In the previous post, we were able to tell you the four avenues through which dream comes. We said dreams are from four distinct sources which are: God, Satan, natural activity of the day and the dream that comes from your thinking or what occupies your mind as you go to bed. Today, we are going to be talking about God as one of the sources of dream.
God Still Speaks Through Dreams Today
You see, both God and Satan could operate through the dream realm to speak to man. Man has the capacity to dream and decode whatever he receives in the dream because he’s a spirit being as well. God has been known for ages past to speak to people through dreams. He spoke to Joseph about his future through dreams. God spoke to king pharaoh of Egypt about the famine that was to come via the instrumentality of dream. Of course! we all learnt of the outcome of that dream given to Pharaoh as it saved the whole world from perishing in the famine.
Hope you still remember Joseph the husband of Mary, how God commanded him to take Mary his engaged wife to be; and also how God told him to take Jesus and his mother and escaped to Egypt. All these came via the process of dream. I can go on and on, telling you stories that are similar to this from the Bible. Hope you have not forgotten the story of king Nebuchadnezzar and the image of gold that God revealed to him through dream. Let’s look at the following verses of scriptures to buttress our stand further.
For God may speak in one way or the other, yet man does not perceive it. in a dream, in a vision of the night when deep sleep falls upon men while slumbering on their beds. Then He opens the ears of men, And seals their instruction. In order to turn man from his deed and conceal pride from man. He keeps back his soul from the pit. And his life from perishing by the sword (Job 33:14-18)
Then he dreamed and behold, a ladder was set up on the earth, and its top reached to heaven; and there the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And behold the Lord stood above it and said; I am the Lord God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land in which you lie, I will give to you and your descendants(Gen 28 : 12-13)
At Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, Ask! What shall I give you? (1kings 3:5)
But while he thought about these things, behold an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit (Matt 1:20)
Samuel said to Saul, “why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?” “I am in great distress,” Saul said. “The Philistines are fighting against me, and God has departed from me. He no longer answers me , either by prophets or by dreams. So I have called on you to tell me what to do.” (1Sam 28:15)
“In the last days, God says , I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. (Acts 2:17), (Joel 2:28)
Any dream that comes from God must be in agreement with His word. Since the scriptures make us to understand that God speaks to people through dreams, we must also know that God often speaks in a way that requires understanding and interpretation. But on the contrary, the devil and his agents like to imitate whatever God does. This is why we need to discern this before accepting it as been from God. Every dream must be judged and examined in the light of God’s word. To discern properly, we must call to mind whom God is. In other words, the dream must be in agreement with God’s word and His nature. We all know and believe that God is good, kind and merciful. God does not intimidate or condemn you. He is gentle and kind. God’s attributes and character will always remain the same as He speaks to you.
The scriptures make us to understand that God is Spirit. We are also aware through the scriptures and from nature or experience that man is a spirit being. We are created in the image and the likeness of God with those attributes of seeing, speaking, touching, tasting and feelings. God communicates or speaks as we do too. Since He is spirit being too, He uses various means to talk to us in the dream. God has been doing this from the beginning that He created man.
Characteristics Of God Given Dream
As earlier said, godly dreams are those dreams that come from God. In order to identify those dreams that come from God, it is highly imperative that we know the characteristics of a God given dream. You see, God passes messages across to both believers and unbelievers through their dreams. But unfortunately, not all these people take the pain to understand or listen to the instruction God is trying to get across to them. I have told people severally that there is no person that dies suddenly without first seeing the traces of the sign of death in his or her dream. It could be weeks or days before the actual death happens. Rather than many of them taking their dream seriously and take a positive step to ensure that the good dreams come to pass and make sure that the bad ones did not happen, they just fold their hands and allow circumstances and forces behind those evil dreams to dictate and destroy their destiny. Let’s examine some of the features of this God given dream that we are talking about.
It is peaceful: When God gives a dream to His children, it is always peaceful. God does not frighten you or make you afraid. The peace that accompanies such dream as you wake up is a sure sign that it is from God. He will not even intimidate you or coerce you into doing what He wants.
It is clean and clear: When you start having dreams where someone encourages you to do something that is dirty, sinful or contradict God’s word, you can be sure it is not from God. In addition to this, when you dream and see yourself in evil places or doing something dirty or nasty, it is not from God. Whenever God speaks to you through dream, it is always clean and clear.
It carries a definite message : You must know that out of the four sources of dreams, the least frequently occurred one is the dream that comes from God. The reason is because God doesn’t just interfere in the affairs of man without having a definite message to pass across. This is why I want to warn and strongly counsel that whenever God gives you a message or instruction in your dream, you had better obeyed and act accordingly and quickly. I have realized from experience over the years that whenever God speaks to me or passes message across to me in my dream, it is either a warning message that can affect the critical aspect of my life and destiny or something to prevent my life from being terminated unnecessarily. There was a time somebody was sent to me to find out if I was using charm or occult power. what has kept me alive today and kept me going has been the instruction I received more than thirty years ago where God unfolded His plan and purpose for my life in several dimensions of dreams. He revealed how they would come to terminate my life and how I should escape it when the time comes. But all these never happened until I surrendered my life to Him. Without mincing words, a God given dream will carry with it a definite message. The message was definite to pharaoh; it was specific to Joseph; it was definite to Nebuchadnezzar. Hence, one of the ways to know whether a dream is from God is to look out for the definite message that comes with it. If it has no clear and definite message, it is a clear indication that it isn’t from God. Then, you have no business acting on it.
