The Mystical Boat

The Dream: He is unaccounted for. The boat came back, but it was empty. He was lost at sea, given up for dead. They had a funeral, buried the idea of His returning to land. He dropped down from heaven, but the boat is still there empty parked along the sea on the rocks. 

All the gear is there. Everything that they need to set out again. Nobody has used it pretty much since the boat came back. It just sits there empty, waiting for passengers. They’re scared of the water, the sudden storms, and unpredictable winds. And, there is a funny feeling to use something that was used by someone so long ago, and now given up for dead. 

They bury this stuff with Him, but it’s not in the ground. It sits on the shore next to the sea, ready to launch out just like the day He left it there. It’s our boat. He is the sailor lost at sea. He doesn’t want us to use the boat to find Him, but to go to sea for ourselves. Catch stuff. There are places we need to go that have schools and schools of fish to be caught. 

The water is teeming with life ready for the picking if we only use the boat to get there. Yet, we stand on the shore and look out to the sea. We think He will return to use His own boat. But, He has left it for us. If we put the boat into the water, it goes where He blows. He’s the wind of direction that moves the boat. It is not a motorboat. There are no oars, but still, it goes to the right place. The mystical boat has a chain of gold when it’s anchored in the safe -haven.

Interpretation:

Jesus used a boat 2000 years ago. He brought good news to those who were poor. He bound up the brokenhearted ones and freed those in bondage. He released them from sickness, emotional pain, and the power of death. He brought light into the dark places of our hearts to understand God in a way that was never possible before He came. He delivered everything that was needed to have complete victory over the Devil and his demons. And, He gave all these things to us through the Holy Spirit whom He sent to live within us. He has given us the same vehicle that He used. It is a boat that is along the sea on the rocks. When our spiritual eyes are open, and we see things the way He saw things, then we are ‘by the sea’. The rock is supernatural insight that is given to us when we have an intimate relationship with God through Jesus Christ. When the relationship is built on His love, then there is a connection that is built between Him and us. He starts to whisper in our ear the secrets of His Kingdom.

The boat is the way. It is the vehicle that God gives us to get us to where we need to go. When we combine the Holy Spirit’s power with the intimate relationship with God through Jesus, then we will find our boat; we will find our way. The dream says that everything we need is there.

All the tackle is still in the boat just as Jesus left it. God does not change, and the Word of God does not lie. Jesus has left us a complete package when He left us the Holy Spirit. All of the Holy Spirit has been given to us.       

 The boat sits empty, waiting for passengers.

Oh, to have those who hear the voice of God and walk into it with complete victory! 

 There are things that keep us from coming aboard that boat.

The dream says that we are scared of the water. Perhaps, we are frightened by the Holy Spirit. He is unpredictable. We do not have any control when we relinquish it to Him. When people speak in tongues, there is no control of the voice. The only control there is, is in the flow. The person can open his heart to allow the flow of the words to come through or not. And, the person has no control over the words.

 The words are from God, totally. That is frightening to many. And, to them, it is frightening to think that the Holy Spirit might take them over. It is like entrusting the boat to the wind with the sails up and no motor. When the boat starts sailing, we no longer are able to control it alone. We need help. A sailboat cannot be sailed by only one person without great difficulty. But it can easily be sailed with two. Similarly, when we entrust our selves to the Holy Spirit flowing through us, He puts us into situations that we cannot control alone. We must rely on the grace of God to help us. This is frightening water to sail out onto.

Have we been taught that God moved through the hand of the disciples differently than He does now?

 The teaching of the appropriation of the power of God moving through His people through being directed by His loving word has been given up for dead. It is a dead theology. Do we walk up to paralyzed people that lay by fountains, reach out our hands to expect them to begin to walk as if they were never paralyzed? I don’t think so. We send them to surgeons and therapy. And we pray the way we have been taught to pray.

But, He says that He will lead us with His eye on us. When we allow Him to live within, we are merged with His thinking. As we start to think like He thinks, then we become the other eye in the I AM. We become His hands to fulfill His missions.

