Daniel 2:31-45
“Your Majesty looked, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly, and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were all broken to pieces and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The windswept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.
“This was the dream, and now we will interpret it to the king. Your Majesty, you are the king of kings. The God of heaven has given you dominion and power and might and glory; in your hands, he has placed all mankind and the beasts of the field and the birds in the sky. Wherever they live, he has made you ruler over them all. You are that head of gold.
“After you, another kingdom will arise, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth. Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron—for iron breaks and smashes everything—and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others. Just as you saw that the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay. As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay.
“In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands—a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold to pieces.
“The great God has shown the king what will take place in the future. The dream is true and its interpretation is trustworthy.”
I dreamed a dream… (Les Misérables)
There are not many dreams I remember in my life. I did have some nightmares lately because of some stress in my life, but I knew where they came from. Years ago I had some surgery and they sent me home with some “Happy Pills” for pain. During the night I sat straight up in bed and told Treva, “The government was coming to take her wisdom teeth away.” I was asleep and she was in hysterics. A little later I said something unintelligible about “the cherry trees behind the fire escape.” I’m glad there was no one there to interpret my dreams and the drugs were soon gone.
God has spoken to people through the ages in many different ways. He used some special prophets through the years to interpret dreams for powerful people. Many times it was tough news they had to bring. Other times it was clarification of a direction, or a revealing of special wisdom, or sin. It was a tough job, history records that some unscrupulous “wise men” or “prophets” were killed because they were not one hundred percent correct in their interpretation. Some of these charlatans were trying to manipulate power for favor and fortune. It didn’t work out well for them.
Holy messages have come through dreams, angels, a burning bush, clouds, fire, a finger on the wall, a talking donkey, a still small voice, prayers, prophets, preachers, apostilles, angels, and the living Word of God – Jesus. We cannot put God in a box! He uses all of creation to speak to us and His voice still speaks truth! We are blessed to have scripture, ministers, Bible study, music, and media to help teach us about our Lord. Beyond these tools is a personal, God-sized dream that can only be accomplished through His strength and provision through you.
If you want your dreams to come true, the first thing you have to do is… wake up.
- What are some ways that God has spoken to you in the past?
Highlight – what words or phrases jump out at you?