The Sleeper Effect
John Wimber, a founding leader of the Vineyard Movement, was widely respected for his spiritual authenticity. For most of us, the path to faith is full of twists and turns. But John’s journey reminds me a little bit of Balaam’s.
In his twenties John was a self-proclaimed pagan. He hadn’t given God a second thought his entire life. One day he went to downtown Los Angeles to borrow money from his drug dealer, and he crossed paths with a man wearing a sandwich-board placard that read “I am a fool for Christ.” John thought it was the dumbest thing he’d ever seen, dumb as a donkey. When he walked past the man, he noticed that the back of the A-frame sign read “Whose fool are you?” Somehow that sign planted a seed in his spirit.
Before revealing the rest of the story, let me share one of the miraculous ways in which the Holy Spirit works. In psychology there is a phenomenon called the sleeper effect. Generally speaking, the effect of persuasion diminishes over time. That’s why advertisers try to seal the deal before a message decays. But there are rare exceptions to this rule, and they remain somewhat of a mystery to researchers. Researchers aren’t entirely sure how or why this happens, but the persuasiveness of some messages actually increases over time. I think the gospel is the prime example, and the Holy Spirit gets complete credit. He can harvest seeds that were planted decades ago or resurface ideas in the deep recesses of our subconscious.
Many years after that A-frame incident, a very skeptical John went to a Bible study with his wife. His wife began to cry unexpectedly, confessing her sins to the entire group. He was disgusted by her display of emotion and thought, This is the most foolish thing I have ever seen. I would never act like this.32 That’s when he had a flashback to the man with the sandwich board. Before he knew what was happening, John was down on his knees, sobbing and asking God to forgive his sin too.
At the risk of offending someone, I’ll admit I’m not a huge fan of billboard evangelism. I think it’s far more effective to share our faith in the context of friendship. But let’s be humble enough to admit that God can speak through anyone, through anything. Far be it from me to tell God how to do His job. After all, He speaks through donkeys, and He still uses fools like you and me!
The Element of Surprise
A quick survey of Scripture reveals a God who always seems to show up in the right place at the right time. His timing is impeccable, but His methodology is unpredictable. Remember the instructions Jesus gave to the disciples when it was time to celebrate Passover?
As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters, and say to the owner of the house, “The Teacher asks: Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?” He will show you a large room upstairs, all furnished. Make preparations there.33
We read right over it, but this sounds like a youth-group scavenger hunt, doesn’t it?
And then there are the instructions Jesus gave Peter at tax time.
Go the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.34
This has to rank as one of the craziest commands in Scripture. Part of me wonders if Peter thought Jesus was joking. After all, Peter was a professional fisherman. He’d caught a lot of fish in his life, and I’d be willing to bet that none of them ever had a coin in its mouth. Come on, what are the chances?
Let me make a few observations.
First, God loves doing miracles in different ways. God will not be reduced to a formula. Once you think you have Him figured out, He’ll throw you a curveball. Trust me, you don’t need to tell God how to do what He does. You just need to hear what He says and then obey it. And if you want to experience some wild and wacky miracles, you have to obey the crazy promptings.
Second, God loves surprising us when and where we least expect it. When it came to fishing, I bet Peter thought he could teach Jesus a thing or two. After all, he was the professional. The area of our greatest proficiency is precisely where we think we need God the least. Perhaps that’s actually where we need Him the most.
Jesus could have provided Peter’s tax payment in a much more conventional manner, but it would have been much less awesome. I’m not sure which is crazier, a talking donkey or a fish that spits coins out of its mouth! Either way, these aren’t anomalies. They are par for the course, and God is as unpredictable now as He was then.
How do you read the Bible? Do you read it like a history book? Or do you read it like it’s living and active? Do you read it as if God has finished doing what He did? Or do you believe that God wants to do it again, and again, and again?
Most of us read the Bible the wrong way, with low expectations. I read it with this core conviction: if we do what they did in the Bible, God will do what He did. Why? Because He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.35 And I’ll take it one step further: we’ll do “even greater things.”36
Do we need to hear His voice any less?
Do we need fewer miracles?
Do we need fewer gifts?
Do we need fewer signs?
Do we need fewer open doors and closed doors?
The answers are no, no, no, no, and no.
May God sanctify our expectations so they’re on par with Scripture. May we pray with the same kind of expectancy that Billy Graham did when he visited Epworth Rectory: “Lord, do it again!”
One of two things happens over time. Either your theology will conform to your reality, and your expectations will get smaller and smaller until you can hardly believe God for anything. Or your reality will conform to your theology, and your expectations will get bigger and bigger until you can believe God for absolutely everything!
DREAMERS BY DAY
The Fourth Language: Dreams
And these are but the outer fringe of his works;
how faint the whisper we hear of him!
—JOB 26:14
A vanilla shake from Chick-fil-A is one of life’s simple pleasures, and driving by without driving through feels like a sin of omission. Why? Because it’s not just ice cream; it’s Icedream.1 The vision for “Mor Chikin” traces back to Truett Cathy, but the vision for vanilla has a little longer lineage. It traces all the way back to a twelve-year-old slave boy living on a tiny island in the Indian Ocean.
