I am a little over a year into my religious journey as a college student and I was incredibly blessed to find comfort and feel at home at Crossroads Church Uptown branch. Even though I am not in Cincinnati for the summer, I continue to stream online and attend the Columbus branch when they meet.

Crossroads began a new series this past weekend called the Spirit Realm. The series addresses the stories or experiences we have, or have had that seem unexplainable, strange, or random. However, these experiences are nothing to be afraid of. They are to be celebrated and embraced because you have or have had experienced God working in your life. I have been blessed enough that God communicates with me in my sleep through my dreams. I do not dream often, however when I do, I believe that God is trying to communicate with me about something currently happening in my life or that is going to happen.

As strange as it sounds, I have learned not to be afraid but to embrace the messages that he gives me. This past academic year my roommate and I wanted to go to dinner in Cincinnati at a place that she grew up eating at, but I had never been to before. The night before we went to the restaurant, God communicated with me through my dream and showed me the exact set up of the restaurant that we ended up going to. Walking into the restaurant the next evening, I was in complete shock and curious as to what else God had planned. It was not until later in the semester that God would use the restaurant as a platform to communicate messages.

In one of my dreams, my roommate and I were back at the restaurant sitting at a table with three of our other friends. There was no sound to the dream therefore everyone communicated through pictures and one of our friends kept drawing a picture of a house. We confronted him the following day and it turned out that he had been feeling very homesick and it was beginning to affect his school work. Being that he lived several states away he did not get to go home very often, however, we talked with him and helped him work with his professors a plan that allowed him to catch a plane to go home for a few days.

In another one of my dreams, my roommate and I were once again back at the restaurant and sitting at a table with one of her friends. The dream once again had no sound and therefore we communicated through motions. My roommates friend began to cry and my roommate reach out to console him. However, when we went to reach back, his hand passed through her, almost ghost like. The following day I retold my dream to my roommate and expressed my concerns about him and prompted her to have a conversation with him. The following afternoon, she had a conversation with him, and it resulted in him expressing how he was feeling very depressed that they were both graduating and they would be separated. In addition to feeling depressed, he was also very concerned about what was going to happen to their friendship.

You may not be a follower of God and may believe that these instances were a simple coincidence, or you may be a new or even old follower of God and may not understand how these are acts of God. Whatever your case may be, I encourage you to listen to the sermons of the Spirit Realm series. These experiences with God are real and this series might help answer your questions or to possibly change your perspective on the spiritual acts of God.