A saving nightmare

I really wasn't going to tell you about this. Especially it being ANOTHER post about God so close on the heels of yesterday's chat about God... but it was a nightmare! I awoke this morning with my pulse racing and my hands sweating. I immediately grabbed my cellphone and dialled my friend's number and told him what I'd dreamt and that we need to make sure we're ok. OK with God, that is. I know - now I'm freaking you out too, right? * Eish! *

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Here's what I dreamt.

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In my dream a bunch of my friends and I were walking along the Durban beachfront, talking and having a good time together. It was evening. Most of us were barefoot and wearing jeans. Casual stuff. All of a sudden this enormous wind was whipping up sand, and the waves on the seashore became enormous terrifying tsunami-like tidal waves. The ground started rumbling, then shaking. And the sky started rolling back. And I felt a heavy, earth-shattering fear unleash itself from deep within me. I immediately grabbed my friend's hand and said to him, "I think Jesus is coming!" In the same moment as I grabbed my friend's hand, the others around us started levitating toward the cloud in the sky. But my friend and I stayed put. We were not saved! We hadn't spent time with Jesus. He didn't know us.

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Talk about a nightmare of epic proportions! And I awoke feeling absolutely terrified. And then I realized that maybe God was trying to tell me something. Maybe this was God's way to saying to me, "Char, let's spend some more time together. I want you to be saved. I want to know you. I want you to know Me. I want you to be ready when I return to take you to this amazing place I've built for you. Don't you want to spend some time with Me, so that we can get to know each other better? I already knew you before you were born. I knit you together in your mother's womb. All the days of your life I have already seen. I know where you're headed, and it doesn't include me. Come away a while. Let's spend some time together, just you and me. I want to teach you how to just be still in my presence. To know that I am God. How else will you ever learn to trust me again?"

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And who am I to refuse such an invitation? Of course, I realize that there's nothing I can do to save myself. That's what Jesus had to die for. To offer me forgiveness and grace. You guys all know that stuff too. What I hadn't realized, fully, was that I need to take time to spend with God regularly. It's not about me earning salvation at all. It's about me learning to know and trust God again. And to build a relationship with Him. A saving relationship. So that one day when He comes on the clouds to take us home, and to raise the dead to life at the resurrection, you and I won't be left behind on a planet bereft of His presence.

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Isn't this God we serve just totally amazing?

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* That's South African for anything similar to "OH MY WORD!" or "WHAT THE ?" or "OH NO!" or "WOW!" etc.