With more than twenty-eight thousand known species, orchids rank as one of the largest plant families in the world.2 But only one genus produces edible fruit: the vanilla orchid. We take its flavor and fragrance for granted. Vanilla is the most popular spice in the world, but in 1841 the world produced fewer than two thousand vanilla beans, all in Mexico.3 And because vanilla was so rare, it was all the rage.
“Francisco Hernandez, physician to King Philip II of Spain, called it a miracle drug that could soothe the stomach, cure the bite of a venomous snake, reduce flatulence, and cause ‘the urine to flow admirably.’ ”4 Princess Anne of Austria drank it in hot chocolate. Queen Elizabeth I put it in her pudding. And Thomas Jefferson did more than author the Declaration of Independence; he authored the first recipe for vanilla ice cream.5
Back to the twelve-year-old slave boy. On the island of Réunion, in the city of Sainte-Suzanne, stands a bronze sculpture of an orphan named Edmond. By classroom standards he was uneducated, yet he managed to solve one of the great botanical mysteries of the nineteenth century.
In 1822 a plantation owner on the island of Réunion was granted some vanilla plants from the French government. Only one of them survived, and nearly two decades later it still hadn’t fruited. That was the case everywhere outside Mexico for three hundred years. It wasn’t discovered until the late twentieth century that a green bee called Euglossa viridissima was a key piece of the puzzle. Without that pollinator, no one outside Mexico could get their plants to flower—that is, until Edmond
worked his magic.
Ferréol Bellier-Beaumont was walking his plantation with Edmond in 1841 when he discovered, much to his surprise, that his vanilla vine had produced two beans! That’s when Edmond revealed, very matter-of-factly, that he had pollinated them by hand. A disbelieving Ferréol asked for a demonstration, so Edmond gently pinched the pollen-bearing anther and the pollen-receiving stigma between his thumb and index finger. It’s the same gesture depicted by the bronze statue in Sainte-Suzanne. The French call it le geste d’Edmond, which means “Edmond’s gesture.”6
By 1858 Réunion was exporting two tons of vanilla. By 1867 it was up to twenty tons. And by 1898 it was two hundred tons. Réunion actually surpassed Mexico to become the world’s largest producer of vanilla beans.7 And it all traces back to a twelve-year-old boy named Edmond who hand pollinated a single vanilla vine. From that single vine, a billion-dollar industry was created.
Every dream has a genealogy. It’s true of Icedream, and it’s true of your dream. All our dreams were set up by those who came before, and we follow suit by setting up dreams for those who come after. So our dreams are really a dream within a dream. We’re downlines in dreams that trace all the way back to “Let there be light.”8 Creation was God’s original gesture. The Cross is His merciful gesture. The Resurrection is His grand gesture. And He is still accomplishing His plans and purposes via dreams and visions through the working of the Holy Spirit.
The language of dreams is the fourth love language, and it’s God’s lingua franca. There is no dialect that God speaks more fluently or frequently in Scripture. Whether it’s dreams by night or dreams by day, God is the Dream Giver.
It was Jacob’s dream at a place called Bethel that changed the trajectory of his life. His son Joseph interpreted two dreams that saved two nations. The prophet Daniel interpreted a dream that saved the wise men of Babylon. The Messiah was saved by a dream that warned Joseph and Mary to flee Bethlehem. Paul had a vision of a man in Macedonia that brought the gospel to Europe. And if you’re a follower of Jesus and aren’t Jewish, your spiritual lineage traces back to a double vision: Cornelius had a vision of Peter while Peter had a vision of Cornelius.
God speaks in dreams so regularly that we often read right over them. Remember when He offered Solomon whatever he wanted, carte blanche? It was a dream. When Solomon woke up, he asked for a discerning heart, which literally means “a hearing heart.”9 Above all else, Solomon wanted to hear the voice of God. That gesture was the genesis of Solomon’s becoming the wisest man on earth.
Right-Brain Imagination
To fully appreciate the language of dreams, we need to learn a little neuroanatomy. Nothing is more mysterious or miraculous than the three pounds of gray matter housed within the human skull. On a grand scale the brain consists of two hemispheres that function like parallel processors. Their functions intersect and overlap, thanks to the corpus callosum that connects them, but the left brain is the locus of logic, while the right brain is the locus of imagination.
Neuroanatomists have mapped regions and subregions responsible for a wide variety of neurological functions. The amygdalae process emotion, as we explored in the language of desires. The parafacial zone, located within the medulla oblongata, governs slow-wave sleep. The inferior salivatory nucleus is activated when you walk into your favorite restaurant. And the left parietal lobe is the reason you’re able to comprehend what you just read.
