Biblical Foundation for Receiving from God through Dreams and Visions Delete Topic|Reply to Topic

Dreams Visions and Pictures

Why bother to seek an interpretation for your dreams?

Because God is speaking through them. Dreams are often our answers to
prayer, from God.

Many think prayer is a one-way conversation with God and this is the extent
of what we can expect from Him in our earthly relationships with Him. Many
expect that we have to wait until we get to heaven to have a real interactive
relationship with God. Since the day that I began seeking God through
dreams and visions one of the greatest blessings in my life is learning that
when we pray we can expect an answer back, in this lifetime, and even this
week.

Too often people have a mixed up idea of what prayer and hearing from God
truly is. I can remember a time in my life when I was taught, and I also
thought, that prayer was asking God for things. I actually felt as though I did
my religious duty for the day if I asked God for something. I may not have
been specifically taught that prayer was a one-way conversation with God but
I definitely assumed that it was.

On one particular day, in the middle of working at my desk, I can remember
asking God for something - taking approximately fifteen seconds to do it and
actually feeling as though I fulfilled my religious obligation for the day (or
even the month). Then, I went right back to working without giving it a
second thought.

I was abruptly interrupted not long afterward with one of the first very clear
messages from God to me. He said, "Are you going to serve me or do you
expect me to serve you?"

In that one question God captured the essence of what my perception of Him
was. I perceived prayer to be dropping off my laundry list of things that I
expected Him to answer and, admittedly, I viewed God as some Intergalactic
Dispenser of Prayer Requests. Although God does answer prayers for the
ignorant, as He did for me for many years - sometimes incredibly, this method
of treatment will not yield much in the pursuit of divine communication and
manifestation of the presence of God in your life.

While preparing to explain how God communicates to us through dreams and
vision the Lord showed me a vision of a scene from the movie Aladdin. In one
particular scene the genie is explaining how frustrated he is with being a
genie always at the beck and call of a rub of the lamp. He illustrates this by
popping up with a "POOF", and says, "What do you need" and then, repeats
this illustration several times, "POOF"....."What do you need", "POOF"..............
"What do you need."

God is saying that this is how people see Him and treat Him, as though He
were a genie in a bottle whom is only brought out when there is a need to be
met, expected to answer immediately, and then to return right back to the
bottle - but He really wants to hear from us and He wants for us to hear from
Him.

God does indeed bless the wicked and the righteous (and even the pure in
heart who are completely ignorant) because He is a good God (Mt 5).
Therefore, in spite of the fact that some people treat Him like a genie in the
bottle, He still answers their prayers simply because He is good. But if this is
the case in your life, you are missing out on a true, living, breathing,
relationship with the God of all Creation. God wants to talk to you. He wants
to answer the questions in your life and He is answering them, but are your
recognizing His voice when He speaks to you?

When we begin to seek God simply for Who He Is, and when we seek Him
with our whole heart - He responds. Unfortunately for many, they do not
recognize Him when He is speaking and so, they accuse Him of not answering
their prayers and the growth of a developing interactive relationship with Him
is halted.

Job 33:13 13 Why do you complain to him
that he answers none of man's words [NIV] ?
14"Indeed God speaks once, [NASB)]
Or twice, yet no one notices it.
15"In a dream, a vision of the night,
When sound sleep falls on men,
While they slumber in their beds,
16Then He opens the ears of men,
And seals their instruction,
17That He may turn man aside from his conduct,
And keep man from pride;
18He keeps back his soul from the pit,
And his life from passing over into Sheol.

As this paragraph of scripture states, the way that God responds to our
prayers is often through our dreams but we don't recognize it. We speak to
God in our carnal, human, language and He replies to us in His spiritual
language - through dreams and visions. We have not been taught this
profoundly important principle in scripture, a principle that is written as
plain as day: When man prays, God responds through dreams, and as a
result they don't recognize it.

