Last night I had a really strange dream. I was at some kind of largish Christian type event. It was no specific one I have ever been to, but did have parts of different ones I have been to. There were people there from different parts of my life who have never been in the same place a the same time. That is not so unusual for dream world I guess, but I can remember thinking in the dream that it was weird that these people were all in one place, but put it down to being at a largish Christian type event and the Christian world being small meaning that sometimes you see people where you would not expect, or find out that that someone you know knows someone else that you know but you never knew they knew each other.
One of the people in the dream was Hayley. I had gone on a long walk as all the food we were being served was either very expensive or had cheese and/or chocolate in. For some reason this meant I should go on a long walk. I then met Hayley, who was staying with some of her uni friends in some caravans (the nice kind) near a railway station (it was unclear whether it was disused or not).
They were staying in the caravans as it was the cheapest way to go to the largish Christian type event. Anyway, it turned out that they had been robbed because they had left a little window open. Two of Hayely’s friends had had everything stolen (undies and all). Hayley wasn’t too worried because she had only had a couple of things taken, and they were things she didn’t really like anyway. Right so none of this is the interesting part, I shall start a new paragraph and get onto it now.
Right we were at the largish worship gathering, there were lots of CYM (of the Ipswich variety) staff and hangers on there. We reached the ‘ministry’ part of the worship gathering. There were lots of people praying for other people. These parts of a worship gathering always make me feel uncomfortable and God has to poke me a lot if he wants me to pray for someone or be prayed for. We were being told to get into two’s and pray for each other. The people around me had all paired up and there was no-one left for me to pair up with in the immediate vicinity. Because of this and my general uncomfortableness at these parts of worship gatherings I sat down, with my knees up and my forehead resting on my knees so that I could peek out and see what was happening.
There were lots of people praying for each other and that was great for them. There was someone else sitting down next to me, and someone else sitting down next to her. I don’t know of they were praying for each other or not. From my peeking out position I could see Dave Pepper was going round praying for people. I thought that this was not a right thing to do because we had been asked by the important man at the front to pray in pairs and he was not doing this, and also he was not on the ‘ministry team’ and so had no right to go round praying for people. I thought to myself, ‘he better not come and pray for me coz he’s not following the instructions right and he’s not meant to be doing that!’
Anyway he prayed for the person sitting next to the person sitting next to me. She stood up as he prayed. He prayed for the person sat next to me, she stood up as he prayed. As the woman sat next to me stood up while Dave Pepper prayed for her I found myself standing up as well. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t stop myself from doing so. As soon as I stood up Dave came and prayed for me, putting his hand on the top of my head. I kept feeling like I was going to fall over, and thought I must have stood up too quickly and that had made me dizzy. Then I fell right over in one big collapse. I realised I had been ‘slain in the Spirit*’. Now this has never happened to me in real life, so for it happen in a dream was incredibly strange. I was shaking, was tingly, was warm in a glowing kind of way, and it felt like there was a huge sheet wafting over me, and like someone was giving me an all embracing hug. Dave stayed with me and kept praying for me until the experience had ended.
* this is not a phrase I am particularly comfortable using, I think it is because it makes it sound like a bad thing, slaying happens with dragons and knights and all that, but I looked it up on wikipedia and it told me this –‘when a person enters a state with loss of all motor control over their body and falls to the floor during an event perceived as a personal encounter with God's glory and power, usually associated with occasions of public prayer ministry when the laying on of hands is practiced.’ This description I feel comfortable with.
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