I have never seen one instance (and my mother is now 86) where it has not turned out that God was speaking through the dream in some way. I have learned to pay very close attention to my mother when she says she has had a dream more than once. If you have the same dream or a slightly varying dream over and over for months or even years, pay attention to that. It also does not mean that every reoccurring dream is prophetic but I will say that the uniquely vibrant ones nearly always are. This does not mean that God is not speaking through non-reoccurring dreams or through common ordinary dreams. Recurring dreams and ones I will call the uniquely vibrant dreams, or lucid dreams.
In this teaching I will only cover two types of prophetic dreams:
I’ve always tried to recall my dreams and spend a few minutes each morning examining exactly what went on in my dream world. I also found that unless I consciously went over the dream in my mind immediately upon waking, I lost it within a few minutes. This got me in the habit of watching for dreams and examining them. I happened to grow up in a family where we were all interested in our dreams and often shared them at the breakfast table. Many people pay absolutely no attention to their dreams and eventually get to the place where they think they don’t dream. God is probably speaking to all of us through our dreams much more than we can imagine. For instance, a prophetic dream can bring confirmation, comfort, warning, or direction. A prophetic dream is one in which God is speaking something and it may not necessarily regard a future event. Prophecy is utterance from God and a prophet is one who is a spokesman for God. To many people, the word prophetic has to do with foretelling future events but that is only one shade of its meaning in God’s Word. I want to talk about this third kind of dream which we will call the prophetic dream. Spiritually speaking, dreams can come from three sources: the demonic realm, the soulish realm (meaning our own mind and emotions) or from God’s Holy Spirit. Tests on sleep deprivation prove that sleep and the accompaniment of dreams is a necessity we cannot live without. Even people who claim not to remember dreams do dream. In the scientific realm, dreaming has been somewhat mysterious but now there is tremendous research going on to better understand why we dream and how often. Psalm 127:2 says “For so He gives His beloved sleep.” First of all, in a certain sense, all dreams are from God because dreaming itself is a gift from God and all people dream. How can you tell when a dream is from God? We will look at that. I have read of cases where several people within a village have the same dream the same night and whole villages literally come to know the Lord overnight.ĭreams from God are flourishing today but not every dream is of divine origin. Many times, knowing nothing about Jesus Christ prior to their dream, they are instantly converted and have a depth of knowledge that would have been impossible by natural means. There is a growing body of reports regarding “Jesus” dreams steadily rising out of the Middle East, especially to Muslims. We can assume that as God spoke to every category of person in Bible days, he is still in the dream business speaking to us the same way today. Pilate’s wife sent word to her husband not to have anything to do with Jesus because she “suffered many things today in a dream because of Him.” (Matthew 27:19)ĭreams abound in the Bible.The wise men from the East were divinely warned in a dream to return to their own country by a different route and not return to tell Herod the location of the baby Jesus.In the New Testament, Joseph was told to accept Mary as his wife because the child she was having was conceived by the Holy Spirit.Daniel understood the interpretation of dreams and was able to escape death by explaining to Nebuchadnezzar the dream he had and the unfolding of the king’s future.(Genesis 37) Later, in chapter 41, Joseph correctly interprets the Pharaoh’s dream. Joseph dreamed he would someday rule over all his brothers and even his father.Jacob had a dream as he lay on the ground with a stone for a pillow in which he saw a ladder ascending up to heaven with angels going up and down.It was during a dream that God revealed to Abraham the history of the descendants he would have and the 400 year Egyptian captivity.The Bible is chuck-full of dreams that meant something – not just the “pizza dreams” we talk about today.ĭreams have played an important role in both the Old and the New Testament. At least we in the Western world feel that way the other half of the world takes it for granted and in Biblical times it was assumed that God spoke through dreams as a natural part of life. Dreaming is one of the more exotic ways to hear from God.
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