A Dream about Stairs that led Nowhere

I had a dream last night that left me perplexed and confused when I woke up. The dream itself got me thinking about the past 10 years and I have to say that the 2010s were a difficult decade for my generation. The upheaval and unrest experienced in those days would aptly be called a shaking. God was shaking everything that could be shaken and this unsettling of the ground upon which we had rested our faith caused some to depart from the faith all together.

Others sought to build on different ground. Their faith in God resting previously on how they were raised or in the respect that in times past was paid to Christianity by mainstream society was shaken as the faith came under greater criticism. Not wanting to give up entirely on Jesus they sought to build their faith on the mixture of the portions of Scripture they were able to accept along with the ever-morphing beliefs of mainstream western culture.

Composite Ground 

In order to do so many things had to be thrown out. They had to reject the Biblical definition of sin and the origin of man. God’s prerogative to judge the lives of humanity and to punish those He found guilty was left behind. The Innerancy and Authority of Scripture had to be nixed as well because it bore witness to that which they had already walked away from.

The composite foundation had been found but at what cost? It left them with a god who wasn’t concerned with our behavior, couldn’t act on moral judgements and couldn’t speak. A god who sent his son to die an unnecessary death on the cross - for if sin didn’t require payment then why did Jesus have to suffer?

It was still a religion -yes - in that it still conducted worship services, had ministers and sought to instruct people about god but it was no longer transformational. It had sacrificed repentance on the altar of relevance and in so doing had conformed to the pattern of this world.

Stairs that led Nowhere

The dream I had last night seems to speak to this. In the dream I was in a church and talking to a pastor. I was walking up the stairs of the church and instead of the steps leading to a room they led to a wall. I was confused so I walked back down the stairs and told the pastor how I had gone up the steps only to be met with a wall and he responded by saying that there was nothing up there but rather gave me a computer mouse.

I woke up from the dream very confused but after some thought on this I realized that no builder will ever build stairs that don’t go somewhere. The stairs actually did go somewhere. Yes, there was a wall but it had been added by man. And the replacement given by the pastor for going up higher was to get on the internet. I was struck with a sense that the church in my dream was cutting people off from a relationship with God and instead pointing people to the world.

There is Another Way

Friends in the midst of this upheaval and shaking there is a third way.  Where some left the faith or others sought for different ground there is still yet something else that can be done. When our faith is tested we can dig deeper into the things of God. We can stand on the belief that the same God who created us for relationship has also spoken to us in a reliable way. We can throw ourselves into His Word and into prayer and fasting. We can become more abandoned in our pursuit of 100% obedience. We can give ourselves to laying down all and following Jesus.

For if we build our lives upon the Stone which the builders rejected we will find a marvelous and timeless Truth.  That there is a door in Heaven that still stands open. And there is still the call for those who have ears to hear it, “Come up here.”

Can you hear it?