Stop, look, and listen is good advice we all teach our children about crossing streets and roads, but it is also important advice about spiritual things.

The Bible is filled with examples of things not being what they first appear to be. We need to learn to Stop (thinking, calculating, concluding), to Look (with our spiritual eyes into the spiritual realm at the same time that we are looking at the natural realm) and Listen (for the Holy Spirit) if we want to know what is really going on.

It takes great training not to rely on our natural sight. In 2 Kings 6 we have a story of Elisha’s servant, who is terrified at the enemy that he is seeing (with his natural eyes) all around him. But then, Elisha prayed for him (2 Kings 6:17):

“Then Elisha prayed, “O LORD, open his eyes and let him see!” The LORD opened the young man’s eyes, and when he looked up, he saw that the hillside around Elisha was filled with horses and chariots of fire.”

When the servant looked with his spiritual eyes, the situation he saw was vastly different than what he had seen with his natural eyes.

The spiritual realm is reality. God in His realm existed before He made the earth. The earth is subject to God’s design, and the spiritual realm is still the pre-eminent realm. If we live without the spirit we are forced to operate under the limitations and corruption of the world. However, what occurs in the natural realm is still subject to the spiritual realm.

While living in the natural realm, we always want to be responding by the spirit. This way, we will make the right choices, the right responses, and the right decisions.

Years ago, Greg and I were in downtown Jerusalem very late in the afternoon. When we returned to our car, it had a boot on the wheel. Apparently, we had committed a violation of some sort, even though we had parked among several other cars that morning. Ours was the only one that had been detained.

Greg took a paper off the windshield, and we read it inside the car. One side was printed in Hebrew, the other in Arabic, neither of which was very helpful for us!

It was getting dark, stores and shops were closed, and the streets were empty. We really had no idea what to do next, because we couldn’t leave. If we moved the car with the tire lock on it, the tire would be destroyed.

Suddenly, a stranger walked up to the car and tapped on Greg’s window. Pointing at Greg, he said, “You need help. Come with me.” Then he pointed at me and said, “Stay here.”

Israel seemed like a very foreign land to us, especially in that moment. Twenty years ago in Jerusalem, there was no English on the buildings or streets outside of the tourist areas, and it was very easy for travelers to become disoriented.

Greg got out of the car and followed the man for a couple of blocks. They came to the middle of a large courtyard. Standing next to him, the man told Greg to go through an archway, up the stairs, through a certain door, and how much money to give the police inside. Greg followed the man’s hand as he pointed out the directions, but as he turned to thank him, the man was gone. Not gone as in walking away gone, but gone as in nowhere to be seen.

Looking all around him, Greg realized the man couldn’t have run fast enough to get out of sight, and yet, he was not visible, either.

Having no other good options, Greg went through the archway, up the stairs, through the doorway the man had told him about, and paid the person at the counter. The man took the money and told him that was all he needed.

Greg returned and climbed into the driver’s seat. He started the car.

“What are you doing?” I asked, since the boot was still on the tire.

He told me what had happened and marveled at how quickly the men had come to remove the tire lock. He had come back immediately, and it was already gone.

That was when I had to tell him. No one had been on the street since he had left with the man. We got out of the car. We stood in the middle of what had been a very busy street hours earlier but was now deserted, and we stared at our rental car as if there was something very mysterious about it. Of course, it wasn’t so much mysterious as “unnatural.”

We got back into the car and drove away. Who was that man who had helped us? What happened to the tire lock on the car?

We are not advocating going off with strangers and following their instructions, leaving your wife alone on a deserted street in a foreign country . . . unless you are going with the Spirit of God in you.

We need to learn, and to teach our children, to be led by the Spirit. That doesn’t mean we don’t think or put aside common sense. It means that our thinking must include the direction and input of the Spirit of God within us. God, of course, can and will intervene in our lives as He chooses. Most of time, though, day in and day out, we have many opportunities to nurture our spiritual self, to cultivate the communion that will allow us not only to stop, look and listen, but to see and hear by the Spirit far beyond what we might imagine.

We stopped, we looked, we listened, and when it was over, we knew. God had sent an angel to help us.

Could we have done it without the angel’s help? Sure. We could have muddled around and possibly had the car towed; we could have found a cab, a policeman, etc. We might have spent hours and a lot more money doing something that turned out to be pretty simple, because we were able to respond to God’s provision for us. Our spirits, in communion with God, led us to respond to God’s provision. Remember how Jesus said, I only do what I see the Father doing (John 5:19). Jesus could walk and talk and remain in communion with His Father, and so can we (with our heavenly Father). That is the essence of spiritual living.

Today, stop, look and listen, at your life. Do you have peace or stress? Do you have unity in your relationships or strife? Do you have provision or want? (Not want as in a new 40″ flat panel HDTV, but want as in not having enough money to buy food for your children.)

I would submit that if your answers are the second, and not the first, you are looking with natural eyes, not spiritual.

Spiritual eyes will bring you into communion with God, and that is a place of peace no matter what is going on around you. Relationships, of course, require more than one party, but Jude 1:19 says: “These people are the ones who are creating divisions among you. They follow their natural instincts because they do not have God’s Spirit in them.”

Lastly, want is the icon of the worldly cultures we live in — contentment is not the outcome of lack of want. Contentment is the confidence, by our spirit in communion with God’s Spirit, that what we have today is exactly what we need, because God knows.

