This is written as a series of Dream Interpretation Helps concerning dreams from God. I will cover the things that I feel are mandatory for correct dream interpretation and application of the truths revealed in the dream. All scripture references are NASB, unless otherwise noted. Emphases are mine. © 2013, 2022 Elizabeth Elam. All rights reserved.
BIBLICAL DEFINITION OF THE GOSPEL – THE LORD IS WORKING TO RESTORE IT
As I stated before, because of repeated dreams about shoes, I wish to honor the Lord by studying the subject He is so concerned about: The Gospel. Remember that the ‘shoes’ are part of the armor of God as described in Ephesians 6. “…and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace.” Eph 6:15.
All Christians would probably agree on the following gospel truths that portray the Lord’s glorious gospel: God in Heaven saw our slavery to sin, the oppression of the devil on our lives and our deserved destination: eternal death. Out of His great compassion, mercy and love, this Triune God (three Persons in One) broke out of His Heavenly glory with a most amazing response. He greatly humbled Himself and came to earth in the form of the man, Jesus, in order to lead a sinless life, teach us how to live, show us the Father by doing numerous healings and deliverances and many miracles out of His great compassion, and then take on Himself the penalty for our sin, since only an innocent one would have the power to transfer the penalty of our sins to Himself and then die in our place. This incredible act of love did historically take place through this One, Jesus of Nazareth, who was both God and man, born of a virgin through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus Christ died on a cross for our sins and took the beatings for our healing, effectually paying even for our ability to be forgiven of past, present and future confessed wrongs, legally paying the price for setting us free from all the oppression of the enemy in the form of disease, mental illness, generational iniquity and demonic strongholds. His death in our place also paid for our entrance to Heaven which is filled with God in all His radiant glory being constantly reflecting from angels around God’s light-filled throne and off joyous faces of redeemed people from all tribes and nations on earth. As the most famous verse in all Scripture wondrously states, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life”. (John 3:16). Three days after His torturous, undeserved death, Jesus Christ rose again in bodily form as seen by many witnesses.
He was the first fruits of the resurrection from the dead, having made a way for all who believe in Him to live eternally with Him. He now sits at the right hand of God the Father, making intercession for us. And He has sent His Holy Spirit to live inside us as an earnest of our inheritance for us who believe, supplying grace and power to live a life of righteousness, a life pleasing to Him.
Now, this gospel is too amazing and extraordinary to ignore or turn from. Here is where agreement among Christians begins to come apart. A God who has done all this for us is worthy of all our worship. But do we unknowingly spurn this wonderful God and give our strength of worship to other less noble things? Or do we, in fear of having our dark deeds exposed, run from His unsearchable Light rather than face Truth and be forgiven and cleansed? Have we, for our own convenience, limited our relationship with the Lord of the Universe, who formed us, to a single (admittedly beautiful) sentence, confessing Him as Lord and Savior and Forgiver of our sins who died and rose again? And then, have we dated this one sentence and stored it away in the filing cabinet of our mind as our eternal life insurance policy; never to be looked at except just once in a while as we browse our other files? As you will see from upcoming Scriptures, saying words alone in our response to this glorious gospel is not all that God requires.
The essence of this gospel, this wonderful good news, is that Jesus Christ has shown Himself to be both Savior and Lord. This fact has implications for all of our lives. If we respond favorably to this truth, the divine promises of forgiveness of sins, adoption as God’s very own children for all eternity, the ability to live life as a new creation and all aspects of healing and restoration are legally ours through the Name of Jesus Christ and the authority in Heaven and Earth which that Name carries!
The part of the gospel that is missing in much of American Christianity is: THE CORRECT RESPONSE. Listen to Hebrews 2:3, “How will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?” The writer of Hebrews goes on to say in chapter 3, verse 15, “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as when they provoked Me.” He’s likening us to the children of Israel in the wilderness. A little further on we read in verse 18, “And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief.”
