Strange Dream and what it meant

           I had a strange dream that a couple who are pastors and friends of mine and I were preparing for some hard times.  It woke me up at 5:30 a.m. I asked the Lord what it meant  and He told me, “You will need your notebook for this.” So I got up and wrote this down.  I have submitted it to a few people, my pastor friend included, who have felt this was from the Lord.  See what you think.  

              There are things about to take place in the world that will be perplexing to Christians who are expecting a revival in which people are saved and things are blessed as you have expected Christianity will be again in America.  There will be people saved and people will always be coming to Me but the idea, the concept people expect is not how things will take place.  You (plural) need to allow Me to reset your expectations of what Kingdom values are because a lot of what is expected is cultural but not Kingdom culture.  There needs to be a rethinking of what constitutes Kingdom culture.

                For instance, is "Consider it all joy when you encounter various trials" your automatic response to difficulties? Would you be willing to go the extra mile for your enemy? What I am telling you is not for immediate issues but are to let you know to prepare yourselves for days to come.

                This is a time of preparation, even a warning for what will come about in days, perhaps, after Donald Trump is no longer president.  For now, there will continue to be adversity from those who are warring against him and what he stands for.  At the same time, many Christians are expecting all to go smoothly and for America to become a Christian nation as it once was. But that was then; this is now. The days are becoming darker in the world and while there is Kingdom advancement today, and it will continue, so also will the kick-back from the enemy.  There will be an increase of darkness. Do not be alarmed by it. Have I not told you such days would come. I have also told you that there would be a great light – and the glory of the Lord would shine brightly in the darkness. Are not the stars able to be seen more clearly on darker nights?

                So this is a time to begin to prepare, to think more deeply about what it means to be light in the darkness. These messages of the need to prepare will seem like the messengers are just being negative to some people but they must also be warned against seeing the preparation as negative, for these preparations will carry the power of God to be strong in faith when things seem to be contrary to what you would want or expect. This is a time to begin to absorb My Word so that your prayers are one with My Word and therefore of Kingdom reality. For instance, not to make you more comfortable or happy in fleshly terms but to know the joy of the Lord as your strength, and the forgiveness of the cross even when times are not comfortable.

                You would do well to begin to consider what brings fear to your hearts so that you can put the fear behind you so your faith in Me becomes deep trust, regardless of the circumstances.  This is why “Consider it all joy” should be something to meditate upon. Not to do it on your own but because you can grab hold of the love of God that is poured out in your hearts. And this not only because you may feel My love in your hearts for yourselves, but secure in knowing I am a very present help in trouble. And also because of  My love in your hearts for those who appear as the worst of your – or other’s – enemies. Beware of taking on offenses, for yourself or others. 

                Remember that I died for all. My blood was shed for all mankind.  There is power that is and will always be available for loving your enemies and seeing them as having a great need for My love and to know Me.  Preaching the gospel is most effective when there are demonstrations of the Kingdom and not just the recitation of words. Love is the greatest demonstration of My Kingdom.

                This is not meant to frighten you but to redirect your thoughts (and your preaching and teaching for those to whom this applies) in order that for the next years there is a preparation for more difficult days to come.  I suggest you not just read this once and put it away. I suggest you print this out and reread it periodically. Keep it in your bibles and while this may seem irrelevant in the here and now, if you will take this word to heart and reconsider what it truly means to be My disciple – especially in difficult times such as was the case for those who lived in the 1^st century, you will be strengthened even now and signs of revival will begin to appear, even in ways beyond the expectations of most, as a Yeshua-like character is developed and you are increasingly conformed to My likeness.

                Remember I did say, “Peace I leave with you, not as the world knows peace….Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in Me.”  Further, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart”, which in N.T. terms would mean your spirit.  And lean not on what your mind would say, especially if you are listening to negative reports in the media, or even from among those who speak fearfully. There is no light to be gained in looking at the darkness!

                Judge not, lest you be judged means to not speak against one another, or others outside who are perceived as enemies, judging them as evil or worthy of being condemned. But judge as I, Yeshua did, of all needing Me. Be kind to one another as I have been kind to you.  This is a good place to begin thinking in Kingdom terms – with Kingdom love.

                Fear not, for I am with you always, even to the end.  You each have an end on this earth. Know securely that you can put your treasure in heaven. But be aware also that this can mean rewards in heaven for the way you have lived as Yeshua, working and acting on behalf of others, giving yourself to others for their good. Make love your quest! 

