, the particular kind where you know the words that needed to be said have been said, and then peace. I was still the same tired man in the same car driving home. The difference was that the weapon forming against me had been answered by a mouth that carried more power.

That is the usefulness of the feeling, once you have refused to make the feeling your priest. I was not sure the dream was spiritual. I was numb, not sensitive, not worked up, not “led” by an anointing presence of the Spirit. I only decided to act on faith, just in case, and open my mouth. Then the words left and the power reported in. Suddenly the question answered itself. There was something to it, and it was a good thing I did not wait to first see the jaws before I realized I needed to do something. Jesus felt the power leave because the woman had already touched with faith. Faith released the power. Spiritual physics does not ask your emotional permission. It waits on faith to be released. Spiritual power moved by faith, while the crowd was still arguing about who had done it.

Jesus told them to pray that their flight would not happen in winter or on a Sabbath. People hear that and turn it into a horror trailer, as if God were the weatherman of doom. He told them the hard thing so they could pray and have the hard thing altered. Information was ammunition. The same pattern sits on the spies. God named the fortified cities and the sons of Anak, and some of those names carry fear in them, and the faithless heard a scare. Joshua and Caleb heard a menu. When God warns you about something, it is not to make you afraid; it is to make the thing He warned you about afraid, as the inhabitants of Jericho were afraid of the Israelites. They are our bread. Their protection is gone. Do not fear them. God was not introducing Israel to a new species of anxiety. He was plating their food and handing them the sword. When you have no faith, a fortified city becomes a reason to die in the wilderness. When you have faith, the same report is lunch, and the spoils come home with you.

A dream like the one I had is the same kitchen. It is not there to scare you, and it is not there so you can clutch the pillow and call the clutching discernment. God is setting a plate down. Here is some food. Take the sword of the Spirit, condemn the weapon, kill the thing, and be blessed on the other side of it. You do not only divert the hidden danger. You overcome it, you watch the defeat from the porch, and you eat the spoils of the war, because a conquered enemy nourishes the man who refused to let it land. Numb is not an empty battery. Numb is a charged car sitting there with the radio on. Worship and tongues had the alternator spinning. The faith confession was the key. You do not wait to feel the engine before you turn it. The key is what makes the engine announce itself.

Open your mouth. The power is already designed to move when faith touches the promise, and sometimes, like it did for Jesus and like it did in that car, you will feel it leave and you will feel it land. Condemn the weapon. Take the bread.

God The Dream Granter

The Power of Positive Imaginations:

Listen up, beloved—your mind is not a neutral playground. It is a divine theater where the drama of faith either unfolds in glorious Technicolor or spirals into a low-budget horror flick of worry and defeat. In Hebrew, the very word for “meditate” doubles as “imagination.” Scripture does not merely suggest we meditate on God and His Word; it commands it (Joshua 1:8; Psalm 1:2). At the same time, it slams the door on the wicked imaginations that plot evil before the hands ever move (Psalm 2:1; Genesis 6:5). The point is brutally simple and gloriously liberating: you are always imagining something. The only question is whether your mental screen is looping the devil’s trailers of sickness, lack, sinful addictions, loneliness, and limitation—or whether you are running the blockbuster gospel reel where healing, prosperity, righteousness, and divine favor are already stamped with your name in Christ.

This is the heartbeat of God The Dream Granter and Positive Imaginations. He is not the dream-killer; He is the Dream Granter, the Sovereign Sponsor who expands His kingdom by fulfilling the desires He plants in your heart (Psalm 37:4). Your good imaginations? They are kingdom fuel. God delights in granting them because they are not selfish side quests—they are the very vehicles through which He boasts about you and advances His reign on earth.

This is not some fluffy self-help remix. This is raw obedience to the finished work of Jesus. My Systematic Theology pounds this drum relentlessly: faith is mental assent to God’s propositional Word, not emotional hype or human sweat. When you renew your mind by fixing it on the promises, you are not playing mind games—you are wielding the Mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16). You are putting off the old man with his fear-based reruns and putting on the new creation who walks in resurrection power (Ephesians 4:22-24; 2 Corinthians 5:17).

Let’s rewind the tape and see how the New Testament picks up the Hebrew baton and runs it straight into victory lane under God The Dream Granter and Positive Imaginations. Jesus looks us dead in the eye and says, “Stop worrying” (Matthew 6:25-34). What is worry? It is the wicked imagination on repeat—like your favorite heartbreak song on infinite loop, replaying worst-case scenarios until your heart races and your faith flatlines. The devil loves this game. He gets you to picture bad things applied to you—sickness claiming your body, lack draining your account, isolation choking your relationships—then he whispers a sinister “yes” in your heart that feeds the unbelief until those negative videos bloom into reality. He comes to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). But God The Dream Granter does the opposite. He commands hope.

