Big Room Dream

17 May 2008

by Joie Pirkey

Over the course of the past five years I have had a series of similar dreams that I sought and sought an interpretation for but could get absolutely nothing.  Last night I had another series of short dreams and an experience where a presence, who I thought was the Lord, was beside my bed speaking out loud.  In these short dreams the Lord revealed to me what the previous dreams meant and what He wanted me to share prophetically with the Body of Christ.  This is fantastic, so please bear with me as I retell the previous dreams first because they add to the depth of the revelation.

The first dream, in 2003, was very short.  I was walking into one of the most beautiful rooms I had ever seen.  The room was very large.  It had beautifully polished wooden floors.  Large wooden trim was around every window.  The windows were like the Craftsman piano type windows from the 1940’s.  They were small four foot squares, well trimmed and up high, touching the ceiling.  These windows lined the entire length of the far wall.  This room was large enough to hold a full sized basketball court.  The ceilings were very high, like you would see in a parochial gymnasium.  From the ceiling to the floor lining every wall were big beautiful wood bookshelves.  Every shelf was full of books.  There was a large desk at the front of the room made out of Cherry wood.  The lighting was soft and there were many very nice pieces of plush furniture set about in groups around this large room.  The floor had a noticeable swoop in it also.  Like a large, intended dip.  I saw the room, felt some kind of ownership and woke up.

The next time this room showed up in my dreams it was part of my sister in law, Susan’s house.  The door was arched now and the walls were plastered with stucco and everything was painted salmon pink.  She was offering a plethora of heath products, teas, herbs, and vitamins, at the front door.  When I looked inside I knew it was the room that I had seen before because of the size and the high windows but everything else looked different.  It was like a spa getaway and was redone with very expensive, artistic materials and design.  I remember that out in front of the building that the room was in, the lawn was large and well groomed.  It looked like a very nice park.

Six months or so later I dreamed of the room again.  This time my friend Keevie Bremhorst was the host and the room was in her basement.  When I entered it the lighting was all very different.  She had hung these really cool silver tubes from the ceiling that came down about four feet from the floor and had a little silver cup at the end.  Inside these tiny cups were lights.  She had beautiful tables under each one of these lights and she was serving excellent food on artsy fun dishes.  She had large glasses to drink from with lots of ice and different kinds of fruit hanging from the brims.  Many people were there eating and talking.  I tried to connect with Keevie to see if she knew what the dream meant but we kept missing each other and I had the most frustrating time trying to figure out what this room was and what these dreams meant.  But nothing came.

Another few months passed and here comes another room dream.  This time the room is “owned” by three young men.  They have completely overhauled it.  They made the floor into a basketball court and made the lighting like you see in a gym.  When I walked in I was so shocked that I was again in this room. One of the guys said, “Wait until you see this!”  He switched a lever that was behind where the original desk would have been and almost the entire floor began to retract into itself and pull up towards us revealing a full length swimming pool underneath it.  Then he sent the floor back into place and walked me all the way to the other side of this large room.  There was a section that was lined with four wheelers, dune buggies with huge wheels, snowmobiles and all the gear needed to ride them.  I was amazed.  The thought crossed my mind as it had in the previous dreams that this must have cost a fortune.

Months later, in the next dream, I enter an old shabby house that was actually falling apart.  This house was owned by my best friend Julie Van Handle’s father.  We walk through it and enter a room at the back.   This time the people in charge had knocked out the entire far wall that previously had the high windows.   They made full length windows from ceiling to floor.  There was a large glass door and an enormous deck outside that was nestled on the side of a beautiful lake.  Inside the lighting had been changed again.  This time they had lamps that had an orangie colored lamp shade that was shaped in the same large curve that the bar and the extended sofa were designed with.  The sofa was made of orange leather.  I could tell that this was the most expensive of the “make overs” and as this thought passed through my mind a woman who was drying a glass behind the bar said, “They don’t come here often but we always keep it ready for them.  We even refresh the ice everyday.”

“Who comes here?” I asked.  She simply answered, “The very wealthy”.

After this previous dream nearly a year passed.  I had not thought about this “big room dream series” for quite some time.  Then on May 17th, 2008, late in the night I had a dream about the room again.  This time 29 people were with me.  We were all dressed in drably colored clothes.  When we entered the room I said, “Oh yeah I know this room.  It’s supposed to look like a library.”  Everyone with me came inside and we were still standing together.  The room was in shambles.  Every previous owner had pulled out leaving little remnants behind.  There were blow up chairs from the snowmobile manufacturer.  There were old Christmas decorations, trash, pieces of plaster from the hole in the wall.  As I scanned the entire length of the room it dawned on me that this small crew of what seemed to be cleaners could never get all of this work done and that I would never be able to raise the money to pay for it.

