I had a dream on January 18th of this year that I want to share with you, as well as the interpretation and the message it carries for all of us. The dream itself was pretty short. I was at my old property and standing at the fence talking to the neighbor. In real life this neighbor doesn’t exist, but in the dream she was a woman who had a very young child and she needed food for the kid. For some reason I was in possession of a container of Similac baby formula that I had sitting on my pantry shelf, and I could see it on my shelf while I was talking to her (don’t ask me how, dreams can be weird). I offered to give her the baby formula, and she politely declined. Instead of letting me give her the food, she gave me a $5 bill. That was the end of the dream. Upon waking, it didn’t take long to identify the message of the dream, because the dream symbols were fairly clear and it was a play on words—grace instead of formula.
Sometimes we can get so busy trying to do things the way we have always done it before or the way everyone else is telling us that something works that we forget we have the Spirit of the Living God inside us and at our disposal 24/7. This reminds me of something a friend said to me in a conversation just the other day, which was that sometimes people think using the prophetic for daily life things is cheating. Its not.
When I was in college, I had one class where the professor gave us four essays that we could prepare for prior to each exam, as we would each get one of them on the test. He was only ever going to give each of us one of them, but it was random as to which essay question each of us would get, so if someone wanted to perform well they had to research to prepare to answer all of them. The morning of each test, I would ask the Holy Spirit to help me get the essay question I wanted—the one of the four I felt I was the most prepared to answer well. Once on the ride to class (Penn State has a campus bus system because it’s a large campus) the Holy Spirit said “move one seat to the left”. That might not mean much to anyone else, but it was a very straightforward answer to me because, as most students do after a few weeks in any class, we all sat in the same seats out of habit (and I got a dirty look from the girl who normally sat in the seat I took that day, as it was one to the left of my normal seat). On the day of the final exam, because finals were often held in different rooms and at different times than normal, I had never been in the classroom so the Holy Spirit showed me a vision of an aerial layout of the seats in the classroom, highlighting the one I should sit in with the color blue. When I arrived I got distracted and completely forgot to look for my special seat, and by the time I realized it, most of the seats were filled. I looked around the room and then realized I was already sitting in it! God had guided me to the right seat anyway.
The Holy Spirit is our ultimate cheat code for life. He is the Spirit of Wisdom, Revelation, Knowledge, and Counsel, so it seems only prudent that if we need any of those things that we start by asking Him for them. But in order to take advantage of that, we have to be willing to set aside our well-planned formulas for things and learn to flow in grace. That doesn’t mean we should never make plans of any kind, but especially when it comes to our spiritual life, when we operate from a position of grace we will be able to set aside our rote formulas for accessing God, getting things done in prayer, and all of the other “ways” we have learned over the years to get God to do things. Why? Because often those things are based on running a formula. For example, there is a chapter in my book “The Power of Impartation” that explains multiple spiritual laws in depth. That information is both useful and helpful, but there are times when we are so busy trying to work spiritual laws to our benefit that we miss out on an even higher good that God has prepared for us.
When we are able to live from grace, God’s divine empowerment in our lives, we can transcend all formulas and patterns and be led by His Spirit in all we say and do. And I’m not there by any means, but I do feel this is a valuable reminder for all of us.
As we close, I want to leave you with a resource that might be helpful. I haven’t read this book yet myself, but it came to mind as I was writing this article, and I suspect it is because the Holy Spirit is nudging me to share it with you all—so that’s what I’m going to do! The book is called “Grace Over Grind: How Grace Will Take Your Business Where Grinding Can’t” by Shae Bynes. In her own words, she is the “Founder and Chief Fire Igniter of Kingdom Driven Entrepreneur,” and this book is actually an expanded version celebrating the 5th anniversary of the book. While it is geared toward business, I suspect the principles in it can translate to other areas of life as well, and if you’re a kingdom-minded business owner then Shae is someone you’ll want to get in touch with. And if you like what she says, she also has a podcast you can listen to as well. Be well, be blessed, and may you go forth with grace!
