Dead dreams come to life again

Dead dreams come to life again is a central expression for the book’s theology of persistent faith: a hope may appear buried, delayed, or beyond recovery, yet it is not necessarily finished. Its decisive image comes from Lazarus, whose death becomes the setting for Jesus Christ to reveal that an apparently ended future can be restored, provided believers continue to trust God rather than surrender to offense, unbelief, or despair.

The Lazarus Pattern

The expression is introduced through the heading “I WILL NOT LEAVE You ALONE UNTIL DEAD DREAMS COME TO LIFE AGAIN.” Lazarus’s sisters, Mary of Bethany and Martha, had expected Jesus Christ to come quickly when their brother became ill. Instead, Jesus remained where He was for two more days, although Lazarus was a beloved friend. By the time Jesus arrived, Lazarus had been dead for four days, and the sisters’ expectation that their brother would remain part of their lives had collapsed with his death.

Mary of Bethany and Martha responded with the same reproach: if Jesus Christ had arrived earlier, Lazarus would not have died. Their grief was intensified by the apparent failure of a trusted relationship. They had believed that Jesus would rescue their brother, and when He did not respond in the expected time or manner, their living hope became what the book calls a dead dream. Martha’s attention remained fixed on the material evidence of death: the stone, the grave, and the stench that had developed after four days.

The narrative reverses that perception. Mary of Bethany and Martha saw a dead dream, whereas Jesus Christ saw a dead dream approaching resurrection. His delay is interpreted not as indifference but as purposeful, creating a situation in which the power of God would be displayed over death itself. The four-day interval also carries symbolic force: Jewish custom regarded the third day as the point after which hope of returning from death had ended, so Lazarus’s condition represents an impossible situation rather than an ordinary recovery.

Faith Against Delay and Impossibility

The expression requires persistence precisely when circumstances seem to contradict the promise. Jacob’s struggle at Peniel is used as a parallel: Jacob continued pressing toward God until he received the blessing he sought. The lesson is that an answer may appear to be moving away, while God is still within reach. Persistence therefore becomes a test of whether a person will continue reaching toward God rather than interpreting delay as absence.

The book identifies several responses that can keep a dream in the grave. Offense arises when God does not act according to expectation; unbelief makes the impossibility more visible than the promise; impossible circumstances seem to establish that no future remains; and apathy leads a person to stop pursuing God. Mary’s remaining in the house becomes an image of withdrawal after disappointment. Against these responses, the Lazarus account calls for continued belief even before visible evidence changes.

The expression also belongs to a broader pattern of persistent prayer. The book describes prayer as continual asking, seeking, and knocking, with blessing released through importunity rather than through a single request abandoned after delay. The woman with the issue of blood embodies this pattern by initiating contact with Jesus Christ after twelve years of suffering, pressing through the crowd, and reaching for the hem of His garment when every other avenue had failed. Her action demonstrates that persistent faith does not merely wait for divine intervention; it reaches toward God, treats Him as the only sufficient answer, and gives embodied action to its words.

Personal Testimonies of Restoration

The Lazarus pattern is extended into a family medical crisis involving the narrator’s wife’s father. During a family camping trip on July 4, the man developed a fever of 104 degrees. Doctors initially failed to identify its cause, and although antibiotics controlled the fever after three weeks, severe weakness remained. In December, the fever returned, and an ambulance took him to medical care after he woke faint and seeing spots.

Exploratory surgery revealed diverticulitis and a ruptured bowel. Months of undetected infection had produced septic shock, placing him near death within hours. Surgery repaired the bowel, but the infection had poisoned his body so severely that he was placed in a medical coma. He swelled to three times his normal size, developed a fever of 105 degrees, and required nineteen intravenous bags of medicines, fluids, blood, and food. Eight physicians treated him while his liver, kidneys, and lungs began to fail; he required dialysis and a ventilator for multiple organ and renal failure.

The family treated the crisis as a spiritual battle and prayed around the clock. The surgeon initially estimated less than a 50 percent chance of survival, but the narrator’s mother-in-law refused to accept the negative side of that assessment and declared that her God was bigger than the prognosis. The narrator’s young son likewise spoke to his grandfather as though recovery were already expected, telling him to take up his bed and go home praising God.

Brenda Kunneman prayed that the doctors would call the patient a “miracle man.” A doctor heard the prayer, and the phrase spread among the medical staff. Gradually, medicines were reduced, machines were removed, and the patient awakened. A nurse who had not seen him for some time recognized him with disbelief, while the surgeon attributed the outcome not to anything the physicians had done but to faith and prayer. The man’s recovery, described as continuing for several years with all well, becomes a concrete illustration of a dream that appeared to be dying and then returned to life.

Resurrection Requires Release

The expression does not end when the dream emerges from the grave. Jesus Christ’s third command at Lazarus’s tomb was to loose Lazarus and let him go. Lazarus walked out alive, but he remained bound hand and foot and had his face covered with graveclothes. The book turns this detail into a second stage of restoration: a resurrected dream can remain restricted if old habits, sins, fears, and thought patterns are not removed.

The bound hands represent whatever limits service, labor, and ministry. The bound feet represent habits and sins from the past that cause a person to fall or prevent forward movement. The bound face represents restrictions on vision, speech, hearing, and thought: the eyes lack direction, the mouth cannot confidently declare God’s Word, the ears hear only negativity instead of a fresh word from God, and the mind continues to interpret the present through past failures and mistakes.

This is why the book insists that destiny does not end when a dream comes out of the grave. Remaining beside the tomb and celebrating breakthrough is insufficient if the person cannot walk into the new life. The graveclothes must be removed so that the restored dream can serve, move, perceive, speak, hear, and think differently. The contrast between the bondage associated with Jezebel’s remaining skull, hands, and feet and the freedom signified by Jesus Christ’s pierced head, hands, and feet reinforces the movement from confinement to release.

A Theology of Persistent Hope

The expression joins spiritual restoration to a practical discipline of regular communion with God. The book warns against seeking God only when disaster arrives, recalling how churches and prayer meetings filled after 9/11 but the renewed hunger lasted only briefly. It likewise interprets the changing course of the war after American troops seized Baghdad in twenty-one days as a warning about abandoning prayer coverage for military personnel. In this framework, leaving God alone is risky because protection and breakthrough are connected to continuing fellowship rather than crisis-driven attention.

The metaphor of a rain cloud of blessing gives persistence a cumulative form. Persistent prayer and sacrifice are compared to moisture filling a heavenly account; when the cloud is full, it releases blessing like rain. A desert, by contrast, represents a life with little prayer and no sacrifice, where there is insufficient moisture to form a cloud. The image makes restoration part of a continuing cycle rather than a moment detached from daily practice.

The book therefore treats dead dreams as occasions for a decisive change in perception. The grave, the four-day delay, the stench, a 105-degree fever, organ failure, twelve years of illness, and worsening symptoms all function as signs of apparent finality. Yet the recurring response is to keep believing, keep praying, initiate contact with God, and refuse to interpret delay as abandonment. Dead dreams come to life again when persistent faith continues beyond the point at which ordinary hope would have stopped, and when the restored life is then released from the graveclothes that would otherwise keep it limited.