Biblical hope is not wishy-washy “maybe someday.” It is the mental picture of God’s promises already applied to you. You see yourself pain-free, striding out the front door like the healed man in Acts 3, high-fiving neighbors while your body laughs at every symptom. You picture the bank balance reflecting heaven’s surplus because Jesus became poor so you could become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9)—maybe even envisioning that unexpected promotion or debt-canceling miracle hitting your inbox. You envision relationships blooming with favor: the empty chair at the dinner table filled with laughter because “God sets the lonely in families” (Psalm 68:6). That picture is not fantasy—it is what faith needs so it can make reality of things hoped for (Hebrews 11:1).

Romans 10:17 drops the mic: “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” But Hebrews 11:1 supplies the missing remote control: faith is the reality of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hearing the Word flips the channel away from the sickness-and-broke marathon you’ve been binge-watching. Suddenly you are picturing yourself walking pain-free into the grocery store. That mental video? That is hope. And when the Spirit whispers “Yes” in that still, small voice—while you hold the image steady—that is faith seizing the reel.

It’s difficult for the Spirit to say “yes” in your heart—which is faith—if you keep dreaming of bad things. It is for this reason you have not heard the Spirit speak much to you. The Spirit is not going to say a happy “yes” in your heart, as you picture yourself sick and not able to do the things you want to do. That’s what the devil does. He wants to steal, kill, and destroy you. He gets you to see bad things applied to you in imaginations, then he says “yes” in your heart to help feed the unbelief so those negative videos bloom in your mind. But God The Dream Granter flips the script. When you apply the promise personally—“By His stripes I am healed—today” (Isaiah 53:5), “I am the righteousness of God in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:21)—the Spirit shouts a big “Yes!” It is not that the Spirit was not speaking in your past because He did not like you; He simply was not going to say “yes” to all the bad things you were dreaming up. But now, He will be like the best friend you always wanted, and He promised to be.

I love how Abraham models this in my theology of the new creation. The man was ninety-nine, his body “as good as dead,” yet he “did not waver through unbelief” (Romans 4:19-20). He did not fix his imagination on the dead facts of his flesh; he fixed it on God’s promise. He saw stars and sand and nations long before one baby cry pierced the night. Caleb and Joshua did the same—while ten spies played the fear documentary, these two were screening the “We are well able” trailer (Numbers 13-14). Faith moved mountains then, and faith still moves mountains now. God The Dream Granter turned their positive imaginations into multiplied descendants and conquered land.

Here is where the rubber meets the road—and where the fun upgrade happens. Most dreams fizzle because they are either fluffy emotionalism (“I just feel it’ll happen”) or sweaty human striving (“I’ll make this happen by grit”). But the deeper tragedy? Having no good dreams at all. If your imagination is a blank screen or stuck on negative reruns, faith has nothing to grab. If we are talking about the promises of God, faith isn’t merely assenting to the broad idea that God heals, but that it applies to you. You need to see yourself healed; that is hope and the Spirit will shout a big “yes” when you apply the promise to yourself. The Word must saturate your mind until good imaginations become your default playlist. You wake up and the first frame is: “I am the righteousness of God in Christ.” You step into the car and the scene is: “By His stripes I am healed—today.” You face the empty chair at the dinner table and the script flips: “God sets the lonely in families.” These are not mere positive thoughts; they are obedience to the command to meditate, to hope, to let faith substantiate what Jesus already purchased.

This is light-years from humanistic positive thinking. Humanism says “fake it till you make it.” The gospel says “Jesus already faked it for you—now believe it and watch it manifest.” When you run the new playlist—healed, prosperous, surrounded by favor, walking in every promise—God The Dream Granter boasts about you. He expands His kingdom through your fulfilled dreams. Stop and think about that for two seconds. God has made is so that granting your dreams is what He likes to do. Its not way down His list of things to do. It’s a top-level priority of love for Him. And in addition to His huge love for you, granting your dreams also expands His kingdom. And so you don’t need to see them as separate things, because God doesn’t. In fact, the less dreams God grants the slower His Kingdom advances. Your heart’s desires, rightly imagined in the Word, are not selfish side quests; they are kingdom’s top expansion projects. Because you are in Christ. You are His priority.

So upgrade that mental Netflix queue today, friend. Delete the doom-scroll marathons. Queue up the gospel blockbusters where you star as the new-creation hero Christ already made you. God is not sitting in heaven with a red pen crossing out your dreams—He is the Producer shouting “Action!” on the greatest story ever told: yours. Meditate. Imagine. Hope. Let faith grab it. The reality is coming. The reality is already yours in Christ.

Now go—run that good imagination reel until the whole world sees the glory of the finished gospel exploding through your life. You are the promises of God. Act like it. Faith is waiting to make it reality. And you will discover the Spirit a close companion as you hear Him more and more say “yes” in your inner man.

Your good dreams are God’s priority. So dream big, and dream good God The Dream Granter is ready. Are you?