God spoke to man through dreams and visions in almost every key bible
account: Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Solomon, Saul, Gideon, Laban, Pharaoh,
Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel, Joseph - Mary's husband, Pilot's wife, and Peter to
name few. Unfortunately, instead of recognizing that God speaking in this
fashion was common we have been taught that these are exceptional
situations. The reality was, and we get a glimpse of it in the story of Joseph,
that people expected to hear from God through dreams and visions and were
well versed in symbolism.

In the story of Joseph, we see that he tells his brothers and his father his
dreams. Neither his brothers nor his father spent any time wondering over
what the symbols were, they recognized the symbolism immediately and were
quite offended by what the dream suggested. Their keen perception of the
symbolism in Joseph's dream suggests they were very fluid in dream
interpretation. Jacob no doubt taught his children that God speaks through
dreams and visions and undoubtedly recounted the number of incredible
dreams in which God spoke to him, as a result they expected to hear from
God and paid close attention.

One could make the assumption that Jacob, Joseph, and Pharaoh were
special. Of course God would go out of His way to talk to them through their
dreams, but I'm not special so I don't expect it to happen. I believe the Lord
put the dreams of the baker and the butler in the bible to dispel any such
assumption. While the butler could also be considered significant since the
interpretation of his dream led Joseph to Pharaoh's court, the baker's dream
held no so such significance. There was virtually no value in giving him a
dream of the future, other than as a biblical example that no matter who the
individual was they expected to receive divine messages through their dreams
and visions, and they did.

The butcher and baker were everyday people given prophetic dreams of the
future, taking the messages seriously, and seeking an interpretation.
Biblically, people expected God to speak through dreams so the first thing
that they did with their dreams is to tell them, they sought an interpretation,
and then they acted on the interpretation.

How can we expect to communicate with God when we've been taught that
His primary means of communicating with us is not valid? We've been tricked
into believing that God definitely speaks He just isn't speaking to us yet....
because we aren't holy enough yet or we aren't good enough yet or maybe He
just doesn't talk to everybody. When the truth is, He has been talking to us
all of our lives. We just haven't recognized it. Think how effectively we've
been cut off from God because we have believed that dreams are not a valid
form of anything.

We've been taught by our society that the way God speaks to us, through
dreams - as the bible establishes, is not valid. We've been taught that our
dreams are rehashing the days events or various other lies meant to destroy
communication between God and His children. It is time that we wake up
and begin fellowship with the Lord like we were meant to be: Speaking to Him
and hearing Him speak back.

Who would benefit from convincing us that God is no longer speaking to us
through dreams and visions? Who would benefit from cutting off our
communication with God?

God's enemy has convinced us that we have never experienced God speaking
to us. God's enemy has convinced many of usof the following lies regarding
communication with God:

God only speaks in a voice you can clearly hear.
God sends an angel to become physically manifested when He wants to
speak with us.
God's voice is something we don't have the skill to discern.
We haven't reached that spiritual place where God will speak to us.
We aren't good enough.
God just isn't going to talk to us because He stopped communicating
with people when the bible was written, or when the last apostle died.

The truth is, God speaking to us is so common that our enemy has had to
convince us that His voice is not His voice (dreams and visions) to keep us
from the benefits of a relationship with Him.

How ridiculous is it to think that the God who created us for fellowship with
Him stopped interacting with us through dreams and visions, the way He has
always interacted with humans, and instead expects us to simply know Him
through the bible instead of through a real, interactive relationship with Him?

The world needs less religion and more of a relationship with God. We need
to have a REAL relationship with Him. One where we hear Him, speak to
Him, look to Him for guidance when we need it with full assurance that He is
truly going to answer us because He will and He wants to.

God has not stopped communicating through dreams and visions. The
manner in which He communicated in biblical times still applies today!
Dreams and visions occur in this day and age. God still communicates with us
through them, so it is important that we understand dreams and visions in
order to fully receive His messages.