If we don’t stay in communion with God, it is hard to stay in the place of knowing that God knows, and if we are not confident that God knows, we will be thinking with our natural minds, before we stop, look and listen with our spirit.

It was a typical morning at our house. This particular morning, things were going along swimmingly until little Sarah bounced into the kitchen. She was as aggravated as a five-year-old could be.

Considering everything else that was going on that morning, I wasn’t all that focused on nurturing her gifting, but I did know Sarah, and it was clear to me that the best way to execute my agenda was to take a few minutes to resolve whatever had upset her.

“I had a dream,” she declared definitively. “A tornado was coming right down Brown Avenue, and it was ruining everything.”

It had never occurred to me that Sarah felt so strongly about the order of Brown Avenue on the whole, but it wasn’t hard to see that she didn’t approve of a tornado making matchsticks of her house. I really wanted to get breakfast over with, so I told her, “Well, let’s pray that no tornado comes down Brown Avenue.”

We prayed, and afterward everyone seemed satisfied. At least Sarah was. So we went on with breakfast, and the matter was mostly forgotten.

Two weeks later, we were at a meeting when sirens started going off all over town, with report of several tornadoes touching down.

Immediately we got to our car to head home to our children. We pulled onto the main thoroughfare and headed westbound, one mile north of the freeway. I turned on the radio, and the report said that the tornado was headed eastbound, one mile north of the freeway. It was approaching the major cross street near our house. I let out a moderate scream, but Greg focused on reaching the house.

When we arrived, the television was on, and the children were huddled in the hallway. The report continued to say that the tornado was headed eastbound on the north side of the freeway — right for us. It was then I remembered Sarah’s dream and our prayer.

That stormy night, the tornado did not touch down on Brown Avenue, which was the prediction. Instead, it touched down on the south side of the freeway — out of its projected path. Our house, our neighbor’s houses, and Brown Avenue in its entirety were spared. The tornado didn’t harm any homes and took out only some storage buildings. Though most people probably didn’t realize how much they had been spared that night, one five-year-old girl got the lesson of a lifetime: Dreams can be from God, revelation is real, and God answers prayer.

Among the five ways that God speaks to people — dreams, visions, dark speech (riddles), directly and audibly — dreams and visions are among the most frequent in children.

Interestingly enough, almost one-third of the Bible is also about dreams and visions.

There isn’t any question in my mind that God is speaking to your children in their dreams. The only question is, Do they know it? Do you?

You can help your children to cultivate this important aspect of spiritual gifting. First of all, remember that not all dreams are from God. Also, while some dreams from God are literal, most are metaphorical or symbolic and may need revelation, interpretation or both.

Keep in mind that children learn more from what is caught than what is taught. If you have a value for their dreams, they will also have a value for their dreams. What we value we make room for, we pay attention to, and we retain more.

Help your child to keep a dream journal, or keep one for them if they are too young to do it themselves. There are, of course, many ways to journal a dream, and you can help your children to explore those various ways: writing, drawing, diagramming, etc.

Things to do:

Ask your child daily about their dreams. With our kids, we liked to do this at breakfast time.

Do not rush to interpret your child’s dream. Instead, let them ponder it, possibly helping a little with symbolism.

Teach your child about metaphors.

Help your children to begin to learn basic biblical symbolism. Not just what things are symbolic of, but why.

Be careful to make appropriate responses. Dreams can be funny, and it is easy to be embarrass your kids or fall into ridicule without meaning to sometimes.

Most important: Nurture and encourage your children in the spiritual things of God.

Our goal here is to help refocus on raising children who will grow up to be Spiritually and Emotionally Whole. I  don’t believe that we need more religion. I believe that we need people who are spiritually alive, spiritually and emotionally healthy, capable of fully relating to God and each other. This work is best done in childhood, and we are the people (parents, grandparents, mentors) who can make a difference. Giving our children a safe home where they are well fed, go to school, etc is only the beginning. It isn’t that hard to be a difference maker in the lives of our children. What is sometimes hard is knowing how to be that difference maker.

So here we are today. We hope that you will take a look at our book, Raising Spiritual Children, if you are interested. If not, please join us in our forums as we explore how we can become parents, and raise our children to become fully and joyfully, who they were created to be.

God’s way to wholeness fully encompasses knowing God and using the spiritual gifting that He has given us. After all, we cannot be spiritually and emotionally whole apart from God. Does your child have dreams? Do they hear God? Most likely the answer is yes, whether they have ever articulated this or not. Learn how to help your child grow in their relationship with God, and in the spiritual gifts that He has deposited in them.

We want to challenge you and your children to reach the purpose you were put on earth for. Become the family that God designed you to be; the family that is different, in a very good way. Be the light that God conceived you to be.

This isn’t meant to be only a teaching site. We are looking for a new community. In some ways, I hope we can become the community that so many of us looked for over the last decades and could not find. Whoever you are, and whatever space you are in on these issues you are welcome. I hope that we can speak to Christians and non-Christians, working moms and dads, and families with a stay at home parent, homeschoolers to boarding schoolers, you are all welcome. I know that you have a contribution to make, and hope that we will also make a contribution to you and your family.

Please be encouraged, and be a part as well.