As I got the word that my mother would likely die before I would be able to make it to see her in Illinois the emotion that set off in me came as a deep sadness like I had never experienced. By the following Monday my mother was still alive for a time yet the sadness was growing; aware that Jesus promised comfort for such a time, that Monday night I prayed an attempted to listen for His voice but nothing, (except crickets). I soon feel a sleep and had a very short vivid frustrating dream. At the time, even the next morning I thought nothing of it just kept praying for Jesus to speak to me. Yet that dream changed my life in a huge way, it just hadn’t unfolded yet. In the Movie by the same name, Shrek, tells his donkey companion that, “Ogres, are like onions, they have layers” that dream that Monday night has proven to exceed even Shrek’s explanation of layers. Over the next two weeks the layers have kept unfolding and unfolding. The coming wisdom and insight, healing, identity, anointing, ministry, warfare are all so glorius. Jesus the Father and the Holy Spirit joined in the adventure, my band of brothers, my closest friends, and family all unlocking more than I could ever dream; oh yeah, it was a dream.
The dream was quite simple. My truck, “Old Red”, had broken down, (the icon of the Christian Car Guy Show and my ministry a 1995 Dodge Dakota with 389,000 miles on it ). In real life I had just gotten it back from putting a used engine in it a few weeks ago. So to begin with it was frustrating because I had just got it repaired so in the dream I decided to fix it myself. When I took the cylinder head off there was a huge white towel in the engine, with just a few grease streaks on the towel. This made me very frustrated because I wondered how could a towel get in my engine, I was so frustrated I woke up. At the time I simply thought that was crazy and thought very little more of it, though it was a very vivid and easy to remember dream.
The dream happened Monday night/Tuesday Morning, that Thursday morning Adam Draper who does a segment on Disciple Magazine, Teach Me To Pray, came in to record his segment. Guess what he was speaking on, yep, dreams and visions from Acts chapter 2. So as the verse says, “Old men will dream dreams”, I guess I qualify as an old man and I had a dream, so as he was recording I began to wonder about my dream. I even thought, “I have a dream dictionary in the book, Seeing the Voice of God why didn’t I look the elements of this dream up?” So when Adam finished his recording I told him about the dream. Adam is a very deep and whole hearted disciple for sure and as I spoke his eyes seemed to grow with his interest. He was excited and told me that this dream was God reaching out to me in a place he couldn’t through other means. He went on to tell me that my truck represented my ministry, a vehicle in a dream is often is a picture of the persons ministry or walk with the Lord, a vehicle for the adventure. I remembered that connection from reading the Dream Dictionary before so as soon as he said it it registered. The towel he wasn’t sure of but he clearly sparked my interest. He encouraged me to spend some time in The Spirit and ask about the towel he was sure this was a revelation of some significance.
The moment he left I went for the dream dictionary, and yep a truck in a dream is listed as a ministry from Acts 17:28a “For in Him we live, and move, and have our being;” How about the towel, WOW! A towel in a dream is listed, service and humility, John 13:4 “ He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself.”
So according to my journal the next morning my initial layer/ reasoning was that God was telling me the power is not in my service. As I wrote in my journal the next morning the power is in the resurrection, the life to have gazed into the Face of God. I kept coming back to the Lords prayer, “For Thine is the Power”. “Apart from Me, (Jesus) you can do nothing”, John 15:5. Lord are you telling me I am trying to earn the power through service? Yes, I believe that was just a bit of the first layer.
The following day I was so excited about this revelation I decided it would be good to call the author of the book, Seeing the Voice of God, Laura Harris Smith. I know her from a few interviews and shows and also having met her in Nashville at the National Religious Broadcaster Convention. I felt it would encourage her to see the fruit of her work and I was also interested in her take on the dream as I know her also to be a very deep and whole hearted disciple extremely caring as well. She too seemed gripped by the dream and immediately said she too felt God was really coming with something marvelous here. She added that a big part of the dream she felt was the oil streaks on the towel as oil was a picture of my anointing. That this dream may reveal something that has to do with my anointing as well, how encouraging was that. So once again I headed off to talk with Jesus about these oil streaks and what that meant.
