Sallie Dawkins

This has been an amazing year with the Lord. It has been roughly six months since I published "When Faith Is Shaken: Discovering Wholeness in the Midst of Chronic Illness." The book tells part of the story of what God has been doing in my life through years of chronic illness, pain, trauma, questions, and shaken faith. But publication certainly did not mark the end of the story. God continues to heal, teach, reveal, and restore.

One of the unexpected ways He has done that this year is through dreams. Dreaming is not my primary way of encountering God, but this year He has given me a number of dreams that have brought healing to my soul. I shared several of them in "When Faith Is Shaken." Since then, the dreams have continued, and so has the healing.

Recently, at the Lord’s leading, I shared several of these God-encounters with a group. I did not simply want to tell people about my dreams. As I shared what God had shown me, I invited those listening to ask Him what He might want to say to them for their own healing.

Then something interesting happened. Someone who had been in the group contacted me after continuing to reflect on what I had shared. She felt that I had soul wounds that still needed healing. She was correct!

I could have heard those words as criticism: After everything God has already done, there is still something wrong with me. Instead, I am learning to hear them very differently. There is a significant difference between believing something is wrong with me and recognizing that God is still healing something within me.

God is not standing at a distance, waiting for us to mess up. He is not watching with eagle eyes, hoping to catch us sinning or failing. God is our good Father. In Christ, we are His beloved children. Jesus came to save the world, not condemn it.

Healing is part of that beautiful gift of salvation. The Greek word sōzō, often translated “save,” carries a richness that we sometimes miss. It includes being saved, rescued from danger or destruction, made well, healed, and restored. Salvation is much bigger than waiting to go to heaven someday. Christ has made provision for wholeness, and I am continuing to discover just how much that means.

Sometimes He reveals places in my soul where the effects of something painful have remained long after the event itself has passed. That does not have to become an accusation. With God, it becomes an invitation.

One recent dream involved a large bell. Intuitively, I knew it was the Liberty Bell. When the bell rang, something oppressive that had been attached to me could no longer remain. It left with a scream. When I later asked God what kind of spirit had left, I understood Him to say it was a spirit of disgust.

I began considering what disgust can involve: rejection, revulsion, or aversion toward something perceived as offensive, distasteful, unpleasant, or contaminating. We experience ordinary disgust just walking through this world and accidentally stepping in something! But suddenly, the dream gave me language for something deeper that God wanted to address—not so I could become preoccupied with what was wrong, but so I could experience greater freedom.

“Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” —2 Corinthians 3:17 (WEB)

When I shared the Liberty Bell encounter with the group, I invited each person to imagine walking with Jesus and hearing that great bell of freedom ring. I encouraged them to ask Him what the bell meant for them. Was there something from which He wanted them to experience freedom? What might become possible if rejection, fear, shame, aversion, or something else He revealed no longer controlled their choices? The point was not to make my encounter theirs. The point was to invite them into their own encounter with Jesus.

Another recent dream carried a different message. In that dream, I was leaving a large downtown venue with a crowd. Two limousines were waiting at the curb, and everyone began climbing inside. Naturally, I assumed I was supposed to go too.

But the limousines filled up. The driver asked everyone to scoot over, and people begrudgingly made a little room. I tried to squeeze myself in. I adjusted. I tried harder. I simply did not fit.

At first, the experience felt like rejection. Everyone else was going somewhere together, and I was the one left standing on the sidewalk. But when I stepped away from the situation, something unexpected happened. I felt relief.

As I reflected on that dream with God, another possibility emerged: What if being left behind was not rejection at all? What if it was redirection? How often do we try to squeeze ourselves into places simply because everyone else seems to be going there? We can do it because of culture, family expectations, peer pressure, religious expectations, or simply because we have always done it this way.

But fitting in and belonging are not the same thing.

When I shared this encounter with the group, I invited people to imagine themselves standing on that sidewalk, but this time to notice that Jesus was there with them. Jesus was not inside the limousine. That changes everything. Perhaps the better question is not, Why didn’t I fit? but, Jesus, where are You going?

Maybe some of the places where I have felt rejected were never meant to define my value. Maybe some closed doors were not evidence that I was unwanted. Maybe I was trying so hard to squeeze myself into something that God, in His goodness, never intended for me. What if what felt like rejection was sometimes His redirection?

The dreams are different, but I see a common thread running through them. God continues to show me places where past experiences have influenced how I see myself and the world around me. He is not exposing those places to condemn me. He is revealing them because He loves me and wants me free.

Romans 8:1 tells us there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Yet we can still experience self-condemnation, guilt, shame, rejection, and the whispered lies of the enemy. We can carry wounds God desires to heal. Forgiveness is an act of free will. God does not force us to forgive; He invites us. Likewise, He does not force us to receive healing. Again and again, He creates opportunities for us to encounter His truth and experience greater liberty.

Those God-encounters can happen through Scripture, prayer, nature, a photograph, a dream, a vision, journaling, or a conversation with another person. The method is not the point. Jesus is.

I remain open to God’s healing touch in my life, and I actively pursue the freedom He has provided, including through prayer and deliverance. What I share in my books and with groups is not something I have mastered and now teach from a distance. It is what God is actually doing in my life.

I keep returning to Jesus’ words to Peter: “And the Lord said, ‘Simon, Simon! Indeed, Satan has asked for you, that he may sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, that your faith should not fail; and when you have returned to Me, strengthen your brethren.’” —Luke 22:31–32 (NKJV)

There is something freeing about those words, “When you have returned to Me, strengthen your brothers.” We do not have to arrive at some imaginary finish line before God can use our testimony. We can strengthen others from the places where He has strengthened us while remaining open to His continued work within us. I do not have to be finished healing before I can share what God has already done.

Genesis 50:20(WEB) reminds me of this same truth: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to save many people alive, as is happening today.” The painful things are not good simply because God can redeem them. But neither does evil get the final word. God can take what was intended to harm us and bring something from it that reaches far beyond us.

Six months after publishing "When Faith Is Shaken," I am still healing. I am still learning. God is still speaking. And sometimes He is still showing me wounds I did not realize were there. I no longer need to hear that as condemnation or evidence that something is wrong with me. I can recognize the loving invitation of a Father who wants His daughter free.

And I can hear a bell ringing. It is the sound of liberty.