What are His missions? He has given us the boat to go to sea to catch stuff for ourselves He wants us to get a hold of all the victory that He has left us by His death, burial and resurrection. He wants to show us and enable us to receive that victory for others and ourselves.

He has schools of information for us. He wants to teach us about Himself. It is within the place of intimacy and flow of the Holy Spirit that we will find the wealth of knowledge, wisdom, understanding and counsel. And, He always empowers His word, so surely we will have the Spirit of Might flowing, as well. It is in this boat that we will see the miracles of God.

He longs to give life to the body of Christ. Not merely to live, but have life abundantly. If there is healing for us, we need to seek it actively through the direction of His voice and the power of the Holy Spirit.

He is the wind of direction that moves the boat. When we get into the place where the love of God is flowing through the Holy Spirit, His voice will be clear to us. He is the wind. He is the voice. He is the Word. Remember? In the beginning, was the Word and the word was with God and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. The voice of God empowers us to move where He wills.

The chain of gold is the connection between Him and us. There is a bow that connects us to Him. We have a bond when we ask Him to become our Father and we become His child. We both commit to the relationship. A gold bond is formed. The bondage changes from that of the enemy to that of God. We do not have any choice. We are either under the kingdom of this world, Satan, or we choose to become part of the Kingdom of God. We become a slave to righteousness, rather than sin. We are no longer bound toward sinfulness, but rather, bound to do what is right according to the laws of God. The anchor is His heart. We become bound to His heart by the golden links of wisdom. This is our safe haven. We are put in a place like a safe haven protected from the enemy by the grace of God.

It is like a harbor to protect us from the tempest of the Devil. So, even if there is a mighty storm all around, we are safely in the harbor, because we have the bond to the anchor of His love, His heart.

Proverbs 1.9, 3, Isaiah 61, Mark 2.5, John 16.7-28, Acts 3

[Excerpts taken from And Afterwards I will Pour Out My Spirit.]

Genesis

We are approaching a genesis; a new world. Open our eyes, Lord, that we may see our new world, the wonders of Your new creation.

Visions

A vision is a mental representation of something that is not tangent. You can’t reach out and touch it. Often, when we pray for another person, we may have a symbolic vision that comes up into our mind. It may be a scene, or a thing, or a person (rarely). There are many individuals in the Bible that had visions or trance states.

 In Acts 10 Cornelius has a vision in which God tells him to accept Paul and pray over him to receive his sight again. Each of the books of Prophecy in the scriptures are either visions or dreams. Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Revelation all are written like someone who is on drugs. They are all visionary and prophetic. Often, God speaks to us in an unconventional manner. We need to be open to listen to Him. God is not limited by our refusal to accept the visions and pray into them, we only limit our access to information that will help us with the answer. He will only use willing vessels. Visions can give direction to prayer.

The Scripture is not silent on the subject of dreams and visions. God says, “He who has a dream let him tell it, He who has my word speak it faithfully. What does straw have to do with wheat? Is not my word a fire and a hammer that breaks the rock into pieces? (Jeremiah 23:28-30).

Visions and dreams are not the Word of God. They must be taken to the Word to be interpreted. There they will find their foundation. Once the foundation is built, then the building can progress the direction of the dream or vision.

They are active prayer 

Visions are visual messages from God that need to be interpreted to be useful. They are pictures put into our mind. They are one of the ways God talks back to us, so they come to us while in prayer. To have visions, we must be focused on God. He can talk to us only when we are open to receive the answer. Only then will God be able to talk into our minds.

Hebrews 10:16 says, “This is the covenant that I will make with them: After those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws upon their heart, and on their mind I will write them.”

We are called to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. The vision must be weeded out from other thoughts that are going through our mind. We must rid our mind of distractions when we pray. We should schedule prayer times and make them uninterrupted time where we talk to God and listen. It’s about learning to be still before God.

When Elijah ran up to the cave to escape Jezebel, God said He wanted to talk to Him. Elijah recognized God’s voice because it was in the ‘gentle blowing’ wind, not the storm. God wasn’t in the great and strong wind, the earthquake, or the fire. If we follow that story, Elijah just waited for things to quiet down, then, he went out to meet God. Sometimes, we need to wait for our own lives to quiet down, so we can listen.

