Dream On

I have dreamed vivid, colorful, and memorable dreams every night for most of my adult life. They are often strange, fantastic, absurd, or surrealistic. Many mornings my first topic of conversation with my husband is an update of my dreams from the night before.

My dreams fade from memory quickly and return to the oblivion of my subconscious mind. Occasionally, one of them will stay with me and sometimes I even dream the same dream twice. Some dreams are vividly embedded in my memory while others disappear minutes after I tell my husband about them in the morning.

By way of contrast, my husband is usually in a deep sleep within 60 seconds of climbing into bed. He sleeps soundly through the night and, until recently, never had a dream he was aware of in his entire adult life.

We recently met a woman named Janice Seney (name used with permission) who taught a class called Listening to God - How to Hear God’s Voice. It was life-changing for us in many respects. In addition to a basic understanding of how to live from our spirits (as opposed to our body or soul), dreams and visions, and the proper interpretation of them, turned out to be an important part of the class.

Dreams and visions have been God’s preferred method of communication with his people throughout history. In the Old Testament, God almost always spoke to his people through dreams and visions (Abraham, Moses, Jacob, Joseph, Daniel, etc.). In the New Testament, he did the same (Peter, Cornelius, Phillip, Paul, John, etc.) Do we really expect God to change the way he speaks to his people today? Most of us tend to discount and ignore his primary communication methodology because it makes us uncomfortable.

During and after our six-week class, my husband and I prayed together and told God that if he wanted to speak to us through our dreams, we would pay attention, listen, and obey to the best of our ability. We each started dream notebooks to record our dreams and, armed with our basic training in dream interpretation, we simply started paying attention.

I could tell so many stories but in short, God did speak to us clearly and specifically through our dreams. He confirmed direction, requested action, increased vision, provided comfort and assurance, and imparted wisdom and insight in many areas of our lives.

Many of my dreams were profound and some of them prophetic. My husband, who never dreamed before, dreamed every single night for nearly a month. And God showed up in our lives in a huge way. We realized how much we had been missing by discounting and ignoring God’s supernatural power in our lives.

Here’s what I mean. God is a loving God. And in the conservative theological circles in which I travel, we talk a lot about this aspect of God character. But God is also supernatural. No one in these same circles would deny it – but we spend very little time learning and talking about this part of God’s nature. Why is that?

One more thing – not all dreams are from God. Some are from our soul, driven by the problem we are grappling with at work or the anxiety created by an impending deadline or event. Some are from the enemy of our souls and others have more to do with the pepperoni pizza we had for dinner than anything else.

There is much I could say but I must close for today. Regarding your dreams, ask God to speak to you and pay attention when he does. Commit in advance to listen and obey. Embrace the supernatural nature of God and - dream on!

I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. ~ Joel 2:28

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