                If you will begin to allow these premises to take hold (in your preaching and teaching and) in all your lives, you will see a way to the power of the kingdom. There will be much healing that will come about as a result – healing of relationships and of your body’s illnesses.  Signs and wonders will take place but they are not the highest manifestations of revival, rather the turning from sin – even the presently acceptable sins that are a part of Christian values right now that are not of Kingdom holiness.

                It is the Father’s will that you become more like Yeshua as the goal of your lives.

Therefore, give your lives to knowing Me (Yeshua) more and more. Meditate on My own character, why I did or said what I did.  Know Me as I am available to you to know Me intimately by the Holy Spirit. Make this your priority for you cannot become any of what I have just told you or what the Bible says apart from the Holy Spirit who is also the Spirit of Holiness.  Put your dependence upon the Spirit of Holiness.  My born-again people are not told what you should do or become on your own strength or by your own doing, but by the power of the Spirit, just as I relied on the Spirit.  Remember I only healed when the Spirit was there for healing. Rely on the Holy Spirit to make you holy!  Put your trust in God to enable you, even as you work and believe and act as the Bible tells you to. 

This is much to absorb. I do not expect all this to take place now or at once. This is meant to make you aware of what the Father is now doing among you by His Spirit and what you are being apprised of to begin to be strengthened in greater measure in these areas in your lives. So you will be over-comers in all your ways.  One step at a time, dear ones. I am with You.

Lonnie Lane   5-10-17

PRAYING FOR YESHUA’S RETURN

What do you pray for? Who is most advantaged by your prayers?  You?  Others?  God Himself? You might want to take a moment to consider how you would answer your own prayers.  I had to.

This morning I had a dream that was more of a message than pictures. Some dreams you know are from the Lord.  This was one of them. I must preface the dream’s message with a story. In writing the book,  Heaven is Beyond Your Wildest Expectations, (available on Amazon.com) I interviewed a number of people who had been to heaven, most had died but after they experienced heaven, the Lord sent them back to bring the message of what they had seen and heard and to tell people to prepare for the coming of the Lord is soon. How soon is soon, we do not know. But we would do well to “prepare” as He said.   

One man I interviewed recounted the Lord’s words to him which impacted me greatly, causing me to rethink my own priorities in the Lord.  While I do not remember the exact words I do recall that basically it was this:  “My people are more concerned with their own comfort than with Me coming, so they do not pray about what must take place prior to My coming” (my paraphrase).  

I had to ask myself, did I even pray much for His coming when it will be the greatest moment in all of creation?  But in considering the implications of Yeshua’s message to pray for His coming, and what we do or do not pray for, it seems that God takes (most of) our prayers seriously, that He answers the desires of our hearts most often, and that what is NOT sincerely the desires of our hearts, He either does not “hear” or doesn’t take seriously since we really don’t either.  How many things have you prayed for that you either forgot because they really didn’t matter in your life after all, or because you realized later it was God’s protective blessing that He didn’t answer as you had asked?  It’s happened to all of us. 

But I was struck with what this man reported were Yeshua’s own words that His own people’s concerns were largely other than His return.  Now, I’m sure that just about all of us live in great anticipation of His return.  Or do we?  I think each person’s answer may be affected by what “His return” means to them. It is Biblically true that one glorious day Yeshua will appear, no doubt brighter than lightening in the sky to “catch us up” to be with Him forever (1 Thes. 4:16). "in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed" (1 Cor. 15:52). While His coming is a given, the question is when?  

If you believe in what we call a “pre-trib rapture” that before the great and terrible days of tribulation which the Bible indicates will take place in the end of days, then surely you are confident that one day soon you will be “home free” without suffering the ravages of any days of serious difficulty.  Personally, I don’t see it this way in Scripture - the "last trumpet" is after all, the last trumpet. To believe otherwise, if you'll allow me to say so, seems rather escapist to me - though I would be enormously happy to see that I have been mistaken should I find myself suddenly in the sky with Him prior to any difficult times. That would be wonderful, but personally, because as far back as Abraham, there are statements that God does not deal with the righteous as He does with the wicked. There are, in fact, 99 such statements in the Bible.  We see that in Egypt when God brought the plagues upon the Egyptians, Israel remained free of them. The darkness was all over Egypt but the sun was still shining in Goshen.  Pretty superantural, wouldn't you say?  God kept them protected, just as I believe He will keep His people protected as we trust in Him to do so. Still, Israel did go through the first of them.  

So what if we will be here for some of it, half of it, or all of it?  How then should we pray?  What do we need from God if we might in fact remain on the earth for some difficult days ahead?  After all, there are many believers throughout the world today who are suffering now for their faith in Yeshua. Surely, He cannot come too soon for those being persecuted for their faith. We should all pray for His protection and provision, courage and rescue for those suffering for Him until He does come.  

