Dallas County Living Well Magazine Summer 2014 | Page 40

The Voice of God

W

By Michelle Wallace

hen I was very young I lived in total
rebellion. There were drugs, alcohol,
promiscuity; it’s really a miracle I survived. I moved from Indiana to Dallas to escape my troubles and found
there’s no where you can run to escape from yourself. One
night I had a dream. In the dream I was in a car crash. I didn’t
see myself die but somehow I knew I had died. The dream was
vivid and real. I woke up in a cold sweat, sat bolt upright in bed
and heard these words, “Follow Me and I will make you fruitful and multiply you. If you don’t, this will be your end.” Again,
the picture of the red car flashed before my eyes.

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North Dallas Living Well Magazine • Summer 2014

Somehow I knew the voice had to
be God. I ran to the living room and
found a Bible that I received as a child
during a week long camp. My mom
had dropped me there, likely for the
free childcare. It was the only real exposure I had to God or His word. The
Bible had never been cracked. But this
night I would fling it open to Deuteronomy Chapter 8. There, on the page, I
read some of the same words I’d heard
in my bed. “All the commandments
that I am commanding you today you
shall be careful to do, that you may
live and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to
give to your forefathers.” The chapter
went on to describe the fruit. “God is
about to bring you into a good land, a
land with brooks and rivers, springs
and lakes, streams out of the hills
and through the valleys. It’s a land
of wheat and barley, of vines and figs
and pomegranates, of olives, oil, and
honey. It’s land where you’ll never
go hungry—always food on the table
and a roof over your head. It’s a land
where you’ll get iron out of rocks and
mine copper from the hills. After a
meal, satisfied, bless God, your God,
for the good land he has given you.”
God knew I would need to remain
thankful or my heart would turn away
from Him. He warned that once I
became prosperous I would have a
tendency to turn away from Him and
think that somehow this was all accomplished by my own hands.
The chapter closes with the same
warning I heard in the dream. “It shall
come about if you ever forget the Lord
your God and go after other gods and
serve them and worship them, I testify
against you today that you will surely
perish.” To perish means to die before
your time. The Message says it this
way: If you forget, forget God, your
God, and start taking up with other
gods, serving and worshiping them,
I’m on record right now as giving you
firm warning: that will be the end of
you; I mean it—destruction.