Does God Speak to Us in Dreams?

Does God speak to us in dreams today? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of Core Christianity. Hi, this is Bill Meyer along with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and this is the radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day. You can call us right now with your question at 833-THE-CORE. That's 1-833-843-2673. You can also post your question on our Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter accounts, and you can email us with your question at questionsatcorechristianity.com.

Well, if you're a regular CORE listener, here's a bit of behind the scenes info for you. Normally, Adriel and I work in different studios in different cities. He lives in San Diego, California.

I live in Minneapolis. But this week, we are working together in our studio in San Diego. So last night, Adriel and his wife invited me over for dinner, and I got to meet his four kids, ages 8, 6, 4, and 2. And I have to tell you, Adriel, you definitely have the cutest kids in the state of California. Oh, I know that.

I already knew that, Bill. It was kind of wild last night, wasn't it? It was a lot of fun. I made some tri-tip.

Oh, it was great. That's my go-to. I also typically, when I barbecue, I'll throw some hot peppers on the grill, which we offered one to Bill, and he was bold enough to try it. And he took one bite and was done. Oh, man.

Fortunately, we had ice cream for dessert to maybe help. Was that a ghost pepper? What was that, baby?

No, no. It was like a red jalapeno. It was hot, but this is how I like it. Well, the kids cracked up when I ate the pepper, and I was like, they were all laughing.

I tried to warn you. And I don't know why my wife offered. I don't know if it was maybe something you said.

That's why she offered it to you, or what the deal was. But it was a fun night, for sure. Oh, thank you. One of the neatest things about the evening was, when I was getting ready to leave, three of the kids were in bed, but the youngest, who is two, Adriel, had him in his arms. And Adriel started singing, holy, holy, holy, and his little guy started to sing along. Yeah, he's going to be a singer, maybe.

We'll see. He also has no bedtime. He's the two-year-old who acts like he's 32. He was up with us having a good time, wasn't he?

He's great. Well, let's get to our first call of the day. Margaret is on the line from Newport Beach, California.

Hi, Margaret. Welcome to Core Christianity. Thank you. It's nice to be here and fun to hear about the family, Adriel. Yeah.

Appreciate that. I have a question from the Book of Colossians, which I have loved all my life, but there is one little sliver of a part of a verse in the first chapter, in verse 24, that I've always wondered about. So the verse says, Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh, I do my share on behalf of his body, which is the church, in filling up that which is lacking in Christ's afflictions. So how can we, how did Paul write, why would he write that there was anything lacking in Christ's afflictions? What does that mean?

Yeah, Margaret, thank you for that question. And I think, you know, one thing that we have to say at the outset is, and we're talking about the Apostle Paul here, I mean, if anybody clearly emphasized the sufficiency of the work of Jesus Christ for us to put away our sins once and for all, it was him. And so is he, is he contradicting himself here?

I mean, what does he mean? Was there something lacking in the sacrifice of Jesus? I think just on the basis of everything that we have in his writings here in Colossians, in the book of Romans, in the book of Galatians, he can't be saying that. He can't be telling us here that Jesus's sacrifice was insufficient for the body of Christ.

And so what does he mean by lacking? You know, one thing that Paul frequently will talk about in his epistles is suffering with Christ. The fact that the things that he's experiencing for the sake of the Gospel are ways in which he is suffering with his Lord and Savior. You see this in places like Philippians chapter 3, and I think a lot of it goes back to his own conversion experience. Do you remember, you know, when Jesus confronted Saul of Tarsus as he was writing to persecute Christians, how that story went. Acts chapter 9, beginning in verse 1, But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him, and falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

And he said, Who are you, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. The very first words of our Lord Jesus to Saul of Tarsus, the great persecutor of the Church, emphasized the fact that there is such a unity between Christ and his body, that to persecute the body of Christ is to persecute Jesus himself. And so I think the apostle, I mean, he learned it right there at the outset, and I think he saw his own sufferings as a minister of the gospel, as an apostle, as sharing in Christ's sufferings, and in one sense as being experienced by the Lord Jesus in his body.

And so I think that's what's being focused on there. It's not that he's trying to say to us that there was something about the work of Jesus that he had to add to, in the sense of Jesus' sacrifice, his once-for-all sacrifice for our sins being insufficient. It's him identifying himself as a co-sufferer, if you will, with Jesus, his Savior, for the good of the body of Christ. As he was advancing the gospel, experiencing a lot of very difficult things, persecution, famine, nakedness, sword, as he was doing that for the good of the Church, he was doing it for his Lord, for Jesus. And so I think that's the best way to understand it. And here, and I'd appeal to that really important principle of scriptural interpretation, we let the clearer passages of scripture interpret the less clear ones. And so Paul is absolutely clear in so many places that the work of Jesus alone is sufficient to forgive us all of our sins, so he can't be calling that into question here.