But shouldn’t we be praying that He does come and whatever circumstances will be involved in that marvelous event?  For those who expect a “pre-trib rapture,” what about the millions of people who are left who will go through times of tribulation as the Bible describes?  What is our concern for them?  And what if there is not “pre-trib” happening and we turn out to be the people who are going through difficult times.  What then shall we pray now?  Can we pray to bring about Yeshua’s return?  The Bible does end, after thousands of years of input, with the words, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus!”   I’m not at all sure I have the answers, but I do feel that I am to put the questions out there for whomever God leads to read this. So if you’ll allow, I will share some further thoughts. 

I expect that most of us know that the world is in trouble. Being an American, without going into the details of American foreign policy or even what is taking place internally in America, it appears we’re losing our grip as a superpower and making some really bad deals, decisions and alliances.  I might not have to remind you, in light of Genesis 12:3, that siding with Israel’s enemies whose intent is their destruction, is far from wise.  Additionally, we are feeding the hand of the dog that will bite us, if we think radical Muslims will decide we’re not really the Great Satan after all because we’re funding them.  Well, I said I wasn’t going to go into it, so I’ll stop and go back to what I feel God wants to put before us – the matter of praying for His return even if it means difficult days ahead.

Are we not praying about it either because we don’t expect to be here, or because we’re leaving it up to God because it’s too scary a picture to look at, or it seems too confusing to sort through all those prophesies or the News to know what to pray?  Maybe it’s a combination of these.  But the question still remains –  how then shall we pray?  And what about the Lord’s statement that we desire our comfort more than His coming? Isn’t that a piercing remark?  I think of myself as desiring Him and His will more than anything else in my life, but this statement has caused me to realize that I really do not want to experience what I might have to, before His return, should we not be “raptured” out of any harm’s way. Or to put that in wider terms, neither do I do want “us” – that is my family, my friends, my people at large, my church, the church, or my country to go through what the Bible describes in various places as end time events. None of us do, which is why most of us would rather not look too closely at that option – being here, I mean. 

Without going into those verses here (you could do a Google search for end time Scriptures) or discussing possible scenarios, what I believe God would have us focus on, at least in this article, is whether the desire of our hearts is His coming more than anything else in our lives.  Of course, while we are still here, we must be concerned with issues in our lives and the lives of those we care about. Life does go on in the here and now and we always need His help and wisdom, so yes, praying about those matters, matter!  

But what is the deepest desire of your heart? Where does Yeshua’s appearing truly fit into the plans and purpose of your life? Do we each really want Him more than anything else? We readily say yes, of course, at least most of us. I would have said it too. But then I came to see, what I really want is “peace and safety.”  Well, of course. We all want that too and that’s God’s desire as well.  He has promised us both peace with Him and protection which is to say, being safe in Him. Only it doesn’t necessarily mean in the worldly sense.  

I want to be a candidate to be able to say with Paul as I’m sure you do, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day….” We agree, right? We want that too.  But then Paul finishes the sentences by saying, “and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing” (2 Tim 4:7,8).   Are we each among the “all who have loved His appearing?” Of all the things we love, and the ways we love Him, is His appearing high in our priorities and the greatest desire of our hearts?  I mean really?  How much thought do you give to what may be required of you before He returns if what the Bible says will eventually take place does actually come about in our lifetime?  Does that dim or fan the flames of our “love for His appearing”?   

Most of us would agree that “we have peace with God through faith” (Romans 5:1).  I’ve never known why Paul didn’t finish that sentence.  I always want to ask when I read that verse, “Faith in what?  In who?” not that I don’t know.  But I didn’t always.  I remember times in my walk with the Lord when there was such an emphasis on faith that my focus was on having enough faith, rather than on Him.  That was, of course, works because it was dependent upon me having enough faith, so I never felt as if I had enough because any time we look to ourselves and not Him, we are in the deficit.  It will never be sufficient.  Only what is in Him and from Him can be sufficient. Once I put my faith in Him and not in having enough faith, I was at peace.  So then, should we pray for more faith? Or shall we put our trust in the Lord that His goodness is entire toward us, that His promises are true and that He will keep us safe in Him no matter what. Shall we not come to Him with David’s psalms, for instance, to pray them though to God until God’s protection and His goodness become as real to us as they were to David in the midst of his days of tribulation.  He certainly had them, but he remained wrapped in a blanket of confidence of God’s goodness and His love for him, no matter what happened.  And we have a “better covenant” (Hebrews 7:22; 8:6) than David did! 

