October 25, 2009

Dream the dreams of God!

Joel 2:28-29 “And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit upon all people, Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days.” NIV

Yesterday we were talking about the fact, that God is speaking to us. We were looking at Samuel and how God was calling him in the night hour. Let's take a brief look at dreams and how God chooses to talk to us through them. For years scientists and academics have been researching the human dream life; trying to find out why we dream and what dreams mean. They come up with all different kind of statistics but dreams still seem to be a mystery they can't fully explain. Even so, there are some interesting facts about dream life in general that can help us understand more about this one of many ways of how God is speaking to his children.
We spend about a third of our life sleeping. Why would God choose not to speak to us, when we are already in a state of being quiet? In 1. Samuel, God calls Samuel as he laid down. The more time we make for God, the more we quiet ourselves, we grant him access to speak into our lifes. Thank you Lord, for speaking to us through dreams! We simply need to learn to interprete dreams rightly. People tend to believe that dreams are either simply nonsense or that every symbol has a meaning. I personally believe, that God constantly uses dreams to speak to us; however, we can influence our dream life. Did you ever experince, that you go through seasons where your dreams reflect your day or a certain situation you go through? Sometimes our thought life is so busy with those things that we can't still our thoughts. In those seasons, our dreams often times are influenced by that.
Dreams are symbolic. God speaks to us through dreams, but they are often times symbolic. Because many people don't know enough about the symbolism, dreams appear meaningless. But the more we learn what the different symbols mean, the more we are able to interprete dreams more accurately and we learn to understand the way the Lord speaks to us.
Different symbols can mean different things to you and me. God speaks to you in a marvelous and unique way, in a way that he speaks to no one else. But as we are still getting to know his language, we can get confused. I definitely recommend reading books about dreams that will help you better understand hearing God's voice in the night time. One very helpful book is “Understanding the dreams you dream” by Ira Milligan.
We forget about 90% of our dream within the first 10 min after awakening. Because of that, it is very important to write your dreams down. The enemy is at work. He tries to steal the dreams God gives you. That's why we can at times completely forget what a dream was about just shortly after awakening. Even though a dream might seem to be insignificant or doesn't make sense to you as you wake up; it is always good to keep track of your dreams by writing them out, including the date and time. Some dreams might never make sense, but some will - a few days, weeks or even months later. I often times dream dreams, that don't make sense to me at first, but some time later I look back and suddenly realize how powerful a dream really is that I didn't understand before. Just reading it again suddenly opens up a new understanding.

God gives us a powerful tool through his dreams. My prayer for you is that you will learn how to listen to his voice even as you sleep. May he open up your understanding to interprete the dreams he gives you and to let them become powerful tools in your hand in your daily walk with the Lord. If you don't have a developed dream life yet, I pray that you will dream the dreams of God. Lord, pour out your Spirit upon your people! Amen.