It really, I think, has to be that union and unity that he has with the Lord that he's talking about in terms of suffering with Jesus there, Margaret. Margaret, thanks so much for your call. By the way, how do you listen to Core Christianity? Do you listen on the radio or online?

A radio station online. Oh, perfect. Well, it's so nice to have you, and thanks for being one of our great listeners. I will now not skip over this verse out of nervousness. I will appreciate it in a new way. Thank you, Adriel.

You're welcome. Oh, you know, I appreciate so much, Margaret, and all of our listeners who are committed to God's truth and digging into the Bible and really asking those tough questions. Like, I don't really understand this.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's how we grow in our faith, right? Not just sort of setting those things aside, but really digging in. And oftentimes, it's when we dig in that we begin to appreciate those verses so much more. I mean, to be able to think about that close connection that Jesus has with his body, to be able to say, you know, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

Well, Jesus loves his church, and he's so tied to his church that to persecute her is to persecute him. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Our phone lines are open right now, and we would love to talk to you. If you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life, you can call us at this number and write this down for future reference. If you ever have a question, anything about the Christian faith, here it is, 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. Let's go to Lynn from San Diego, California. Hi, Lynn.

Hi, how are you today? Great, what's your question for Pastor Adriel? Well, I was wondering if you could go over a little bit of what heaven is like, and what the future awaits for believers in heaven. What kind of future waits for us?

Yeah, Lynn, I would love to do that. I mean, what a wonderful thing for us to be able to think about, and I think there are a lot of people right now who are saying, man, I can't wait for heaven because they just feel like there are so many difficult things that are going on right now in society that we tend to look up in days like these. And the good news is, right, God has promised us something that we can't even begin to fully comprehend in Jesus Christ. I mean, I think about what the Apostle Paul said, quoting in 1 Corinthians 2 verse 9, what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him. In other words, in one sense, you know, when we're talking about heaven and the age to come, it's incomprehensible.

It's more than we could ever imagine, and yet the Bible does give us some pictures of what that's going to be like. I mean, I think about what the Apostle Paul said in Philippians chapter 1, I believe it's in verse 23, where he talked about wanting to depart and be with his Lord, because that was far better than anything else that he was experiencing or could experience, you know, this side of heaven. He knew being with Jesus is the best. I mean, you think of Jesus's conversation with the thief on the cross in Luke chapter 23, where he said to the thief, today you're going to be with me in paradise. And so heaven, that period of time where we're separated from our bodies prior to the resurrection of the dead, is described as paradise, as this being in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. And really, I think it's going to be consumed with worship of the triune God. We're going to be gathered around the throne of God.

And here's another thing, Lynn, that you have to look forward to that I think is just so wonderful. The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness. You know, right now we're weighed down by the sins and struggles of this world. We look forward to the day where it's like, man, I want to obey the Lord and love the Lord like I'm called to in His word, but I fail every day. Well, when we enter into the presence of the Lord, we're not going to be weighed down by that sin anymore. Hebrews chapter 12 talks about the saints who are around the throne of God right now worshiping Him.

The souls of the righteous, the author of the Hebrews said, the souls of the righteous made perfect. And I don't know about you, but that's one of the things that I look forward to the most is just being able to be gathered around the throne of God with the people of God in perfect holiness, singing praise to the Lord and experiencing His glory in a way that we can't even begin to fully imagine. And then even beyond that, the hope that we have, Lynn, is the hope of the resurrection of the dead, that one day our bodies too are going to be raised glorified. And so we have just so much to look forward to, and we ought to just praise the Lord this side of heaven because of all of it.

And so I would say, you know, look at some of those verses, you know, the one in Philippians 1 that I mentioned, Luke 23, departing to be with the Lord in paradise, and even those great pictures in the Old Testament and in the New Testament of that feast that the people of God are going to have together, the sort of marriage supper of the Lamb, where we're worshiping and celebrating the goodness of God for us in His Son Jesus. Lynn, thanks so much for your call. We appreciate you being one of our regular listeners here at Core Christianity. Thank you. Have a wonderful day. By the way, if you have a question for us, a couple different ways to ask it, you can call us and speak to Pastor Adriel live at 1-833-843-2673.

