As I slept last night my mind was troubled about many things. Before I awoke I had a vivid dream that I was in a church, a strange church to me, one that I had never been in before. I was invited to preach. As I walked up to the pulpit I noticed that the church was full but the people were perplexed as to who was this preacher. I searched around the lectern for a Bible but found none. There was hymn book, a prayer book, even a concordance, but no Bible. What would I preach about? The words of Amos came to me: “The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord, “when I will send a famine through the land – not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. Men will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the Lord, but they will not find it.” (Amos 8:11,12)

But what Word do they need to hear? Surely they need to hear the great commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” What is in your heart, what defines your soul, what troubles your mind, what do you need for strength? Is it the love of the world, the cravings of sinful man, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life? (1 John 2:15-17) We are told not to love the world for if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. The world and its desires pass away but the man who does the will of God lives forever. We know that the whole world is under the control of the evil one (1 John 4:19)

But we are in the world and the world around us that troubles us so much is infected with what brings us suffering. How can we love our neighbor if the world around us, and it must be admitted, in us, creates so much conflict and is filled with angry, accusative voices?

Then there came to me the words of Jesus, so often quoted, yet so often ignored: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). God has given us his love in his only Son who came and suffered and died for us so that we might overcome the world. He calls us to believe in him and to follow him as his disciples. Not just to believe in our heads, intellectually, but to digest into our lives by our focus and our actions, our attitudes and our relationships. He calls us to fill our hearts with the love of God in Christ of the Cross, to fill our souls with the love of God in the Cross, to fill our minds with the love of God in the Gospel, to be strengthened to love over indifference and distaste by the Holy Spirit of Jesus, for he came to destroy the works of the devil and to overcome the evil one. We have to let the love of God in Christ permeate our daily lives so that we are fulfilled by the life of God. We have to confess our sins, repent and return to the Lord if we are to be forgiven and saved.

This requires continually marinating our minds in the words of the Scriptures, inhaling the presence of Christ by constant prayer, being careful what we say and how we think of one another. “Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell” (James 3:5,6). The devil is having a field day with our conversations, our politicians, our pundits and our celebrities. We need to hear again what Jesus said, “He who is without sin cast the first stone” (John 8:7).

“Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth” (Ps.46:10). “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way” (vv.1,2). This is the Word of the Lord.

The dream ended and I awoke from sleep. But the dream endured.