More prayer over the Memorial Day weekend, more study. I was in Jeremiah 35:19 where God was blessing the Rechabites for being obedient to their father and thus God promised they would ‘never’ cease to have a man “Standing before the Lord”, literally abiding in God’s face a place of blessing. Clearly to be abiding with the Lord is the anointing and doing service abiding in God is a picture of the towel with the oil streaks.
So then the question from that study was ; what is keeping me from abiding, what are you getting after here Lord, is it something I did not obey from my father? CLEARLY, that morning in study Jesus said, “Robby, it’s not your father, it’s your mother.” Oh my, that’s the connection to ‘The Shrek dream’, Jesus you were responding to my pain over my mother’s impending passing (which as of this very moment still hasn’t happened) but you were speaking to me about something to do with me and my mother.
Here again another layer, I immediately felt this had something to do with her suicide attempt when I was twelve. She had taken all her medication and crawled into the back seat of her car wrapped in a fur coat in the middle of the Michigan Winter where no one found her for about 8 days. The doctor’s thought she wouldn’t make it so after all this time wondering where my mom had gone now we were told that we needed to say good bye to her as she would likely pass any time now. Sound familiar, yes unknowingly my sister’s call threw me back to the twelve year old me still hurting and broken from that. While I was still working through the forgiveness and the wounding here. On the 1st of June I had decided at lunch time to spend some time in prayer over all this and as I began my phone rang it was, Adam Draper.
“Robby, your dream is meant for everyone not just you, let me tell you that God has shown me so much through your dream.” He starts off by telling me that, “the oil is the anointing, (I had not told him anything about Laura’s interpretation or comments about the oil), we try to move our life with our own efforts and achievements and we will break down, YET, if we stay in our anointing, in God’s presence, we access the real power.” He even went on to share how they were discussing this dream at a Bible Study he attends that morning, and a long time attendee admitted he didn’t know this Jesus and was saved at that meeting that morning. This had so moved Adam that rather than going to work that morning, he’s an attorney, he went to Reynolda Gardens so he could spend sometime in God’s Presence and felt compelled to call me right that moment, do you think it was a coincidence, I had just reasoned to pray about the dream?
More prayer another layer, Thursday morning I am praying as I head for my CBMC meeting in Mocksville, followed by my leading devotions at Somerset Assisted living, I am thinking about the dream and also praying for devotion material for these meetings. This time the oil struck me, what power is in oil. In the Middle East in the World, he who has the oil has the power in more ways than one. In the Bible the oil that anointed Kings, the oil on Aaron’s beard on Psalms 33. The more I thought about it, gas comes from oil, plastic so much of what the world treasures is oil based. It took millions of years and who knows how much plant and animal material to get the oil the power that was inside them originally now harnessed through this oil. That’s just the physical side of it. The two Olive trees in Zachariah and Revelation are providing the oil to the Menorah in heaven on the Throne, the seven Lamps or Seven Spirits of God, huge, huge stuff. I have written much on this before, What lights up a Christians Heart and Luke 12:35 Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning. In the anointing of Jesus in Isaiah 11 you see the seven spirits of God then in Isaiah 61 Jesus is anointed to preach the good news break chains, heal broken hearts and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, (Grace). Yes oil is a phenomenal thing physically and even more so spiritually.
As I walked into do the devotion at Somerset another layer, I asked about my dear, dear friend a second mother, Miss Beck who had been sick the previous week at 104 years old. One of the residents abruptly announced,” she’s passed on Monday! Her funeral is today at 1:30.”
I said “What? No one called me?… Miss Beck had asked me to speak at her funeral” I was confused and hurting but I needed to do the devotion, God gave me what I was to speak at her funeral in an immediate download sharing that with the residents the dream was all in this message as well. The dream was from the Lord about my relationship with my mother even though I didn’t know how at the time. The message came from Mark 10:29 where we get 100 mothers, (look it up you’ll see how precious this passage is) and then the whole reason I believe Miss Beck lived to 104 was I had never met anyone who honored their mother like that ; read How she lived to 104. The gracious pastor of her Church allowed me to share that day at 1:30. Meanwhile, still praying about my real mother and what is God getting at that I might honor her?