That's 833-THE-CORE. You can also go to our website at corechristianity.com. There's a little microphone icon there. If you click on that microphone, then you can leave your question right there. And in fact, we received a call from Ireland, Adriel.

This person went to our website and left a message. And let's hear that question for you. Hi, this is Nephi. I'm from the Republic of Ireland.

That's in Europe. I believe and strongly hold to eternal security. I also believe that the redeemed cannot lose their salvation. Now, how do we explain a believer who passes away, but they had ongoing sin? And for sake of argument, they did not repent of this particular sin.

Do they lose any reward in heaven? Yeah, well, I mean, you have these passages in the New Testament talking about being judged according to our works. And I know one of the temptations that we can have as believers in Jesus Christ is to sort of look at other people and try to determine, you know, was that person really saved? And especially in situations like this, where you have maybe an individual who maybe secretly, and it came out later, was, you know, was living a double life, and then they die, and people have all these questions. I think it's helpful for us to look at the words of the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 4, beginning in verse 3.

Listen to what he said. I think this is just helpful advice for us when we fall into this sort of desire to try and figure out whether or not another person is truly born again. Are they really saved? Paul said 1 Corinthians chapter 4 verse 3, but with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I don't even judge myself, for I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore, verse 5, do not pronounce judgment before the time before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart.

Then each one will receive his commendation from God. You see, the Apostle Paul right there said, look, I don't even judge myself. You know, the Lord is the judge, and I think that there's some some wisdom here for us. Now, individually, it's not my job to determine whether or not someone is truly saved.

They're really a believer. God is going to handle that on on the day of judgment, but Jesus did give us steps for addressing sin and unrepentant sin in the church. I know a lot of times churches don't practice this, but Jesus outlined a sort of course for church discipline. What do you do when a brother or sister is living in ways that are contrary to what the Word of God teaches? In that situation, the church should act. This is why we talk about things like church discipline. Matthew chapter 18, Jesus said there in verse 15, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.

If he listens to you, you've gained your brother, but if he doesn't listen, take one or two others along with you that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church, and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. In other words, at that stage of church discipline, then an individual is excommunicated, they're removed from the fellowship of the church, and they're treated as a non-believer, not in order to punish them, but in order to help them see, look, there's this real spiritual issue here. Your soul is in jeopardy, you're deceived, you can't live in this way and think that everything is fine in terms of your communion with Jesus Christ. And so I think that the church does take action in situations like this, but it's not up to us as individuals to try and judge or figure out whether or not this person was truly a believer. And I think the wisdom that Paul gives us there in 1 Corinthians 4 is really helpful.

And so, brother, that's what I would say, Nephi, and thank you for your question. So great to hear from our listeners in other countries. That's one of the cool things about being on the World Wide Web. Of course, we're on a variety of social media channels. You can find us, you can actually watch the video of this program live on our YouTube channel, CoreChristianity YouTube channel.

You can also correspond with us on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, ask your questions there, or call us again anytime at 833-THE-CORE. Now, one of the things we want to mention here at CoreChristianity is that our goal is to help you understand the core truths of the Christian faith. And we want to help as many people as possible really get a clear understanding of the gospel through the articles on our website, the resources we produce, and every question that Adriel answers on the program. But, you know, we can't do it without your support.

That's right, Bill. We are a listener-supported program, and if you've benefited, if you've been encouraged by the answers to the questions about the Christian faith that you hear here at CoreChristianity, we would like to ask you to consider sending a gift now to help us continue. As a thank you for a gift of $20 or more, we'll send you our new resource, How to Read the Bible.

It's a resource that shows you how to answer some of the most important questions you hear, some of the questions we answer even here on this program. And most importantly, it's a resource that's going to help you answer questions about the Bible and how its grand message points to Jesus. I mean, that's one of the big needs that we see right now that I see as a pastor is helping people to see how the Word of God, how the Scriptures are all pointing us to Jesus himself.

I mean, Jesus spoke to the religious leaders, and he said to them in John chapter 5, you search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it's these Scriptures that testify of me. All of us right through the Word of God are being led to the Son of God, Jesus. And so get a hold of this 10-week study that's going to help you get to Christ through the pages of the Bible. If you'd like to make a donation and receive this new study, just go to head over to CoreChristianity.com forward slash Bible, that's CoreChristianity.com forward slash Bible. And on behalf of the entire team here at Core Radio, we appreciate so much your support. We have phone lines open right now. If you have a question for Pastor Adriel, here's the number, 1-833-843-2673.

