Sweet Dreams Aren't Made of This...

So this blog is going to drift away from the norm of what I usually post on here. Follow with me if you will.

Did you see Inception when it came out? I did. And let me be honest. About an hour into the movie, I was looking around to see if anyone else looked like they were on acid. I couldn't figure out if the director of the movie had taken all of his random thoughts and put them together at one time, or if I fell going into the theater and was having a seemingly minor concussion throughout. Anyway, moral of the story: I didn't get it.

But there were a few things I did take away from it and crazy enough, while I was praying tonight, that insane movie came back into my mind. And as I thought more and more about certain things, the pieces just started falling into place and making sense. Mind you, not that whole movie (I don't think God was trying to reveal that movie to me in my prayer time).

So here goes:

If you have seen the movie, you know that the characters enter into these dream-like states for various purposes. And it's insanely hard to tell the dreams from reality because everything appears to be real. I have those same problems myself. My dreams range from ridiculous to terrifying, all of which are hard to tell from reality. Back to the story. So, to help the characters determine if they are in these dreams or reality, they all carry a "totem" of sorts. Leo DiCaprio's character in particular carries a spinning top sort of totem with him (if I'm remembering correctly) and when he spins it, if it continues to spin indefinitely, he's still in the dream. Obviously if it stops, he's in reality. It helps him to check himself. Now onto my point.

I worry about our world. But in particular, I worry about those that I love. I know people of today find it ridiculous to talk about the devil, but the fact remains that if you believe in God, you must believe in the devil. And one of the devil's greatest tactics is that he lulls people to sleep spiritually. Everything seems fine because it looks just like reality, but truly, he's rocked "us" to sleep with his schemes. Once we start to bend here or compromise there, it's only a matter of time before we're dreaming away spiritually and not even realizing it because it looks so familiar. We find ourselves doing things that we used to not do because we used to have standards, but now we do it because "I'm stressed" or "everyone else does it." And yes, I use the term we because I am no saint. I have to include myself on everything because I'm not even close to being perfect. But I'm saying all this to say that it is time for us to check and make sure that we aren't caught in a dream. Has the devil lulled us to sleep ever so slowly with compromise after compromise? The Bible says for use to "work out our own salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12)," so we have to do a check to make sure we're awake. The Holy Spirit helps us daily to stay awake if we'll just pay attention and listen to Him. If Leo didn't use his totem, he'd never know what was dream vs. reality. I don't want to face God and hear Him say that I slept my way through life here spiritually.

I know it's heavy, but it's only because I love you.