Juxtapose that with the Great Commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”10
Does loving God with all our minds include the medial ventral prefrontal cortex? That’s the part of the brain that enables us to find things funny, and the obvious answer is yes! In fact, the happiest, healthiest, and holiest people are those who laugh the most. Long before neuroimaging, the Bible declared that laughter does good like medicine.11
God wants to sanctify our sense of humor along with every other facet and function of our minds. What does that look like for right-brain imagination? The full answer would require another book, but the short answer is God-sized dreams. After all, the size of our dreams really reveals the size of our God.
If we believe that God is the One who designed the human mind, what would lead us to believe that He wouldn’t speak to us through all its component parts? It could even be argued that every feature unique to the human mind is a facet of the image of God. Sometimes He speaks the language of desires by employing the amygdalae. Sometimes He uses the voice of logic, when logic will get us where He wants us to go. God certainly speaks through the five senses, which link to the parietal lobe. And He speaks through memories of the past and dreams of the future.
I was recently at a gathering where Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, shared some preliminary findings from a ten-year study of brain circuitry.12 Three years into the study, it has produced as many questions as answers. Voice recognition and visual recognition, for example, are more mysterious than ever. So is the way memories are recorded and retrieved. But the greatest mystery of all might be the human imagination.
I subscribe to the school of thought that we steward the brain by learning as much as we can about as much as we can. But I also believe in a God who dwells in the synapses of the brain and speaks to us at the level of thoughts, ideas, and dreams.
Every thought that fires across our eighty-six billion neurons is a tribute to the God who knit us together in our mothers’ wombs. But when we have a thought that is better than our best thought on our best day, it might be from God. That doesn’t make it equal with Scripture, but it’s a step above a “good idea.” Is it easy differentiating between good ideas and God ideas? No, it’s not. And again, even what we perceive to be God ideas must be screened by Scripture. But when God gives us ideas that we don’t believe originated with us, we must be careful to give credit where credit is due. And it’s our job to take those thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ.13
Mental Movie
In 1956 Loren Cunningham was a twenty-year-old student touring the Bahamas with a singing group. One night he got into bed, doubled the pillow behind his head, and opened his Bible. He routinely asked God to speak to him, but what happened next was far from routine.
“Suddenly I was looking up at a map of the world,” said Loren. “Only the map was alive, moving!”14 Loren shook his head and rubbed his eyes, much as Edmund and Lucy must have done when the picture of the Dawn Treader came alive. Loren likened it to a mental movie in which he saw waves crashing onto the shores until they eventually covered the continents. “The waves became young people—kids my age and even younger—covering the continents.” Loren saw this army of young people standing on street corners, outside bars, going house to house, preaching the gospel.15
Loren wasn’t sure exactly what the vision meant, but it would turn into one of the largest missionary-sending organizations in the world, Youth With A Mission. More than half a century later, there are more than eighteen thousand YWAM staff members in eleven hundred ministry locations in more than 180 countries.16
That type of vision might seem a little unusual for some, but isn’t that how God spoke to Ezekiel by the Kebar River or Isaiah after King Uzziah died? The entire book of Revelation is a moving picture recorded by John while he was exiled on the island of Patmos. I’m certainly not suggesting that our dreams are equal to Scripture. After all, those visions are part of the canon. But what makes us think that God doesn’t speak through the same mechanism, especially when He said He would? Dreams and visions are evidence that we live in the last days.
In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.17
The supernatural by-product of being filled with God�
�s spirit is dreams and visions, and prophecy is part of the package deal too. Not only do we need to discern the voice of God for ourselves, but we also need to discern His voice for others. That’s one definition of prophecy, and don’t be surprised if it’s a mental picture.
Now let me make an important observation. The dreams God gives us are for us, but they’re never for just us; they’re for everyone who will be affected by and inspired by them. Loren Cunningham would be the first person to say that the dream for YWAM wasn’t about him but was about the eighteen thousand staff and countless people who have come to faith in Christ.
If your dream becomes a business, your employees are the beneficiaries of the dream God gave you. And so are the customers who buy your goods or services. That’s true no matter what you do. If you’re a doctor or lawyer or teacher, you didn’t go to med school, law school, or grad school for just you. You went for every patient you’d treat, every client you’d represent, or every student you’d teach.
When I was in seminary, I went to see a theater production called The Toymaker’s Dream, which profoundly influenced me because of the way it imaginatively recast the Creator as Toymaker. I had no idea who made it until I met the producer, Tom Newman, nearly two decades later and was finally able to thank him. God used that play in a significant way in my life and around the world. It was eventually performed for a combined audience of seventy-five thousand people in the former Soviet Union, including key members of the Young Communist Party.18 I know that God used this play to create change on a global level, but I feel like a primary beneficiary.
One of my core convictions is that the church ought to be the most creative place on the planet. I believe there are ways of doing church that no one has thought of yet. And as an author and a preacher, I try to say old things in new ways. Those values weren’t birthed in a vacuum. They were catalyzed by a wide variety of experiences, one of which was The Toymaker’s Dream. And that’s the beautiful thing about dreams. You never know when or where or who or how your dream will inspire someone else to pursue his or her dream. Only the Dream Giver knows that. But we’ll have a lot of people to thank someday for directly and indirectly inspiring our dreams.
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