That's 833-THE-CORE. Let's go to Michael from St. Louis, Missouri. Hi, Michael. Hello. Hello. How are you? Doing well, Michael. How are you doing?

I'm doing pretty good. I just wanted to ask a quick question. I'm a born-again believer, and I had a question. My teaching about being filled with the Holy Spirit and being empowered tells me that I have the ability to speak in tongues, which I do. And I wanted to know your view about a prayer language, and what does that really mean from your perspective?

Yeah. Michael, thank you so much for that question, and obviously tongues and the gift of tongues is something that's described in the Bible in the New Testament. You see this in the book of Acts on several occasions, in particular on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2. And also Paul has an extended discussion on the gift of tongues and other spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12-14. Now I think that this was a distinct gift that was given at a particular point in redemptive history, in particular during the early days of the church. And in Acts 2, one of the things that it signaled was the reverse of the curse at Babel. You think about what took place there in Genesis 11, where the languages were confused. It was a sign of God's judgment. And then here in the book of Acts and in 1 Corinthians 12-14, we have essentially the reversal of that. This is the curse now being transformed.

How? Well, through the work of God, through the work of Christ and what he had accomplished for his people. Now in particular, the gift of tongues in the New Testament were real languages. And I think sometimes people today will talk about them as sort of angelic prayer languages, and that's not my position. They were real languages that essentially were communicating the truths of God's Word, the truth of the gospel. I mean, when the disciples were speaking in tongues in the book of Acts on the day of Pentecost, the crowds heard them in their own language. They were amazed. They were amazed, yeah.

And what were they declaring? We're told in Acts 2 that they were declaring the wonderful works of God. And then in 1 Corinthians 12-14, the apostle Paul makes it really clear in chapter 14 that the gift of tongues, when it is used in the context of the church, should be used with an interpreter, so that others can say amen to the giving of thanks. That's what Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 14. And so that's how it operated, at least in the New Testament church.

It was this sign of the reversal of the curse that had taken place there in Babel. It was a way for the church to be edified, built up. I mean, Paul emphasizes that extensively in 1 Corinthians 12-14. But I think that that gift, and some of the other sign gifts, the more miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit, were especially for that first stage of the history of the church, when the gospel was just immediately breaking out. It was a sign for the people there to essentially jumpstart the expansion of the gospel in these extraordinary ways, in these miraculous ways. And actually in the book of Hebrews, in Hebrews chapter 2 verse 4, the author of the Hebrews talks about how that was at one time, you know, the Lord was working in these signs, and what is various gifts of the Holy Spirit. It seems like even there you didn't have those things happening as frequently, and throughout the history of the church we've seen, you know, these more miraculous signs sort of fade out. And so that's my position, brother, and I think, you know, that it's important for us to understand really what tongues was in the New Testament as we're thinking about it for ourselves today. This is A Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sench. It's time for one more question, and this kind of deals with the signs and wonders as well. Antonio asked this through our website. He says, Does God speak to us in dreams today?

Ah, yeah, that sort of fits, right? Well, it's certainly the case that throughout the Bible God did speak to people through dreams and visions. I mean, I mentioned that, you know, I've been reading through Genesis. You think of Joseph, you think of Daniel even and others. I mean, the birth of our Lord Jesus and the dreams that were associated with the birth of Christ. And so it seems like throughout redemptive history, especially when God was communicating a really important message related to Christ the Savior, he would sometimes speak to people through dreams. And in Joel chapter 2, when it talks about Pentecost, that Pentecost prophecy, it talks about the old men dreaming dreams and young men seeing visions.

And so I think that there have been times where God has used... I mean, I know that there have been times, according to the Scriptures, where God has used dreams to speak to his people. But again, I think we have to differentiate between how God ordinarily works in the lives of believers and how God works at times extraordinarily. I don't anticipate God to speak to me through my dreams. If we want God to speak to us clearly, we go to Holy Scripture, to his word. Now, that doesn't mean that God can't use things like dreams.

And you hear stories about Muslims or people in the Middle East turning to Christ through dreams. But at the end of the day, what we need is the preaching of the gospel. Paul said in Romans 10, how will people hear unless the gospel is preached? And how is it going to be preached unless someone is sent? And so we preach the word. Thanks for listening to Core Christianity. To request your copy of today's special offer, visit us at corechristianity.com and click on offers in the menu bar or call us at 1-833-843-2673. That's 833, the core. When you contact us, please let us know how you've been encouraged by this program. And be sure to join us next time as we explore the truth of God's word together.