Dream Interpretation Part 2

Last week, I blogged about the importance of dreams. I covered dreams in the Bible and some amazing dreams that people have had and how these dreams have helped influence society with their inventions, scientific discoveries, movies, books etc.

This week I am covering how to prepare for a dream and then how to document the dream. It is one thing to have a dream, but if you can’t remember it and don’t take the time to document it and uncover what the dream means, then you lose the full impact of the dream.

If you make an effort to prepare and expect to have a dream, it shows God that you are serious and that you expect and want to hear from Him. Since God is a good God, I am sure He will not let you down. In 1 Samuel 3: 1-10, we read about the boy Samuel hearing from the Lord. Eli ends up in verse 9 advising Samuel to respond with “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.” Imagine if our response to God every night as we lay in bed was: “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening and wanting to hear from you.”

Dreams are important as they help us understand more about God, His character and what He wants to say to us and why. Basically, it helps us grow in our relationship with God. When we catch this principle, we can look forward to dreaming at night, hearing from God and going deeper with Him. I liken it to giving me more wisdom in my life as it is a time when God speaks to me bypassing my rational mind. God often gives me ideas and solutions that help in situations and issues within the next day or so. Who doesn’t want that!!

Preparing for a Dream:

  1. Limit alcohol, drugs/chemicals and prescription drugs (eg sleeping tablets). The more alert your brain is, the clearer you can hear and see from God.
  2. Be careful what you watch and read before bed. If you fill your mind with scary movies or stories before sleep, then expect that that may influence what your thoughts consist of whilst you are asleep. Pray and cleanse your imagination.
  3. Sleeping atmosphere – quiet, relaxing, peaceful environment contributes towards calmer sleep, thoughts, and hearing from God whilst you are asleep.
  4. Have a device by your bed to document your dream. I use a journal and pen. Other people use a recording device (but I don’t want to wake hubby).
  5. Look at your attitude towards dreams. Be intentional and expectant. Show God that you want to hear from Him during your sleep. Confess any inner vow you have made re not wanting any dreams. This may not be applicable to you, but certain children I know have told God that they don’t want any dreams, as they had a few dreams that unsettled them. God will respect that, therefore they can’t expect at some later stage to have dreams if they haven’t let God know. In Luke 11:9, Jesus says: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” If we chase after God and all He has for us, God will reveal Himself to us. You will start to find that you have more dreams and you are more likely to remember them. It is not unusual to already be having dreams, but you are just unaware that you are dreaming. Once you intentionally try to remember and record them, you may well be surprised at how many dreams you actually have.

Recording Dreams:

  1. Record your dream as soon as possible after waking. I find that if I don’t write it down immediately, I forget the details. Often, I have woken up overnight, and as I lie in bed, I repeat the dream to myself so that, hopefully, I will remember it in the morning to write it down. Trust me, that is not very effective. I hardly ever remember them. I need to get out of bed, grab my dream journal and pen and go to the dining room and write it down immediately.
  2. You may find a recording device eg phone, recorder etc where you can quietly talk into it is helpful as you can stay snuggled up in bed. I can’t do that as it would wake my husband.
  3. You could try using a penlight etc and have that and your book/paper handy beside your bed.
  4. You may prefer to draw a picture that represents the elements of the dream.
  5. I start a new page for every dream. I write it down on the right-hand side and on the facing page I leave room for the interpretation. I always put the date at the top. I also give my dream a title. This helps me to remember it better.
  6. Record the dream sequence. Answer the questions who, what, when, where and why. In other words, list:
    • the main focus,
    • the plot,
    • any people and their names,
    • whether you are in the dream or an observer,
    • where it took place and the setting,
    • the time period,
    • key actions,
    • symbols/colours/numbers/animals/objects/images,
    • any dialogue.
    • Plus write down the overall emotion you felt during the dream and immediately on waking.

Dreams are an invitation from God to draw closer to Him and to come to know Him at a greater level. Dreams open up the mysteries of God. The word for ‘dream’ in ancient Hebrew is chalowm. Chalowm is represented by four different pictures. Water representing the mystery or the Holy Spirit. A tent peg representing binding/holding/joining something together. A staff representing authority or bringing something to you. A wall is also represented meaning that something is hidden or separated from you. Thus, a fuller understanding of the word ‘dream’ is that of the mystery that is hidden from you is being brought to you and revealed.

