Category: Daniela Kissell

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God Speaks Through Our Dreams

AUTHOR: Daniela Kissell

It was a Slovak psychologist who first told me to write down my dreams. I had never before that heard of anyone who would think them important nor would ever even consider them significant. As I tuned my focus under the pressure to produce something when going for a session I have noticed that I was dreaming quite a lot. It was a truly novel observation. One of the dreams unlocked my overburdened heart and turn it towards the messenger of the dreams and my journey of learning to hear the voice of God has began.

In this one significant dream I found myself to be a simple human cell in a body, panicking as I had no organs to breathe. I was holding my breath as long as I could. Then with a deep inhale all the panic subsided. I could breathe, and as I had no hands, no legs, no mouth, I couldn’t do anything. My entire existence consisted of being the cell I was created and keep on breathing. This dream came during the time when I was being crushed under the unrealistic expectations from life, people and myself. Not to keep you long with the details of the most painful season of my life I only want to emphasize the wonder and awesomeness of learning to hear when our Lord speaks to us in our dreams as it is always to lead us out of something into something new.

In Job 33:14-15 it says

For God does speak—now one way, now another—
though no one perceives it.
In a dream, in a vision of the night,
when deep sleep falls on people
as they slumber in their beds,

You might have been doing it already, but if you have not yet or are still in the process of learning how to interpret what you dreamt I would like to bring to you some resources that have been helping me in tuning in and learning the dream language and keep a record of my dreams.

The best dream journal that I found was developed by John Paul Jackson and I absolutely love it. It teaches you how to record the dream, how to interpret it and how to respond to it. Our own Pastor Gary Fishman’s book is another favorite go to, and James Goll’s book on interpreting dreams is a great introduction and biblical perspective on dreams.

Recently I came across another 3 books that are absolutely wonderful . A to Z Dream Symbology by Dr. Barbie L. Breathitt and Divinity Code and Prophetic Symbolism in Everyday Life by Adrian Beale and Adam B. Thompson. Available on Amazon.

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It’s All About The Garden

Hey, my loves! How are you doing today?

At first, Let me invite you to this song:

IT’S ALL ABOUT The GARDEN

Some time ago in a dream Jesus brought me to a garden full of wild flowers. He lead the way on a path to the center of it and invited me to sit with him on a bench under two trees. Puzzled by the garden that was beautiful but not cultivated I asked him about it. His answer surprised me, as he said that it was the garden of my heart. Beautiful, with a place for him and me to sit, but producing no fruit… Wait a minute Jesus, no fruit? And there I heard Holy Spirit getting all excited saying; Come and I will show you how to take care of the garden of your heart. I will show you how the heart produces fruit.

Being the hands on type of a learner Holy Spirit nudged me to start a garden in my yard. Sounds glorious, but I got so overwhelmed by the task. Having been a city dweller for the most of my life I had been confronted by lack of knowledge and skills. So much to learn! He kept reminding me about patience and small steps and drew my attention to the utmost importance of SOIL. The Soil! Pay attention to the soil!!! I got it I thought! I live in the Garden State after all! You would think that New Jersey carrying that “last name” would have soil that requires digging a hole putting a plant in and Ou-la-la! You will just watch in amazement how everything grows! Wrong! So wrong!
If you take a trip to a countryside you will encounter piles and piles of stones on the side of fields that somebody long time ago had to pick up from any land that he wanted to cultivate. And picking the stones would be just the first step.

Then you needed to plow and plow and plow and fertilize until you would get soil that would be useful for planting.
The whole idea of the hard work was just too exhausting. My yard was surrounded by trees and the soil was pure clay. There were moments of frustration where I wished I would have decided to open a ceramic workshop instead. I went for a shortcut. With help of my husband we put together a few raised beds and added the correct mixture of manure and soil and planted.

It looked great, but my yard was looking lonely and the calling of a real garden was being constantly stirred in my mind. So I asked;” Why is my heart still so unsatisfied? The garden looks lovely, the plants are growing, why is my heart still full of longing for a real garden? What is that longing about?

And then I heard a quiet whisper of a question:, “Do you love me?,” he asked. “Do you love me?,” he asked again.

I thought I did, I answered…
“Well, well, let me show you what love looks like,” he said. And he took a tiny seed and planted it in my garden.

About two months ago a movie on Prime called “Back to Eden” generated more excitement and passion about this new form of gardening . They called it gardening the Lord’s way. Encouraged by the dream and longing I got excited and followed the instructions. We got the free mulch from a tree service and set on a journey.

Remember the soil issue! What a shocker! Instead of hard work and plowing and fertilizing in gardening the Lord’s way you can just put on top of your difficult soil a 6 inch layer of tree mulch and let it sit for a year and then you can plant straight to it and will never have to water your garden again! That is a true shortcut! This is how our Father meant it in the beginning! To come to a place where we let His blanket cover the soil of our heart no matter how hard or damaged and let His mulching presence change it into a fertile land; into the heart that is able to receive love in and also produce it. Jesus is a true master gardener, teaching us to take care first of our gardens so out of the abundance in it we can share with others of the fruit he planted in our hearts.
No shortcut when it comes to those rocks! They still need to be removed!

Our Father has been calling us to a place of intimacy for a long long time. Back to the place in Genesis 3:8, where He can walk in the cool of a day in our garden and we will not hide from Him anymore.

I would like to encourage you to watch the movie, regardless of your gardening or no gardening desires. It is full of revelation.

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How Big is Your “AS”

AUTHOR: Daniela Kissell

My dear sojournerers ….
I would like to invite you to consider this…

We all have heard this commandment given by Jesus as it is recorded in Bible in the Book called Mark, chapter 12. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”

In the beginning of every year I ask our Heavenly Father what would He want to highlight that year for me. Several years ago He started to draw my attention to the second part of the verse in which Jesus said that we are to love others AS we love ourselves. That “AS” got suddenly capitalized for me. It got really huge! LOL

As myself… I had not up to that moment thought of the importance of loving myself. What does it even look like? Isn’t that a selfish approach to the concept of love? I was happy in my servanthood. I felt important in my ability to help others.

But then I got invited to hit the road with a genius Holy Spirit who will always lead us to the Truth, ready to answer all our questions.

I grew up in a very sheltered protestant church culture in a communist Czechoslovakia where we lived a dutiful life of serving, everyone helping everyone type of environment where the main emphasis was put on the words..”LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOUR”. This emphasis lead me to a choice of carrier in the field of special education. I served at every event organized by our church, helped to build churches, houses, helped to clean, helped to move, wash, babysit, clean toilets and wash baby diapers… just to name a few. The Servant Life was my understanding of my purpose. My understanding of what it means to love God.

When life of serving lead me to emotional exhaustion Holy Spirit autocorrected the balance in that sentence and showed me where I was lacking.

Do you want to love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength?
Do you want to find peace that comes from accepting yourself and come out of hiding into the light, so you can love yourself and thus love others?

What does it take to live like a Royal and not like a serf?
Let me start with this:

As you watch the video below, write in comments if anything speaks to you.. It is a funny, some might say a rude one, but yet I found a voice of God in it.