You could surmise that unbelief produces disobedience and that would probably be correct. But you could also say that unbelief is basically the same thing as disobedience. Unbelief starts in the heart. The disobedience is the ‘action’ that unbelief takes. The opposite is also true as I will soon give Scripture for. A believer will naturally want to be obedient. An example of this would be a driver obeying warning notices to drive slowly because he believes the warnings that the road is indeed icy. So we also obey the Word of God (Jesus being the incarnate Word) and do what it (He) says when we believe the promises and warnings contained therein.
James 2:14 confirms this point as we read, “What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith (a believer), but he has no works? Can that faith save him?” If you keep reading in this second chapter of James, verse 17 states, “Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead.” Verse 20, “But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless.”
So, according to the gospel of the Bible, it is foolishness to think we can be justified by just ‘believing’. In verse 19, it notes, “…the demons also believe, and shudder.” (They have more fear of the Lord than some of us do… another subject!) Verses 21-23 go on to say, “Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected; and the Scripture was fulfilled which says, ‘And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,’ and he was called the friend of God.”
People get confused on this issue of ‘works’ because of being taught Scriptures out of context. It is true that we’re not to do our ‘own works’. Notice that it was not Abraham’s idea to give back to God what God had first given to him - the very one he loved the most other than God Himself. And remember that God gave Isaac back to Abraham when God saw the pure worship of Abraham to withhold nothing from the Lord. This ‘work’ of ultimate worship was God’s idea.
We are to ‘work’ God’s works. I will show this by quoting a very familiar salvation scripture, but I will not stop where most people think the thought ends; I will add the very next verse which you will see was meant to be part of the whole thought. When all is read in context the picture becomes very easy to understand. Ephesians 2:4-10 reads, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” So the unique good works that we each will be told to do and empowered to do by Him are His works… after He does a work in us! But there are definitely good works for true believers to do!
It is God’s Word that we act upon. It is His Spirit, not our fleshly ‘wants’ that we follow. Read Matthew 7: 19-27. The parable of the ‘Wise and Foolish Builders’ is contained in these verses as well as the emphasis that just saying the ‘right words’ by calling Him, ‘Lord’, and even doing our own ‘righteous’ works is not what saves us. It is hearing His Words and acting on His Words; doing His will, not doing our own thing. And yes, the blood of Jesus is the only thing strong enough to wipe away our sins. We don’t wipe our own sins away by doing ‘good things’. We get clothed in His righteousness, not our own, in a moment of time when we confess Him as Lord and Savior.
But there is a sanctifying process in which we submit to the Holy Spirit’s purification and cleansing work of our heart and motives as He reveals areas in us that the Father is wanting to focus on next. Hebrews 12:14 states, “Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord.” Also in II Thessalonians 2:13, 14 we read, “…God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth. It was for this He called you through our gospel, that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” So we see in these two verses that sanctification is not ‘optional’ for salvation. In other words, we can’t confess Jesus as Lord and deliberately live a life of continual known sin. By our deeds we would be denying Him. There is Scriptural basis for this comment. Read the “Young People and Tornado” dream and interpretation listed on the website. There is a Bible study there on what it means to deny the Lord.
Mark 8:34-38 clearly outlines what our response to the gospel and to Jesus and to all of His words should be (see the red print in the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John); “If anyone wishes to come after Me (Jesus), he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”
I have limited my quote to verses 34-36. Much of denying ourselves, taking up our cross and following Jesus involves forgiveness towards those who have wronged us (Matt 18:21-35) and letting God vindicate us and not vindicating ourselves. Also, Jesus’ words and the Bible as a whole continually give the commandment to love others as well as God (read John 14:21-24), rather than loving the world and our own fleshly desires. I John 3, 4, 5 even goes so far as to say that we don’t really love God if we don’t love our brothers and sisters in Christ. Indeed, our eternal life with the Lord hinges on this foremost and weightiest of matters.