If God helped David, He’ll surely help us in whom His Spirit lives!  Whatever circumstances may come about in our lives, God has said, “I am the Lord, I change not” (Malachi 3:6).  And we know that “Messiah Yeshua is the same yesterday, today and forever,”(Hebrews 13:8).  If He was enough for David, He’s enough for us.  God assures us, “For the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake, but My lovingkindness will not be removed from you, and My covenant of peace will not be shaken,” says the Lord who has compassion on you” (Isaiah 54:10).  I love that verse. It’s one of my favorites. Is that truth real to you, no matter what comes?  And if we’re His, “…we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). 

His purposes are to bring redemption to the world, and we get to be a part of His doing it.  So even though we may go through difficulties, God gave us His word to strengthen our faith and confidence in Him. Paul wrote, “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Cor 4:17).  When we think in terms of eternity, anything we go through here on earth is momentary.  And any difficulties we may go through, when our trust is in God and we honor Him with our faith in His goodness, no matter what, it results in "an eternal weight of glory to us in ways we cannot even begin to imagine.  Paul was taken to the third heaven so he could write those words, to tell us of what can be our expectation of one day when we stand before the Lord and hear Him say to us, “Well done, good and faithful one.”  Do you live for that all–fulfilling moment?  

Disqualified from the Rapture?

“I have a question,” said a woman in my Hebrew Roots class. “If I am angry with someone and I haven’t forgiven them yet and the Rapture comes, will I miss it?”  I could see that she was really troubled by the matter.  She didn’t mean she was carrying a long standing anger, she just meant in the last day or so.  She’s asking what if Jesus comes before she forgives the person she was angry with, will that disqualify her from going to be with Him?  Will He leave her behind if she’s still dealing with the anger?  Rapture or not, the issue is whether God turns away from us when we are angry. 

We need to look at this from a bigger picture than just being angry for the moment, or even for the day. My first question back to her was did she want to be angry with him (it was a him she was angry with).  No, she really didn’t.  She was fervently asking God to take the anger from her and to help her forgive him.  So her heart was not to relish in the anger or to justify it. She was taking full responsibility for it and wanting to repent and be free of it. She wanted to be right with God first and foremost. That is not the heart of someone whom Jesus would disregard.  She was responding like a person who is born again and wanting to please God.

Since God looks to see what’s in our hearts, her heart was in the right place. But what was she to do about this anger?  Well, sometimes we are provoked to anger because of injustice, because someone is acting in an unkind or ungodly way toward us. Even Yeshua got angry and pretty much let everyone around Him know it that day when He flipped over the tables in the temple, scattering coins and animals everywhere.   He was justifiably angry at ungodliness and sometimes there’s just cause for our anger too. 

We are created in His image and He sometimes gets very angry. God knows we’ll sometimes be angry.I’ve noticed that whenever He’s angry it’s because love has been violated somewhere, either love for Him or when people are being unloving to one another in some ungodly way.  But He doesn’t want us to stay angry. He says,  “Be angry and yet do not sin, and not let the sun go down on our anger” (Eph 4:26). In other words, don’t let it fester and feed on itself so it continues, or even grows into an even greater anger as anger can. Rage begins with an offense. Forgive and let it go to God for Him to deal with it. Might the person give you the same cause for anger another time? Quite possibly. So what are we to do?  Keep forgiving, “not seven times, but seventy-seven times” (Matt. 18:22).  Also, I have found that Yeshua’s paradigm-changing declaration from the Cross, “Abba, forgive them for they know not what they are doing” (Luke 23:34), puts things in a God-shaped perspective and will release you from anger every time and your tears will be turned to laughter.

So she wasn’t acting like a person who was not a candidate for Jesus taking her to be with Him. She was, in fact, hating what she saw as her own sin of anger and wanted to fully forgive and repent. Her heart was aligned with God, not against Him.

But here’s another aspect. Once we are born again, apart from decided that we really do not want God in our lives and we choose rebellion, turning our backs on Him and deliberately walking away from Him, our various conflicts and crises do not make us unborn again.  God doesn’t give us His Spirit and then take it back again every time we’re angry or we slip up.  We don’t live in a yo-yo faith where we’re His one day and not another just because we’re confronted with something we’re trying to learn how to deal with. If we’re His, we’re His. And He will help us learn to deal with things as we grow and mature in our life in God.




My friend was still dealing with some of the feelings of anger – which was, in her case, really exasperation – but she had repented of her anger and “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse (purify) us of all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Sometimes it takes a little while for our emotions to catch up with the decisions of our hearts.  Thank God for His unwavering faithfulness!