I had a dream a few nights ago that shook me in “a cold bucket of water thrown over you while you’re sound asleep” kind of way. And this is the thing: I don’t dream. When I do and in such vivid actuality, I know it’s God and not the pizza. We know the Bible is clear— God speaks through dreams. God ministers through dreams. God heals through dreams. God loves dreams. God uses dreams. And this was unequivocally one of those times.
In the dream, I was at a round table with a handful of leaders and I knew this meeting was one of strategic war planning. (And yes, I know what you’re thinking, the whole King Arthur round table analogy isn’t lost on me either.) I was sitting in a chair, leaning forward when President Trump approached covering my flank. In both the natural and within the confines of the dream, this surprised me. Call me naive, but I did not expect him to be present.
After all, this wasn’t a dream about politics, right? And as an important caveat, this article is not either. It’s not even about partisanship, the president’s ideologies, your ideologies or my ideologies. This is strictly about my interpretation of how God sees the season we are living in and His strategy for navigating it in humble wisdom-infused power.
Then, while President Trump and I were having a very intentional and specific conversation the dream suddenly changed scenes to the solemn, earnest activity of a surgery theater. There was a patient lying in the middle of the small room with the hustle and bustle of machines and staff all around. The room was pregnant with the reality that this surgery was vital, intrinsically so.
As I looked up, I was standing behind the lefthand shoulder of President Trump. He was dressed completely in surgical garb, and I was acutely aware that he would be leading the surgery. However, as I looked up to find the doctor who would be assisting in the surgery, he was not there. Panicked at his absence and knowing the integral role he was to play in the success of the surgery, I asked where he was. No one knew why he wasn’t there, but there was a knowing in the room that he was not there by choice.
His absence was not circumstantial; it was a conscious choice.
I looked to President Trump, with anxiety rising in my heart, asking, “What are you going to do now? You cannot possibly do this surgery on your own. It’s too vital. Too important. Too complicated.”
I watched him as reality set in and a fresh wave of vital determination rooted in his heart. He simply responded, “I will have to do the surgery alone.”
“But you can’t!” I yelped as I looked back and forth between him, the patient and the void where the assisting doctor was meant to be. And then I looked down at President Trump’s hands holding a scalpel, preparing to begin the surgery, when I noticed that the index finger on his right hand, from the knuckle to the tip, was rotting and would prevent his ability. When I pointed this out to him, he looked down at the infected finger and without an ounce of hesitation swiftly cut off his infected appendage and continued on with the surgery.
It was at this moment that I woke up, my spirit keenly aware that President Trump’s gesture, to cut off that which was going to hinder him and hinder the surgery, was an action that the Father revered, respected and honored. I was also keenly aware that the burden my heart was feeling at that very moment would not lift until I sowed deeply and intentionally in prayer for President Trump, the “patient” and the call at hand. So I prayed, fervently.
It’s now days later and I’m still praying. And as of this morning, I still had no idea where to put this dream, where or what to file it under. And then this morning, as I shared the dream with my husband, it all boiled down to the simplest of things, 1 Timothy 2:1-3:
“Therefore I exhort first of all that you make supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings for everyone, for kings and for all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceful life in all godliness and honesty, for this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior.”
So, who is the doctor in the dream who didn’t show up?
He was and remains the boldly praying church of 1 Timothy 2 that is not doing what it’s been commanded to do. This is very important to understand, church. By not praying for our leaders, we are choosing to not show up to the great surgery at hand—a surgery that President Trump has been entrusted to steward (Rom. 13:1). And 1 Timothy 2 makes it clear that our bold “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings” are the very surgical assistance that any leader requires. To be more clear, that our leaders require. Without them, His plans cannot be a success.
1 Timothy 2 even does us the courtesy of telling us why.
Because the why is actually the whole point. The why is what most of us are missing completely. Timothy says that if we pray, if we simply do what’s commanded without bias and judgment and regardless of how we feel about our leaders then “we may lead a quiet and peaceful life in all godliness and honesty.”
Let’s meditate on that again, because it’s a strategic key—a weapon at our disposal, a weapon more often than not lying idle, a weapon with the power to usher in peace for ourselves, our families, our leaders, our world cultures and physical climates. In short, if we pray, we have access to knowing peaceful, quiet lives. If we pray, the great strategic surgeries God is performing around the world can and will be powered by able hands, remedies, solutions—all making the impossible possible.
Do you see it? Do you understand the crucial key waiting for us, hidden in plain sight?
So pray, church. Pray for our imperfect leaders, our pastors, political leaders, those on the frontlines, our country and our world, remembering that God doesn’t call the qualified—He qualifies the called. How? Could it be through the obedient, surrendered, disciplined prayers of His people?
“If My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and will heal their land” (2 Chr. 7:14). {eoa}
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