Jesus sums up the two commandments out of which flow all others (Matt 22:37-40), “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.’” These are some of the hardest ‘good works’ (commandments) that the Lord asks us to walk in. Most of His ‘good works’ do not involve being busy, but rather giving our heart to Him continually. The ‘good works’ flow out of a heart He has changed!
I will close this little study of the Gospel with perhaps the most well known salvation verse of all and show the verse that it is quoting from the Old Testament (the Gospel is foreshadowed many times in the Old Testament) and what happens when you add the two Scriptures together so that they are both quoted in full context so no meaning is lost. Before I do, please notice that more than just saying words or ‘believing’ (as the word is commonly understood) is required. When you do a Biblical study of it, you find that believing God and doing His will are inseparable concepts. They are one and the same.
So we must become listeners and seekers of the Lord so that we may hear His still, small voice in our heart and do what He says. Now, the Scripture; Rom 10:6-10, “But the righteousness based on faith speaks as follows: ‘Do not say in your heart, who will ascend into Heaven?’ (that is, to bring Christ down), or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).’ But what does it say? ‘The Word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart’- that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.”
The apostle Paul is showing that faith in Jesus Christ (who is the incarnate Word of God) will fulfill (make possible) the Scripture he is quoting from the Old Testament, Deut 30:11-14: “For this commandment which I command you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it out of reach. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?’ Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross the sea to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?’ But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, THAT YOU MAY OBSERVE IT.”
Think about it; Jesus Christ did come down from Heaven to bring us the Word. He WAS the WORD. He lived out the Word! And He did die on a cross and descend into the abyss to defeat the enemy and get the keys to death and hell, thus opening up eternal life, Heaven's salvation, to us and then... rose from the dead! So, it is because of Christ Jesus that when we confess that we belong to Him and have faith in Him to live His life in us through His indwelling Holy Spirit, that we become empowered to observe (DO) His commands. He did bring the WORD to live inside us (Jesus living in our heart/ life). The WORD is indeed near, so very near! He wishes to live in each of us, this God of the universe! Praise God! What a wonderful gospel!
Colossians 1:27 encapsulates this beautiful truth, saying, “…Christ IN you, the hope of glory”!!!
BIBLICAL DEFINITION OF THE GOSPEL – THE LORD IS WORKING TO RESTORE IT
As I stated before, because of repeated dreams about shoes, I wish to honor the Lord by studying the subject He is so concerned about: The Gospel. Remember that the ‘shoes’ are part of the armor of God as described in Ephesians 6. “…and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace.” Eph 6:15.
All Christians would probably agree on the following gospel truths that portray the Lord’s glorious gospel: God in Heaven saw our slavery to sin, the oppression of the devil on our lives and our deserved destination: eternal death. Out of His great compassion, mercy and love, this Triune God (three Persons in One) broke out of His Heavenly glory with a most amazing response. He greatly humbled Himself and came to earth in the form of the man, Jesus, in order to lead a sinless life, teach us how to live, show us the Father by doing numerous healings and deliverances and many miracles out of His great compassion, and then take on Himself the penalty for our sin, since only an innocent one would have the power to transfer the penalty of our sins to Himself and then die in our place. This incredible act of love did historically take place through this One, Jesus of Nazareth, who was both God and man, born of a virgin through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus Christ died on a cross for our sins and took the beatings for our healing, effectually paying even for our ability to be forgiven of past, present and future confessed wrongs, legally paying the price for setting us free from all the oppression of the enemy in the form of disease, mental illness, generational iniquity and demonic strongholds. His death in our place also paid for our entrance to Heaven which is filled with God in all His radiant glory being constantly reflecting from angels around God’s light-filled throne and off joyous faces of redeemed people from all tribes and nations on earth. As the most famous verse in all Scripture wondrously states, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life”. (John 3:16). Three days after His torturous, undeserved death, Jesus Christ rose again in bodily form as seen by many witnesses.