At that moment the dream ended.  A presence was beside my bed.  All I could see was brighter light in an arc that reached down to the floor.  From it came a voice who I assumed was the Lord.

“I don’t want it this way”, is all He said.

I asked a number of questions about exactly what He was referring to, the shape of the room, the weariness I felt, the idea to change it again.  I couldn’t figure out what He was referring to.  Just then I was back in the dream.  As I found myself in the middle of the large room again I wondered if I was actually awake when I heard the voice in my bedroom.

This time a woman I know from my church, Jennifer, walked into the door way.  She was carrying a blue rubber bucket and a scrub brush.  She looked at me smiling.

“What are you doing” I asked?

“Well if we don’t get started we’ll never finish.”  She said with excitement in her voice as if she relished the project.  She hurried off to the first corner and bent down on her knees and began to scrub.  The thought crossed my mind that she would never get it done this way.

When I looked at the front of the room just then I could see the cherry desk sort of appear.  It had on it a very important book with “deep wisdom for living”, laid open.  Books and book shelves began to appear behind it.

“Can you see the desk?”  I yelled out to everyone.  They looked in the direction that I was looking in but no one said anything.  “Can you see the books?”  I asked.  But there was no response.

Then walking up beside me was my Great Aunt Joyce Wittmann.  She was dressed to clean like the rest of us and she too was smiling.

“Joie,” she said, “Who owned this land in the beginning?” she seemed very light and happy.

I don’t know why I answered this way but I said, “Grandma Wittmann.”

“Then who owned it?” she asked.

“Julie Van Handle’s Father”

“And now who owns it?” she asked.

“Well, you do Aunt Joyce.”  I answered.

“Yes.” She said.  “And how do you ever intend to pay for all of this?”  When she said this she slowly and happily walked away.  I thought about how much it would cost to purchase the land that this room was on, then how much it would cost to get it back into good shape, and then the seemingly astronomical expense of refurnishing it.  I lay down on the scruffy wooden floor and squeezed my eyes shut real tight.  I was overwhelmed.  I was weary.  I was unable to stand up under what I assumed the Lord was asking me to do.

I woke up and was back in my bedroom.  The Lord was there again.  “I don’t want it to be this way Joie.”   He said. 

“I don’t understand.”  Was all I said through my weariness.

He began to communicate with me but He was not speaking out loud.  It was if the ideas were coming into my understanding in another voice but inside of my head.

What He was referring to when He said that, “He didn’t want it to be this way” was how the gifts in the Body of Christ were being used.  He began to show me that when I see something from the Lord it doesn’t mean that I am then responsible to make it happen, to pay for it, to carry it out, to create what I have seen.  It is simply my responsibility to tell the church and to obey what I am specifically asked to do.  Then it is the members of the Body of Christ’s responsibility to take up their gift and use them to accomplish what they discern are for them to do.

He also showed me why the second room looked like a spa.  It looked that way because when the Lord gives someone the gift of knowing what the soul and body needs for health, the gift is a beautiful gift.  When he says ‘beautiful gift’ He means one that the Body loves to look at.  He said that when the person with this beautiful gift lifts up the gift that they possess, people around them use their gifts in such a way that also lifts up that gift; many times even forsaking their own gifts.  As this process continues the church begins to actually look like the gift being lifted up, in the first case, a spa.

He said that when a person is given the beautiful gift of hospitality and serving the church and that person lifts up their own gift those around them begin to use their gifts in such a way that causes the church to look like a Bistro. 

He said that when he gives the gift of zeal, of adventure, of competition, and those with that beautiful gift lift up that gift the church begins to look like a gymnasium.  It’s not the fullness of what the church can be, of what the Lord wants the church to be.  I could tell at this point that there was nothing wrong with acting out on the beautiful gifts but the error came when the one with the gift lifted up the gift themselves.

When I give the ability to make money and those with that gift lift up the gift, the church begins to look like a lounge, like a country club; but when the one with the beautiful gift, lifts up the one with the “uncomely gift”, the gift that others are not drawn to look at, the church begins to function in the fullness that God intended it to.  When someone is given the gift of prophesy and that same person lifts up that beautiful gift, the church begins to look like a side show, He said. 

When you are given a beautiful gift, one that the Body loves to look at, it is your responsibility to lift up the gift that no one wants to look at, the uncomely gift.  When we function in our beautiful gift people are looking.  It’s while they are looking that we are to lift up the gift that no one is noticing, nor desires.  The image of Jennifer setting out to clean the big room with her blue bucket and scrub brush came to mind.  When you lift up the uncomely gift others begin to consider their own gifts and then desire to function in them instead of desiring to have their gifts look like the beautiful gifts.  When the Body begins to function in their own personal gifts the church begins to experience the fullness that the Lord intended, and the church begins to look like what He intends it to look like.