The message we are talking about could be a warning message from God to prevent you from falling into a trap. It could even be about your future or about what you must do to get out of your present predicament. You see, the issue with people when they have problem is that they don’t watch out for God’s message concerning that situation. Rather, they start moving from one place to another seeking solution from places and sources that will further compound their problems.
It must be capable of being interpreted: While it is true that God speaks in parable most of the times, yet the dream from God carries with it the ability of being interpreted. In other words, God will never give a message that cannot be interpreted. Although, the dreamer may not be able to interpret it, yet God will make sure He positions somebody around you who is capable of giving meaning to your dream. The only thing here is that, interpreting dreams is a gift from God which is mostly given to believers. There are other unbelievers too who could interpret dreams but this will be to a certain level. That was why when Pharaoh and king Nebuchadnezzar had dreams, they called some of their wise men and those in the occult to help them with the interpretation as usual but they could not. (Dan1:17)
what do you think could have happened to the people of Egypt and the whole world if Joseph was not invited or if he had not given the accurate interpretation of that dream? of course, uncountable number of people would have perished in the famine. Do you still remember how Daniel gave the interpretation to the image of gold that king Nebuchadnezzar saw in a dream? All the wise men of the land would have been killed if Daniel had not interpreted the dream. How? because the king had vowed to kill all of them except an accurate interpretation is given to the dream. Do you now see that dreams and interpretation have a lot to do with life and destiny?
while it is true that it may be a bit hard at times to interpret the dream, yet it must be capable of being interpreted if it is from God. Even if the dream looks good but lacks clarity and cannot be interpreted, then throw it to the trash. There are certain things many of us did not know about God’s nature and attributes. You see, one of the ways God works as regards this is that before He reveals anything to a person through dream, He knows his ability, intelligence and spiritual maturity.
Although, there are some things that God may reveal to you that may be beyond your ability to interpret, yet He will always put somebody around you who can interpret that message. God would not have given the dream to pharaoh if there were no Joseph to interpret it. Nebuchadnezzar would not have had his own dream too if there were no Daniel to interpret it. Let me say this; the reason many people have dreams that are terrible and yet experience in the physical what happened to them in the dream is because they did not take pain to seek for the interpretation and take deliberate positive steps to deal with it. God did not want bad things to happen to us. That is why He gives us a message so that we might take caution. Unfortunately, many will just dismiss it as a mere dream.
It should Influence you to take immediate steps: The dream given by God should be able to change your mentality about certain things. The reason I believe God led me to blog about dream is to help people out of their situations and change their mindset about life generally. You see, I am a person God had allowed to have different kinds of dream in life. There was a time in my early life that I was even afraid to sleep at night due to consistent nightmares. There were also times in my early years that I was constantly having revelations and visions from God through night dreams. I have had dreams where I was tormented; where I had victory, failure and defeat. Most of these dreams I did not handle well or listen enough to God about, happened physically to me just like the way I had the dream.
But what I realized in all these is that God used it to change my mentality and perspectives about life. He made me to see many of these in my dream and instructed me on how to handle them. then, I began to see things differently. Many that I thought are my friends turned out to be evil and enemies while some that I thought are bad turned out to be innocent. Anyways, you will still see and read many of these testimonies from people around the world as we proceed in all the blog posts.
PURPOSE OF GOD GIVEN DREAM
God will never reveal anything to people without any reason behind it. The reason He gave king Pharaoh the dream during his time was to save the world from perishing from the famine. The reason he gave king Nebuchadnezzar the dream of image of gold was to reveal to him the kingdoms that will reign after him and to make him understand that the kingdom of man will not be forever. Moreover, Joseph the son of Jacob would not have been able to prepare well for his future if God had not revealed that future to him in his dream. Let’s look at some of the purposes of God given dream.
- To reveal God’s plan and purpose for a person (Gen 41:25-27)(Matt 1:20-23)
- To warn somebody of an impending danger (Gen 20:3)(Matt 2:3)
- To call your attention to something you need to act upon (Gen 20:3)
- To reveal your past, present and future in relation to your destiny (Gen 40:8)
- To give you a message for somebody and your generation (Gen 42:9)(Dan 7:1)
- To reveal certain secrets and mysteries to you that are capable of revolutionizing your life and ministry
- It is also an avenue through which God calls and ordains people into the ministry(Num 12:6)
- It could be a channel through which you are anointed or baptized in the Holy Spirit (Joel 2:28)
- God uses the instrumentality of dream to pass instruction to people concerning their present predicament.(Gen 40 :5-13)
- To establish a relationship and personal covenant with a person.(1Kgs 3:5-15)
- To give a person specific instruction (Matt 2:19-21)
- To lead a person in the way he should go. (Matt 2:19&20)
- To correct you of errors or mistakes you have made.(Gen 20:3)
- Dream is an avenue through which God delivers you from demonic attack and infiltration. (Gen 31:24)
In Conclusion
God given dream is always impactful and purposeful. The message that comes through the dream that God gives will impact your life in a way as to change your mentality for the rest of your life. This is because when God reveals His will and purpose for you through dream, your plans and pursuits will change as they will be redirected towards God given plan for your life which is always the best for everybody in the world.
