Editor’s note – Daryl Wilson’s testimony opens with an unusual claim: Jesus meeting him in a dream and asking a simple, piercing question – where are you going? We’re running his account because it traces a path many readers know: little exposure to Christ, scandal mistaken for proof against faith, and a crisis that finally cracked the door open to grace.
A Question in the Dream
I have written about the dreams elsewhere. Suffice it to say that in the second dream Jesus said to me: “Where are you going?”
I knew it was Jesus because of His clear and bright eyes that saw me through and through. And also because earlier in the dream this person had stepped off His surfboard and stood on the water, to get a better look at the sunrise.
Where was I going? He asked, despite the fact that He knew already where I was going. He knew my past and my future in the same way that He knew the whole life of the Samaritan woman at the well. I once heard Jesus described as “completely spiritualized” (and also fully physical); and so He lived with the Spirit, within the spiritual realm, where all things come from: the foundation of our being.
He knew that I was going to Hell and, in fact, knew I was already in Hell in terms of my pain, confusion, and inner conflict. And of course, as Jesus does: He was suggesting the way out.
Born Into a World Without Christ
Not hard to figure out how I got on the pathway to nowhere. I was born into a world without Christ, culturally, in the 1970’s and in a family without any means of accessing Christ. Religion, and especially anything that put forth Jesus as the way and the truth, was something to be mocked and ridiculed. On a deeper level, it was to be feared. Faith in something I could not see? Ridiculous. Coercive. For confirmation of its absurdity, all I needed to do was to look at the many vast scandals perpetrated by religious leaders then as now: financial, sexual, etc.
I was in the world and of the world. I saw with the eyes of the world. But some part of me, even as a child, told me there was something more.
Editor’s note – Wilson’s frustration with religious scandal is worth taking seriously. Scripture never asks us to trust fallen religious leaders; it asks us to trust Christ Himself, who never fails even when His people do.
The Breaking Point
Fast forward forty years and I had reached the crisis of faith: the crumbling of the things of the life I had built, the “soul sickness” of a spiritual being suffocating under the weight of the Devil’s world.
Then the breaking through of the light, just barely, the calling from a place within and without.
And then the dreams.
There was the turning toward Jesus and His teachings, the Leap of Faith, and then more and more understanding.
So what was He suggesting, to save my soul from the fire?
In the World, Not of It
Jesus’ example is that of a being who is completely spiritualized. A being who is in the world- very much present in the world: walking on the edge of the lake, dipped into the water of the river, dying nailed to the cross- but very much not of the world. His soul and mind and being- like ours- has come from God. Jesus remained with Him.
He was in the world but not of the world, as the church saying goes. I needed to do the same: to lift myself out of the world and into the world of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is clear about this… we need to draw close to God as our Father.
Unless you become like little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. [Matthew 18:3]
Killing the Old Self
So I was advised to give up my conceptions of who I was and what I had, give up my self and reenter pure potential, like a child.
Why? So that I could knock on the door of Heaven and be standing there just myself, just my soul. With only this, I might fit through the “narrow door”.
Behind that door is The Spirit. The Spirit lives only in the moment, present in the moment of God’s plan. Only the Spirit, alive in the moment, will reveal God’s plan to you, direct your eyes and ears to what He would have you see.
The baggage to be left behind was heavy: pride, envy, all the things of the world.
But the way was clear: kill off the things that were suffocating me. To throw off the world was to throw off the soul sickness and allow me to breathe, to be and to heal. I needed to close with the enemy and destroy him. And the enemy was me.
A Word from the Editor
Wilson’s story mirrors Romans 6: the old self put to death so a new life can begin. Whatever your past, Christ meets you in it and calls you, as He called Wilson, out of darkness into His light.
Salvation – Eternal Life in Less Than 150 Words
Distributed by – BCWorldview.org
Editor Comment: Your unflinching account of being confronted by Jesus in a dream reminds us that God pursues even those who have spent a lifetime running from Him, and does so in unique ways.