Grace and peace to the children of promise and to all those who have bought the lie.

I always admonish parents to keep the lines of communication open with their children at all times. We should always be talking to them and, most importantly, listening to them: feeling them out for signs of things that may be going on in their lives that they may be reluctant to tell us about or that they may not even know about or may be unable or unwilling to understand.  In so doing, we enable ourselves to read between the lines and to see things that on the surface may appear insignificant, but may actually be a sign of a potential spiritual problem.

I have learned this lesson only in the last five or six years, after God alerted me to what Satan was doing to my family.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t that diligent with my first three children, as I was an unrepentant sinner for most of their lives, and thought that all a father had to do was bring home the bacon and scratch his private parts.  Thank God for the blood!

Satan is always hard at work looking for a doorway into our children’s lives that he can use to bring them under bondage. If your child is saved, Satan knows that he has lost the battle for that child’s soul.  But he may still try to discourage the child and, if possible, to destroy his hope. Satan is subtle, clever, and very crafty, and he has many weapons in his arsenal by which he can come in under the radar of even the most diligent parent.

One way Satan accomplishes this is through our children’s dreams. There are many theories abroad as to the purpose of dreams.  Some believe that dreams are a way that we process things that have happened during the day. Others believe that dreams are a window into the subconscious, and that it is through dreams that one’s fears and hopes are revealed.  But I have come to understand that for the Christian–especially the Christian child–dreams are a spiritual battleground: for it is through dreams that Satan attacks our children, trying to instill doubt, fear, and uncertainty in their minds, in an attempt to derail their faith. Satan knows that in their sleep, children are particularly vulnerable to spiritual attack. It has therefore become my custom to discuss my children’s dreams with them to try and discern if Satan is attacking their dreams and, if so, what he is trying to accomplish. 

I have found that the best time to talk to my children about their dreams is at the dinner table, when they are usually very chatty.  It was actually my son who begun the tradition of recounting dreams at the dinner table.  One day the family had just sat down to eat dinner.  Immediately after saying grace, every head swung around and every eye but mine was glued to the television set.  Not a word was spoken for about five minutes. During the three years that my family and I were separated, my children had grown accustomed to watching television while eating, as my wife has had this habit for many years.  Now, I was faced with the sobering reality that the television set was like another member of the family: a surrogate father, who, during my absence, kept my children company and held everyone mesmerized with his captivating stories.

Grieved in my spirit, I grabbed the remote and shut off the television.  I then explained that dinnertime should not only be a time to eat, but also a time for the family to sit together and talk and reconnect after having spent the better part of the day separated.  There was about two minutes of silence while my wife and children tried to process what had just happened and figure out what to do next. Suddenly, my son, who loathes uncomfortable silences, looks at me and says, “So what did you dream last night?” So I told him. 

What happened next was a first for our family: for each person in turn began to share not only what he had dreamed the night before, but any dreams that were especially troubling, puzzling, or interesting.  It turned out they all had some pretty interesting dreams over the past few years that they simply had never thought to share with one another.

I learned a lot from those dreams.  I learned, for instance, that, like me, they all had had dreams that ended with them falling from a very high place and waking just before hitting the ground. I learned that my son remembers even the most minute details of his dreams and retains those memories indefinitely, while my wife rarely remembers her dreams.  I also realized that I was in a lot of my children’s dreams.  For my part, I realized that it had been a long while since I last dreamed of my deceased father and brother. 

It turned out that I learned more about my children from listening to their dreams than I had learned from any formal conversation with them to date.

Let me give you a practical example of the value of dreams and their role in spiritual warfare.  When my wife and I were separated, I lived in the U.S. while she and the children lived in Germany.  Now, Munich is a Roman Catholic city in a Roman Catholic country, and my wife is also a Roman Catholic, although she attends a “Protestant” church.  So, to try and keep my children grounded in the truth, I would read the Bible with them over the telephone at least once a week, and I would try to give them a test over what we had read about once a month. It didn’t always work out, but we did our best to stay in the Word.  

