The Charltons

DREAMS

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Early in 2016 one of our senior leaders - Randy Martinez - had a dream where another leader in our community approached him and asked, “Randy, have you heard about the Neverites?” To which Randy replied, “Don’t you mean the nazarites?” And the other leader spoke again and said, “No, I mean the Neverites.” Randy immediately woke up from the dream and heard the voice of the Lord say “The Neverites are those who never let the fire on the altar go out, never leave the tent of meeting, and never stop crying ‘Holy! Holy! Holy!’”. God then brought to Randy’s mind Leviticus 6:13 (“Fire shall be kept burning on the altar continually; it shall not go out.”), Exodus 33:11 (“Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses turned again into the camp, his assistant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent.”), and Revelation chapter 4:8 (“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, Who was and is and is to come!”). Randy knew that these were the marks of the generation that God wanted to raise up: those who never let the fire on the altar of their hearts go out, who never leave the place where His presence dwells, and never stop looking at our beautiful Savior while crying “Holy! Holy! Holy!”

 

Another significant dream that Randy had was in February of 2015. In this dream he was in a hallway with the Lord Jesus, and there was a wooden door with a frosted glass frame in the middle of the hallway. All of the sudden the Lord is consumed with zeal and runs down the hallway and plows through the door, shattering it to pieces, and Randy is shocked at the display of strength and zeal. And then they’re suddenly in the kitchen and He runs up to the oven and doesn’t crush the oven but blows a hole through the middle of it. He wasn’t just breaking the things, He was breaking through the things. After the oven He turns to the dining room table, flips it onto its side and blows hole right through the middle. After the table He enters the living room and Jesus blows a hole through the television, and then turns to a stereo system and blows a hole through the stereo system.

Then the dream transitions and Randy is sitting on the side of the river bank with significant national ministry leaders sitting next to him and a bunch of young people on the other side of the river, and Randy was telling the young people all of the things the Lord broke through, and the young people begin to tell Randy “That’s too much grace!” and began to argue with Randy because they thought he was slipping into a doctrine of grace that is too liberal and distorted because Randy was saying that the Lord was doing all of it. They were arguing saying “No we have to do some of it, too!”, and they kept yelling “That’s too much grace!” Randy then stands up and the shout of the Lord comes out of him saying three times “When Jesus breaks through we break through!”

When Randy woke up God brought Micah 2:13 to his mind: “The breaker goes up before them; they break out, pass through the gate and go out by it. So their king goes on before them, and the Lord at their head.” In the dream, each item had a very specific meaning: (1) the door in the hallway represented the open door of grace and provision; (2) the oven represented how and what we eat, including lifestyles of fasting; (3) the table represented how we spend our time together in fellowship and manage our schedules; (4) the television represented what we entertain with our eyes and thoughts in our minds; (5) the stereo represented what we listen to and let take root in our hearts.

This dream has again become significant because the Lord vividly showed me (Mike) this dream while I slept on both May 19th and 20th. We at the Prayer Furnace believe that God is bringing the dream up again because this time it’s not just for our community but for the whole of the body of Christ in our nation. The point of the dream is not about how we can do things better and work really hard to improve in these areas, but it’s about the grace of God and Him making the breakthrough. We need Jesus to make the breakthrough in these areas. We need to do Micah 2:13, where Jesus goes before us and breaks through, and we then have the grace to follow Him through and share in the breakthrough.

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THE LOUDEST WHISPER

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The following was written by a teenage girl in Northern Iraq (I'm referring to her as "Layla") and it blows me away every time I read it.

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The Loudest Whisper:

The story of God’s love revealed in my heart

 

“Jesus is real!!!”

 

It rolled out of my mouth like honey…

Like fire shut up in my bones…

 

Light pierced through the darkness, dividing the room like a knife.

 

I stood before my friends—my peers—all of us in amazement of the words that I spoke. You could have heard a pin drop. I began to describe a Man I barely knew with words that were full of depth and love. As I spoke these words, I felt His old identity as only a prophet disappear. He emerged in my heart as King as I stood there in the light—alone, in love, exposed and vulnerable.  What would have terrified me months before now proved to make me more bold than I could have ever imagined, as His heart collided with my own.

 

“Layla... Layla”

The familiar sound of my mother’s voice woke me from my sleep.  How could a dream feel so real? How was it that I could wake up feeling more joy than I’d ever felt in my life? I leaped from bed like it was the first day of a new life. And it was.

 

My quest to know this Man started much earlier—before I was born, even.  It started with a tiny seed—a dream my father had when he was only six. In his dream, he saw Jesus and knew in his heart He was the only true God. But because his family were devoted Muslims, he quietly kept the revelation tucked away, like a hidden treasure. He carried it his whole life, never making mention of this Man and His identity.  

 

So, I was born into a home where my parents were uncertain about what they believed. Everyone we loved bowed five times a day to Allah while we tried to quietly fit in.  I often asked my teachers to tell me who Jesus was. The answer was always the same, “he was a profit”. I didn’t understand the account of his miraculous birth. I felt like I didn’t understand anything.

 

In a quiet act of desperation, I found a bible and started reading. It was the first time in my life that the confusion began to vanish. I didn’t know much of what I was reading, but somehow it all made sense, as if I were made to know Him and find peace in His words.

 

This was when my first dream happened.

“Jesus is real”….

 

That morning when I awoke, I really was brand new. Transformed. I was filled with a knowledge of who He is and the courage to speak His name. I told my family. I told my extended family. Most of them were angry. Most of them tried their best to frustrate me. But I was prepared to stand, because in that dream as real as life, I had already stood before man and claimed Jesus as my King and my Savior. God prepared my heart to be steadfast. God was showing me He watches over every detail of my life in love and careful leading.

 

My heart in writing this is to that you will know God—so that you will have a desire to know Him and to be known by Him.

 

God is One…and His nature can be seen in the persons that make Him—the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. My favorite example about about the trinity is to see it like a piece of gold with three angles—each angle is gold and the three angles together make up the piece of gold. It’s just one piece gold made up of three angles. The same holds true with God (the real God).

 

But to us there is one God, the Father of whom are all things, and we in Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ by whom are all things, and we in Him.

1 Corinthians 8:6