A Parable: Five Things God Said to a Man in a Dream

Photo by Shane on Unsplash

I have used this story more than once as a sermon illustration, when I want to help people see that God’s ways are wise and good beyond our understanding. Here is the story:

Once God came to a man in a dream and told him five things.

The first thing God said to the man:

“You have no idea how much I love you. If you understood for just an instant how deeply I love you, it would change your life forever.”

The man thought that sounded pretty good.

The second thing God said to the man:

“You have no idea how much I want to bless you. If you understood for only a moment how much I want to bless you, it would change your life forever.”

The man thought that also sounded pretty good.

The third thing God said to the man was deeply troubling. “Tomorrow something devastating is going to happen to you. It will be so catastrophic that it will cause you to wonder if I really do love you. You may even wonder if I even exist.”

The man didn’t like the sound of that at all.

It took God a long time to say the fourth thing He had to say to the man. God began to explain how He would use this catastrophic event to bless the people around the man, how that blessing would flow in cascading implications down through the generations and far, far into eternity.

When God finished explaining all this to the man, he was stoked. “I don’t care what happens tomorrow! This is all good! Bring it on!”

Then God told the man one more thing: “Tomorrow, when this awful thing happens to you, when your world comes crashing down around your ears, you will remember nothing of this dream.”
 
This is what it means to trust God. We don’t trust Him because we understand how things fit together. We trust Him because we know Him. Even though God’s ways are always wise and good, the wisdom and goodness of His plans are sometimes opaque to us.
 
And when we cannot see how events can possibly be good – and this sometimes happens to all of us – we must not jump to conclusions about His intentions or His wisdom. We must not decide that since we cannot see any good reason for things, there cannot possibly be a good reason for them.

There are many times when we cannot understand the Plan. That’s when we have only two reasonable options: give up hope or rest our hopes in the Planner.

Our God can be trusted.

He is the Good Shepherd.
 
He is the faithful Father.

Persevere.