For years, there has been a concerted effort on the part of Satan to destroy my family, and one of the ways he has tried to do this is by attempting to destroy my children’s faith. During one of our Bible studies, I discerned by her questions that my middle daughter was beginning to have doubts.  Upon close examination, I realized that this was due in part to the teaching she was receiving in her ethics class.

You may find it interesting to know that, at least in Munich, children are required to take classes in either Religion or Ethics.  I never let my children take the religion classes for fear they were in Roman Catholicism, and nothing is more dangerous for an immature Christian child than instruction in Roman Catholicism: a religion that claims that Jesus Christ is God Almighty, yet subordinates Him to an idol of stone and to a mere man.  I would therefore, let my children take Ethics, which I thought would be a safe alternative.  I was to find out later, however, that my daughter’s ethics classes are almost like a course in comparative theology, as they often discuss the cultural and ethical practices of other religions, especially Islam.  In fact, my children know more about Islam than I do.

This was reinforced by the fact that at the time, my daughter’s three best “friends” were  German, Chinese, and Turkish: that is, Roman Catholic, Buddhist, and Muslim.  Theirs was the perfect ecumenical friendship, and I don’t think this was a coincidence.  I came to realize that quite often the conversations between my daughter and her friends took on a religious flavor.  I also noticed that her friends and other children in my daughter’s class were extremely versed in Christian doctrine, and would often tell her that Roman Catholicism was Christianity and that Muslims worship the same God as do the Christians.  Satan was going to work on her faith.

The effect of this influence was that my daughter ended up having a dream in which Satan told her that she was not going to heaven.  All religions except true Christianity are works based, and, at least in the case of Roman Catholicism and Islam, have a myriad of rules and practices governing everything from prayer to diet and dress.  I believe that in my daughter’s eyes, the other religions made Christianity, which is grounded not in our own righteousness, but in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, look inferior and sorely lacking in works. 

I realized that Satan was trying to plant seeds of doubt in my daughter’s mind. I anguished over how I could reassure my daughter that she was still saved, even though she had doubts. For days, I prayed for discernment from the Lord as to how best to proceed. Then God showed me a passage in the Bible that I was able to give my daughter to restore her hope.  It is 2 Timothy 2:13:

“If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself.”

With this passage, I was able to get my daughter to see that it was alright to have doubts, especially for a child, because Satan is going to work overtime for the express purpose of destroying the Christian child’s faith, because he can’t have her soul.  I reminded my daughter how Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness and I told her that if Satan could try to deceive God, then it’s a forgone conclusion that he will do the same to us.  I showed her that 1 John 5:13 says that the Christian [child] already has eternal life, meaning that her name is already written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.  And I reassured her that Jesus always keeps His promises.  Her salvation is guaranteed.  I especially taught her from Exodus 34:6 that although God is powerful, and terrible, He is merciful before He is anything else.  He understands our doubts, and will forgive them.

I can’t tell you how happy she was that I shared this good news with her.  She was so relieved!  The best part is that she learned something about Jesus that she didn’t fully understand before.  She learned that He is merciful and that He extends this mercy to us every single day.  Jesus understands.

We have kept up the tradition of discussing our dreams at the dinner table.  But, thankfully I haven’t had to deal with any major theological issues since that scare of three years past.  I have also noticed that my children’s dreams are a lot quieter now, for lack of a better term.  This may be due to the fact that during our bedtime prayers, we have made it a practice to pray that Jesus will keep Satan out of our dreams that we may have peaceful dreams, free of Satan’s devices. 

I no longer turn the television off before dinner.  I just put the news on, which instantly turns our attention onto each other: that is, unless there is a news item that I think we should all see and discuss.  Switching on the news has become the unofficial cue for my son’s favorite dinnertime question: “So, what did you dream last night?”

The free audio version of this discussion is available at the iTunes Store at our podcast, These Last Days.  For your convenience, it is also available below.

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Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.

The Still Man