My first lesson in over-caution
One important hurdle for me to get over was my thought that if people knew I had once been very briefly involved in the occult as a child, then they were even more likely to be suspicious of me. After all, as I have said, my family and situation were unusual at the time because thirty years ago, there were not that many Americans deep into the occult. Thus I had grown up with a stigma that naturally other Christians took on to, having been warned by so many to avoid the occult.
Their fears were unfounded though. In fact, my prior experience in the occult gave me a healthy motivation to avoid evil and foolishness. I was simply more motivated to discern, and in fact was overcautious at times.
For instance, at only 18 years old, I had a very brief, astonishing dream that took me totally off-guard. At the time I was working at an Italian restaurant as a waitress. It was a family owned restaurant, and I worked with both daughters of the owner: One was the cashier and the other a waitress like I was—only she was older and more experienced, and much better at carrying all those trays than I was! She was also married. Her husband worked as a cook in the back.
In my dream I saw both this waitress and her husband. They were praying over a child of about six years old. I was present in the dream and was both watching and participating a little, although from a slight distance. I was certainly not the focus of the dream. The waitress and her husband were forcefully casting out many demons from the child. As the scene unfolded, I was discerning which demons were coming forth at about the same time they were.
The dream lasted only a few short moments and then I woke up, somewhat mystified by the dream. I wondered why in the world would I dream about these two people, and why would they be casting out demons in my dream? After all, they were not even Christians, were they? I did not know. After awhile I went back to sleep.
Unlike the dream about the gender of the baby, I shrugged off the dream instantly and did not give it a second thought. I honestly did not think it was from God, nor did I have any real feeling it was. I had no relationship with these people except that I worked with them. Also, the dream was about casting out demons, which was not my favorite subject at all. You see, I was suspicious of such dreams, and was instantly inclined to think a dream of this nature was not of God. Instead, I thought my dream might reflect the emotional baggage of my occult past (After all, I was a child during some very bad experiences, and a main character in the dream was a child).
Neither the dream about the baby’s gender, nor this dream, made any sense to me at all. However, that was just an excuse for me to discount them. The main reason I refused to contemplate the validity of these dreams, was because I preferred to avoid any reminder of the occult at all. The dream about the baby was a “predictive” dream. No thanks. The dream about my co-workers was about demons. No thanks again! Furthermore, if I were to walk up to my co-workers and tell them this dream, with them not even being Christians? Well that would be pretty kooky, wouldn’t it? I believe it was a defense mechanism on my part to quickly shove the thought of the dream aside.
Yet God had a higher purpose. The very next day after this dream, I met both co-workers right after the service of my church. It was a very large ”mega”-church and no “membership list”, so it was perfectly possible that all along we went to the same church without knowing it. Stunned, I blurted out this dream to them. Neither of them even looked surprised. They said thanks, because God had “just called them into a deliverance ministry for children.” While I was standing there, nearly speechless, they excitedly ran off – my dream was obviously a mere postscript to what they already knew.
These two dreams are perfect examples of what can be both unexpected and discounted. Both dreams may have been just as much for me as they were for the other person, for I was the one who lacked faith, and not them. God used these dreams to begin breaking through my ‘paradigms’ of what dreams could be and how God could use them. No longer was I in the occult, and He wanted to make sure I knew that, even if others at the time were easily frightened by my past if they knew what it was.
