Songs of intimacy

Gareth Goossen
as told to Jim Coggins

Last October 9 and 10, I was in Hillsboro, Kansas with Randy Friesen for a Youth Mission International "Desire the Fire" rally. The evening before the rally, I got together with Rod Jost and a few people he had pulled together to practise the music we were going to do. We had talked earlier, and I thought that he had said he was going to select the songs, and he thought that I was going to select the songs. So, we got to the practice with no songs. We threw some together, and they ended up being all up-tempo songs. The practice went well. Afterwards, I went back to Don Ratzlaff's place, where I was staying, chatted with him for a while and then went to bed.

Around 5:30 in the morning, I was awakened from a dream. I had a strong impression that I needed to remember this dream, that it was important. There was no pen or paper handy, and, rather than running through the house looking for some, I decided I would just lie in bed and speak it out. I did that about three times, hoping that that way I would remember it in the morning.

In the morning, I mulled over the dream and thought, "This makes absolutely no sense to me." Obviously I was supposed to remember it for some reason, so I asked, "God, are You trying to tell me that I need to change something?" The only thing that came to mind was that perhaps the songs we had selected were all up-tempo and that perhaps God wanted some more intimate songs.

I went ahead and changed three of the last songs to songs that had more of a reflective nature to them, songs with more intimacy. I called up Rod and a few other people in the band and let them know, and they were fine with that. I didn't bother mentioning the dream.

Later in the afternoon, I went over to see Vann Trapp, who is a youth pastor at Parkview MB Church in Hillsboro. We sat and chatted for about an hour, and then I said, "By the way, I changed the last three songs to be more reflective."

That is exactly what Vann had been hoping I would do, so he said, "What made you change?"

I said, "I had a dream. It really doesn't make any sense at all, but I felt I needed to change the songs."

He said he would like to hear the dream.

I said, "It really makes no sense at all. . . . "

He said, "Sometimes God has used me to help other people understand their dreams."

I said okay and told him the dream. The dream was that I had a vehicle--I don't remember what kind it was or what colour--but it had a bothersome noise in the engine whenever I would drive it. I would stop the car and check the engine but could never find anything wrong because it never did it while the vehicle was idling; it only did it at certain speeds. Finally I took the vehicle to a garage. Anytime I have gone to a garage, I have driven into the garage, but here I turned around and backed in--which was peculiar because the engine was in front. In the process, I backed over something on the floor and it blew the back tire. The mechanic said, "Too bad about your tire." Then he looked around the car and said, "To tell you the truth, all your tires are pretty rotten. You should really replace them." As we chatted about the noise in the engine, a young girl came out of the back of the shop. She appeared to be about 15 or 16, about 5 foot 2, blonde with a blunt cut parted in the middle, and very slender. She walked up to me, looked me right in the eye, told me her name and and said, "I want to know how to love Jesus. Can you help me?"

As I finished the dream, I looked across the desk and said, "If you have an explanation for this, I sure would love to hear it."

Vann said, "I've had a hard time concentrating while you were telling the dream."

I asked, "How so?"

He said, "Well, you just described my last two weeks. About two weeks ago, our van began to make a noise as we were driving, and we could never find out what it was when we stopped and looked at it. We took it to the shop, and it ended up being an alternator that had the bearings gone on it. While we were at the shop, the mechanic noticed that one of our tires had a leak in it. He fixed it, and then he said, 'To tell you the truth, your other tires are getting pretty worn.' A few days later, as I was backing out of my garage at home, I backed over my daughter's tricycle. Not only that, there's a girl from our youth group with the same name as the girl in your dream. She's about 5 foot 2, very slim, blonde hair with a blunt cut parted in the middle. In the last couple of weeks, she has been in my office a lot of times struggling because she wants to love God but she's somehow not able to find her way through. She keeps saying, 'You've just got to help me do this.' "

That night, during the worship time, I saw a girl who looked very much like the girl in the dream. During the songs of intimacy, she went down on her knees and began to weep. A couple of people came around her and began to pray with her, and God touched her in a significant way. It was the girl from Vann's youth group.

There was an impact on Vann as well. He had been looking for a mission organization that was sensitive to the leading of God's Spirit, and he was really disappointed the day before during practice. While we were practising the up-tempo songs, he'd wondered, "Is this just another organization that hypes kids up, gets them excited and then sends them out? An organization that doesn't really care about developing the heart or intimacy or worship, an organization that doesn't give kids a real sense of knowing how to follow God's Spirit?". So the incident has established a strong connection between Vann and me.

Gareth Goossen is director of Make us Holy Ministries in Kitchener, Ont. He works part-time in worship and alumni follow-up for Youth Mission International.

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