The vision is a picture. It is similar to one on the wall. For instance, there is a picture of a pathway with a bridge. To pray ‘into’ a vision, we must picture ourselves within the picture. We would walk on the pathway and cross the bridge. (God provides a pathway, the bridge is Jesus Christ). So, to use a vision, take the picture and bring it back to God. Bring it to His world for the interpretation. He lives within the Scriptures and within the Holy Spirit.

Take a look at the scriptures and see how the vision correlates with the person in their environment. When asked to pray for a baby, we may have a vision of tiny lever blinds. This message from God speaks about ‘blinds’ that became opened. We can use the concordance and find many examples of people who were ‘blind’ and God shone the light into their situation. If we relate it to the situation of prayer, we can see where God wants to shine His light on that baby or on the family through the face of the baby. I would pray both those ways. It doesn’t hurt to pray more than you need to.

[Excerpts taken from And Afterwards I will Pour Out My Spirit.]

Here are some examples: 

1) One of the visions that I had was of little trees growing in little pots on the stairs of the altar in the sanctuary.

I researched the Bible and saw that God desires to make us to be a church that plants seedlings. We are to be planted in good soil. So to build on this foundation, I looked up Isaiah 61 and prayed it into our Church. I also prayed Matthew 13 where Jesus talks about the seed being planted. I prayed all of the verses that I could find on seedlings.

2) When I prayed for my husband, once, I had a vision of a plow. I searched the scriptures and found verses with the word ‘plow’ in them. Then I prayed these character traits in to His life. I could see that God wanted him to be one that sows the Word and one that helps to prepare individuals to receive the Good News of Jesus.

3) The vision is meant to direct the prayer. We need to allow it to do this. For example; we may have a vision of a clam shell with a pearl inside. The clam is shut tight. This vision should direct us to pray ‘pearl’ stuff. We can pray that the individual will ‘open up’ to whatever God has for him.

There can be progressive visions, as well. If God is teaching you something, then, He will show one thing, and add to it later. I have had visions of a problem, then, as I continue praying, I have a vision of the ‘fix’.

For example, if I am praying for someone and I have a vision of an uprooted plant, I continue to pray Scripture and in tongues until God reveals a vision that is a positive one because I know that from James, an uprooted tree is a symbol of a Christian who is without roots. That is a problem which needs help. So, I continue to pray through the problem to the solution.

To me, when God gives a negative vision, He is telling me of a problem that needs to be fixed. He wouldn’t give it to me without a reason. So, I dig around in the Scriptures for the answer to whatever the problem is, then, pray it in.

 For the uprooted tree, I would pray the Scriptures about being rooted and grounded in the love of Christ and I Corinthians 13 which is all about learning to love. Sometimes, there can be a progression of a vision. God may show us an individual in a bad condition, such as in an animal trap, and we know that He needs to become released from the trap. We can pray ‘release’ verses. There are verses about how God releases us from the bondage’s of Satan. With this vision, we may have another vision; one of release, when the individual is ‘prayed through’.

Praying into visions is like doing math. God gives the problem, then it is up to us to come up with the answer. He will help along the way, but it is our mouth that prays His will into action. He is breath, we provide the air. He is the movement; we provide the willingness to be used. He moves the spiritual realms when we speak His words.

It is by our mouth and our heart that His heart is moved, Satan is kicked out of situations, and His Kingdom is moved forward. When you are praying in a group, as you pray, allow each one to call out their vision. The others can help to find Scripture to help back the vision. Then, each prays in the Scripture that they contribute to the group.

You continue to pray until you reach the answer. It will be given, and you all will know that it is the one that you have been seeking. Just like math, there is only one answer when God asks the question; His answer. He has the answers written down in the back of the book. Just ask. They are in revelations of His mind which are given to our hearts as they are open to His. 

I Kings 19:12, Isaiah 61:11, Matthew 13.46, II Corinthians 10:5

[Excerpts taken from And Afterwards I will Pour Out My Spirit.]