My next blog post will start to unpack how you interpret your dreams and how God uses metaphors so that you can have a fuller understanding of that which God is trying to reveal to you.

Remember Proverbs 25:2 “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.”

Prophetic Activations / Exercises to incorporate into your week:

Every week I list 5 prophetic activations/exercises under children/family, group, beginner, intermediate and advanced. The purpose of these exercises is to practice to help us hear God’s voice in a clearer manner. They sharpen our senses to hear and see and sense God and His way of communicating with us. This enables us to grow in our relationship with God and also to impart to others what God tells us for them. Feel free to use as many of these activations each week as you can. The more you practice, the sharper you become at hearing God’s voice. Enjoy! Remember that whenever you give another person a prophetic word or picture etc, please make sure that it is encouraging, edifying (strengthening) and comforting (1 Corinthians 14:3) and that it comes from a place of love.

1. Children / Families Activation:  Over a family meal, share a story from the Bible about someone dreaming and the relevance of it. Then share a dream you have had. Ask the rest of the family if they have ever had any dreams. If so, ask them if they can remember any. If not, ask them if they would like God to speak to them that way. Buy a journal for those who would like one for them to record their dreams.

2. Group Activation: In preparation, ask people to bring to the group a dream they have had and any interpretation they have made. Ask various people to share their dream and interpretation. Spend some time in pairs praying over each other for their dream life – that they would dream more and be able to understand their dreams.

3. Beginner Activation: Spend time with God asking Him to reveal more wisdom to you during your dreams. Get a book and pen ready to record your dreams. Ask God to show you if there has been any time in the past when you have not wanted to dream and chat about this with God. Look at anything else you can do so that you can increase your dream life and hear from God during your sleep.

4. Intermediate Activation: Ask God to show you a business in your town that is suffering from the impact of COVID-19. Ask God to reveal to you what you could prophesy and pray over that business and the owner.

5. Advanced Activation: Find out the name of the person who owns a major media outlet (eg newspaper, television station, movie production studio) in your country. Seek God as to what He would have you prophesy and pray over this person and the media outlet.

Dream Interpretation Part 1

God is so amazing. He loves communicating with us. He is extremely creative. In fact, He is the author of creativity and creatively uses all sorts of ways and means to get our attention.

One of the methods that God uses to communicate with us is through our dreams.

Unfortunately for most people, we short-change ourselves by not making use of this communication with God. We may have ‘shut’ our dream life down by an inner vow after a ‘scary dream’ or may not be aware that God even wants to speak to us during the third of our life that we are asleep.

When I am talking about dreams, I am referring to the events or series of thoughts and images seen in our mind whilst asleep.

I dream prolifically and find that they are extremely helpful to me in my daily life. Just the other day, I had a dream and on waking was unsure what it meant. Lately I haven’t been paying enough attention to them as I haven’t prioritised writing them down in my dream journal, but I knew that I needed to write this dream down. I still had no idea what the dream meant and didn’t make the time to do this. I just knew that it was a warning that Gary & I were ‘running ahead of ourselves’ in a certain area and taking possession of something before the right time. In other words, we were too eager in our timing to see something huge accomplished and pushed ahead when we should have waited. Several hours later, I suddenly realised that that my dream was relevant to that very day. I had just received news that the shipment of my paperback books had not left the warehouse and wouldn’t be delivered for several days. We had been expecting the delivery that day and all the plans I had made for the day plus the weekend and next week would need to be adjusted. Initially I was extremely disappointed and frustrated. Realising that God had tried to show me this suddenly shed a new light on the situation.

God has a purpose with our dreaming. He is inviting us to draw closer to Him. In Proverbs 25:2, the Bible says, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.” We are royalty as a child of God. As such, we are invited to live as royalty and have an invitation to search out what God is trying to communicate to us.

Dreams show us more of God. Dreams reveal more about God, more about His nature, His ways, and His workings. Dreams produce a hunger for more of God.

Other purposes of dreams include:

  • Wisdom and insight
  • Encouragement
  • Evangelism – many Muslims have dreams of a man in white speaking to them and become Christians due to their dream.
  • Show us outcomes and what to do
  • Dreams bypass our reasoning

In the Bible, we see a number of people had night time dreams where God communicated to them.