Friday morning back hard at praying; “God what is this about with my mother?” Jesus took me back to my own suicide attempt when I was 5 years old. I had been here before but could never remember why. The incident seemed so foggy that I wasn’t even sure it was true, but I remember freaking out my parents so bad they sent me to a Psychiatrist. All I could remember was I put a plastic bag over my head. I could remember how Satan used the innocent words of my mother to entice me. I had gotten some toy in a plastic wrapper in the back seat of our station wagon, I was messing around with it and my mother said,”Don’t put that over your head you will kill yourself.” I could sense the evil seconding that motion, “did you hear that, a way to kill”. I’m not sure I even knew what kill meant but obviously my mother didn’t want that. Though I could remember that vividly I couldn’t remember why I wanted to kill myself, try as hard as I could.
I knew from my Ransom Heart Boot Camp training that I needed to bind up the strong men that obviously had this younger me tied up in chains. My name when I was that age was Bruce and that younger place that Bruce in me was captive for sure. I asked Jesus what strong men had Bruce tied up. Jesus told me Fear, and envy, dread, lying, confusion. WOW, a small legion. I started praying the blood of Jesus and His authority over Bruce and commanded each spirit by name to go to the judgement Jesus had for them. I was also sensing that this dream had a huge identity issue in it, so I asked Jesus for a new name if there was one here.
The battle switched from the strong men to comforting little Bruce, little Bruce clearly needed something, I asked Bruce he said nothing just stunned he said nothing. Little Bruce wanted his mom to hug him, my brother Mark was much more hugable I thought since he got more hugs in little Bruce’s view, but Jesus stepped in and hugged little Bruce, (it doesn’t get any better than that), I thought surely little Bruce would tell the story now, but nope still frozen silence.
I asked Jesus again, ” What do we do now?”. Jesus instructed me that little Bruce needed some time, some healing, tender time just hanging out with me. So as crazy as this may sound I spent the rest of the day Friday and Saturday, just hanging out with little Bruce, sharing life with him. Little Bruce still thought he was going to die, that he broke his mother and father’s heart he was as stuck as he could be in 1960. So we shared those two days with how things worked out, how Jesus rescued us and everything is going to be OK. Bruce needed much reassurance, fortunately I had some long drives to my father’s house and back where we got to really Talk.
Sunday morning, I normally spend the first part of my quiet time Sunday morning working on my Sunday School lesson but Jesus clearly told me, “Today is the day focus on this healing.” So we went right to it.
Again, I was at a loss,” Jesus what’s going on it seems worse?”. Jesus told me the spirit of Confusion was back. So I prayed and bound him back to be Judged by Jesus. Bring the cross and Jesus blood over Bruce. The confusion left and finally, little Bruce was letting go a little.
Little Bruce was feeling, “I wanted to fix it, this isn’t right, I didn’t do anything, I didn’t brake it!”
I asked him, “What do you want to fix and why can’t you?”
Little Bruce explained, “Mom won’t let me fix dad’s car the red one, I don’t want to kill myself I just need to fix that car I can do it, mom has to let me.” The guilt and shame condemnation all agreements I need to brake.
I paused, went to Jesus and said, “this is part of my identity thing isn’t it, I’m a fixer, is that what you call me, Jesus?”
Jesus told me, “Yes you were and are a fixer. The dream was about fixing a red truck, but like your truck, you couldn’t have fixed that red car, the little plastic axle support was broken. I could have fixed it but you couldn’t without me you don’t have the power. Further your mom was just trying to protect you from getting your dad angry messing with his car. ”
I asked Him, “Jesus I need your precious blood, forgive me for manipulating my mom, scaring her, dishonoring her, judging her. Lord, Jesus forgive me for and help me pull this bitter root judgement with which I have defiled many, Hebrews 12:15. Jesus that you for helping me break the vows to keep this hidden and breaking agreements I made with the enemy that my mom was the enemy. Lord thank you for helping me see clearly what a fixer should be.
One more layer to the Shrek Dream, to ponder for now. I believe I am a faithful fixer and wanting to fix so much of what I see in the world, but. The power is in the anointing with Jesus beside me instructing me I can get this big old Log out of my eye, so then I can see clearly to take the spec out of my brothers eye… Thank you Jesus.
Jesus had given me this amazing two week dream adventure, much work, and lots of tears and hurt. What I had kept hidden and broken for 55 years, no wonder it would take time to unravel, but don’t miss it. Jesus has this for you too. I feel God led me to write all this down so you too would have hope that this kind of healing is waiting for you, truly a dream adventure with God…. Robert Bruce Dilmore, Jr.
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