He was the first fruits of the resurrection from the dead, having made a way for all who believe in Him to live eternally with Him. He now sits at the right hand of God the Father, making intercession for us. And He has sent His Holy Spirit to live inside us as an earnest of our inheritance for us who believe, supplying grace and power to live a life of righteousness, a life pleasing to Him.
Now, this gospel is too amazing and extraordinary to ignore or turn from. Here is where agreement among Christians begins to come apart. A God who has done all this for us is worthy of all our worship. But do we unknowingly spurn this wonderful God and give our strength of worship to other less noble things? Or do we, in fear of having our dark deeds exposed, run from His unsearchable Light rather than face Truth and be forgiven and cleansed? Have we, for our own convenience, limited our relationship with the Lord of the Universe, who formed us, to a single (admittedly beautiful) sentence, confessing Him as Lord and Savior and Forgiver of our sins who died and rose again? And then, have we dated this one sentence and stored it away in the filing cabinet of our mind as our eternal life insurance policy; never to be looked at except just once in a while as we browse our other files? As you will see from upcoming Scriptures, saying words alone in our response to this glorious gospel is not all that God requires.
The essence of this gospel, this wonderful good news, is that Jesus Christ has shown Himself to be both Savior and Lord. This fact has implications for all of our lives. If we respond favorably to this truth, the divine promises of forgiveness of sins, adoption as God’s very own children for all eternity, the ability to live life as a new creation and all aspects of healing and restoration are legally ours through the Name of Jesus Christ and the authority in Heaven and Earth which that Name carries!
The part of the gospel that is missing in much of American Christianity is: THE CORRECT RESPONSE. Listen to Hebrews 2:3, “How will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?” The writer of Hebrews goes on to say in chapter 3, verse 15, “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as when they provoked Me.” He’s likening us to the children of Israel in the wilderness. A little further on we read in verse 18, “And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief.”
You could surmise that unbelief produces disobedience and that would probably be correct. But you could also say that unbelief is basically the same thing as disobedience. Unbelief starts in the heart. The disobedience is the ‘action’ that unbelief takes. The opposite is also true as I will soon give Scripture for. A believer will naturally want to be obedient. An example of this would be a driver obeying warning notices to drive slowly because he believes the warnings that the road is indeed icy. So we also obey the Word of God (Jesus being the incarnate Word) and do what it (He) says when we believe the promises and warnings contained therein.
James 2:14 confirms this point as we read, “What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith (a believer), but he has no works? Can that faith save him?” If you keep reading in this second chapter of James, verse 17 states, “Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead.” Verse 20, “But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless.”
So, according to the gospel of the Bible, it is foolishness to think we can be justified by just ‘believing’. In verse 19, it notes, “…the demons also believe, and shudder.” (They have more fear of the Lord than some of us do… another subject!) Verses 21-23 go on to say, “Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected; and the Scripture was fulfilled which says, ‘And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,’ and he was called the friend of God.”
People get confused on this issue of ‘works’ because of being taught Scriptures out of context. It is true that we’re not to do our ‘own works’. Notice that it was not Abraham’s idea to give back to God what God had first given to him - the very one he loved the most other than God Himself. And remember that God gave Isaac back to Abraham when God saw the pure worship of Abraham to withhold nothing from the Lord. This ‘work’ of ultimate worship was God’s idea.
We are to ‘work’ God’s works. I will show this by quoting a very familiar salvation scripture, but I will not stop where most people think the thought ends; I will add the very next verse which you will see was meant to be part of the whole thought. When all is read in context the picture becomes very easy to understand. Ephesians 2:4-10 reads, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” So the unique good works that we each will be told to do and empowered to do by Him are His works… after He does a work in us! But there are definitely good works for true believers to do!