  • Abimelek in Genesis 20:3 was warned by God that he was about to commit a sin by having sex with Sarah. Abraham had not been honest with Abimelech and thankfully God stopped Abimelek in time.
  • Jacob was given a dream of a ladder with ministering angels in Genesis 28:11-22 and Genesis 31:10-13 which revealed God’s will to him.
  • Laban’s warning in Genesis 31:24
  • Pharaoh in Genesis 41 – for preparation for the future of his country.
  • King Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 2
  • Solomon in 1Kings 3:5 encouraged to ask for anything he wanted in his dream.
  • Daniel in Daniel 7
  • Gideon, in Judges 7:13-15 was mightily encouraged by God and His faith built up by overhearing two Midianites talking about a dream where Gideon overpowering them.
  • Joseph, in Genesis 37:5-10 had the future revealed to Him.
  • The imprisoned cupbearer and baker in Genesis 40:5-23.
  • Joseph, Mary’s husband & Jesus’ stepfather was given multiple instructions by God for the care and safety of Jesus in Matthew 1:20-23, 2:13, 19-20, 22.
  • The Wise men seeking Jesus dreamt of being told not to visit Herod the Great on their return trip home in Matthew 2:12
  • Job in Job 33:14-18 shares about dreaming as a warning, preparation and preservation
  • Pilate’s wife in Matthew 27:19 had a warning dream about the death of Jesus and the implications for her husband.

Throughout history, we can also see the amazing effects of when people have had dreams and put the outcome of those dreams into action. Some fantastic examples include:

  • Elias Howe invented the sewing machine after searching for answers to the issue. He then dreamt about cannibals surrounding him and preparing to cook him as they waved their spears up and down. His eyes focused on the holes near the end of the spears and the upward and downward movement of the spears. He put that picture into reality with the sewing machine needle and found that was the answer to the invention.
  • Paul McCartney from The Beatles had a dream in which he immediately rolled out of bed and played the music and lyrics he had heard in his dream on the piano by his bed. He had just composed the song ‘Yesterday’.
  •  Jack Nicklaus dreamt of an adjustment to his golf swing which he then implemented the following day and improved his score dramatically.
  • Abraham Lincoln dreamt that he would be killed three days before his assassination.
  • Frankenstein, Kubla Khan, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Tintin in Tibet, The Terminator, and countless other books and movies have been inspired by dreams
  • Science has been impacted greatly through scientists and philosphers dream life – Descartes and his philosophy, Albert Einstein and his theory of relativity, Kekule and his discovery of the chemical benzene, James Watson & Francis Crick discovering the structure of DNA, Bohr’s structure of the atom, Mendeleev envisisioned the complete arrangement of the periodic table in a dream

I wonder what mysteries, inventions, amazing discoveries and opportunities we are missing out on by not paying attention to our dreams?

Over the next few weeks, I will start to unpack dreams and look at basic dream interpretation. Next week I will also offer some suggestions to help your dream life to be more active.

Prophetic Activations / Exercises to incorporate into your week:

Every week I list 5 prophetic activations/exercises under children/family, group, beginner, intermediate and advanced. The purpose of these exercises is to practice to help us hear God’s voice in a clearer manner. They sharpen our senses to hear and see and sense God and His way of communicating with us. This enables us to grow in our relationship with God and also to impart to others what God tells us for them. Feel free to use as many of these activations each week as you can. The more you practice, the sharper you become at hearing God’s voice. Enjoy! Remember that whenever you give another person a prophetic word or picture etc, please make sure that it is encouraging, edifying (strengthening) and comforting (1 Corinthians 14:3) and that it comes from a place of love.

1. Children / Families Activation:  Go for a walk around your neighbourhood playground and pray a blessing over the park, equipment and families who will return there after the COVID-19 lockdown.

2. Group Activation: Ask every group member to bring a small object to the meeting (whether online during this COVID-19 time or in-person). Take it in turn to prophesy over each person in regard to their object and what God is showing you as a springboard to their life.

3. Beginner Activation: Ask God to show you how to express His love to your neighbour.

4. Intermediate Activation: Open your fridge and ask God to highlight an item. Use that item as a basis to write a prophetic word for a friend.

5. Advanced Activation: Spend time with God hearing and sensing His heart for a business owner in your local area who is needing to make a decision about the future of their business.

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