What is the place of dreams? I wish you knew how big that question is. Although I think this Saturday, we're going to begin talking a little bit about that by God's grace. I mean, when we study the Bible, we discover that one of the most consistent and major ways by which God communicated his heart to people was through the dream, right? Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah.

I'm seeing how I can say so much in a few words. I can't talk about dreams so much right now, but I will tell you about, you know, a recurring dream, right? Dreams are many things. One of the things a dream is is a spiritual insight into a particular situation that is happening.

A simple example. I go into—let's say I move into a new house, right? Physically, the house is beautiful. The house is neat. Everything is fine. Everyone is smiling. But in the dream, in that same house I just moved into, people are fighting me and beating me. Things are cutting me. That tells you that even though physically this place looks safe, it's not a very safe place. There's something dangerous about it because the dream, more than anything, is a window into the reality of the spirit, the spiritual truth about a particular thing.

A basic example: even though it was not a dream, it was a trance. It was when Peter was on the rooftop, and he had a vision of God bringing down a plate of unholy or unclean animals, and God said, "Eat this thing." That dream, that vision, was a spiritual picture of the centurion that came to visit him. In the physical, that centurion looked unclean, and by all rights and standards, Peter would have turned him away, but the dream gave him a spiritual insight as to who that man actually was.

So life, according to the Bible, is framed by the world unseen. Everything we see physically is a product of something spiritual, something intangible, something unseen. Even generally speaking, the phone I'm using to speak to you now began in a person's imagination. It began in the intangible realm of their being, and from that place, they brought it forth into physical manifestation.

Now even in the physical, you are no longer quarreling with a particular person, right? Or that battle is won, but in the spirit, you are still seeing the battle. It means that the battle is not yet won. It's worthwhile for you to contemplate; I mean, dreams can be many things; there are many ways one can look at dreams. I'm just giving you a very general and broad interpretation, right? Because everything in the physical is an effect of causes in the spirit. The physical world is a realm of effects; it's not a realm of causes, right?

Now in the dream, you can start to see causes even before they produce themselves as effects in the physical plane. There are many examples where a man and his wife are friends; they are laughing in the afternoon, but the person sleeps at night, and in the dream, they are fighting. One or two days later, that dream they had of a fight can happen the next day or the day after, meaning that in the spirit, the causes that will produce a quarrel in the physical have already started to play out, and when one sees that, one has to begin praying towards that thing and begin to act, because it's not enough to pray; we have to also act in accordance with our prayer.

So if a battle has been won physically and everything is well and dandy, but in the dream, there's still a repeated pattern of that battle remaining in the dream, it means that whatever caused that battle to happen in the first place is still in activity in the realm of the spirit, and it's worthwhile for you to begin to address it in the spirit, and if there's any way you can address it in the physical and keep it from happening, it is worthwhile for you to do that as well. So that's what a dream like that can be pointing to you, amen?

For number two, how do you focus in a place of worship without your mind wandering? Well, let me just say that it begins with you learning how to focus in the first place. If we don't practice focus in general things like eating, and we'll talk a lot about this, especially in module two, when we talk about cultivating a meditative life, where we just learn how to be meditative from eating your food, from talking with your friend, because sometimes you're talking with your friend and you zone out so casually. Whether you zone out in thought or you zone out to your mobile phone, we have this natural habit of being distracted and not being able to hold attention in a particular place. If we are used to that on a normal day, when it's time to engage God, we're going to find ourselves doing the same thing. Are you following me?

Yeah, over time we're going to talk about a lot of things about how to focus and meditate in prayer and whatnot. But it actually begins with the simple and basic practices of, well, practicing paying attention and being focused in little, little moments. You are eating your food; how about you pay attention to the food? Don't, as you're eating, you start to think about, "Hey, I didn't reply to that Instagram DM." No, you're eating food. Pay attention to the grains of rice. Enjoy what is entering your mouth. Are you eating shawarma? Pay attention to it. How does the cream taste? Is the chicken a bit too hard? Is it soft? Is it spicy? Is it tangy? Pay attention. And you see that that ability that we develop in a simple thing, like eating, watching, even watching a movie, talking with someone—that increased focusing ability—you see how it easily translates even in our time of worship. But we'll talk about a lot of other things that, you know, can be employed, right? Amen? It is well with you.