It is God’s Word that we act upon. It is His Spirit, not our fleshly ‘wants’ that we follow. Read Matthew 7: 19-27. The parable of the ‘Wise and Foolish Builders’ is contained in these verses as well as the emphasis that just saying the ‘right words’ by calling Him, ‘Lord’, and even doing our own ‘righteous’ works is not what saves us. It is hearing His Words and acting on His Words; doing His will, not doing our own thing. And yes, the blood of Jesus is the only thing strong enough to wipe away our sins. We don’t wipe our own sins away by doing ‘good things’. We get clothed in His righteousness, not our own, in a moment of time when we confess Him as Lord and Savior.
But there is a sanctifying process in which we submit to the Holy Spirit’s purification and cleansing work of our heart and motives as He reveals areas in us that the Father is wanting to focus on next. Hebrews 12:14 states, “Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord.” Also in II Thessalonians 2:13, 14 we read, “…God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth. It was for this He called you through our gospel, that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” So we see in these two verses that sanctification is not ‘optional’ for salvation. In other words, we can’t confess Jesus as Lord and deliberately live a life of continual known sin. By our deeds we would be denying Him. There is Scriptural basis for this comment. Read the “Young People and Tornado” dream and interpretation listed on the website. There is a Bible study there on what it means to deny the Lord.
Mark 8:34-38 clearly outlines what our response to the gospel and to Jesus and to all of His words should be (see the red print in the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John); “If anyone wishes to come after Me (Jesus), he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”
I have limited my quote to verses 34-36. Much of denying ourselves, taking up our cross and following Jesus involves forgiveness towards those who have wronged us (Matt 18:21-35) and letting God vindicate us and not vindicating ourselves. Also, Jesus’ words and the Bible as a whole continually give the commandment to love others as well as God (read John 14:21-24), rather than loving the world and our own fleshly desires. I John 3, 4, 5 even goes so far as to say that we don’t really love God if we don’t love our brothers and sisters in Christ. Indeed, our eternal life with the Lord hinges on this foremost and weightiest of matters.
Jesus sums up the two commandments out of which flow all others (Matt 22:37-40), “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.’” These are some of the hardest ‘good works’ (commandments) that the Lord asks us to walk in. Most of His ‘good works’ do not involve being busy, but rather giving our heart to Him continually. The ‘good works’ flow out of a heart He has changed!
I will close this little study of the Gospel with perhaps the most well known salvation verse of all and show the verse that it is quoting from the Old Testament (the Gospel is foreshadowed many times in the Old Testament) and what happens when you add the two Scriptures together so that they are both quoted in full context so no meaning is lost. Before I do, please notice that more than just saying words or ‘believing’ (as the word is commonly understood) is required. When you do a Biblical study of it, you find that believing God and doing His will are inseparable concepts. They are one and the same.
So we must become listeners and seekers of the Lord so that we may hear His still, small voice in our heart and do what He says. Now, the Scripture; Rom 10:6-10, “But the righteousness based on faith speaks as follows: ‘Do not say in your heart, who will ascend into Heaven?’ (that is, to bring Christ down), or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).’ But what does it say? ‘The Word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart’- that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.”
The apostle Paul is showing that faith in Jesus Christ (who is the incarnate Word of God) will fulfill (make possible) the Scripture he is quoting from the Old Testament, Deut 30:11-14: “For this commandment which I command you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it out of reach. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?’ Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross the sea to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?’ But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, THAT YOU MAY OBSERVE IT.”
Think about it; Jesus Christ did come down from Heaven to bring us the Word. He WAS the WORD. He lived out the Word! And He did die on a cross and descend into the abyss to defeat the enemy and get the keys to death and hell, thus opening up eternal life, Heaven's salvation, to us and then... rose from the dead! So, it is because of Christ Jesus that when we confess that we belong to Him and have faith in Him to live His life in us through His indwelling Holy Spirit, that we become empowered to observe (DO) His commands. He did bring the WORD to live inside us (Jesus living in our heart/ life). The WORD is indeed near, so very near! He wishes to live in each of us, this God of the universe! Praise God! What a wonderful gospel!
Colossians 1:27 encapsulates this beautiful truth, saying, “…Christ IN you, the hope of glory”!!!
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