WHY DOES GOD USE DREAMS? --
HOW TO INTERPRET THE SYMBOLS
Job 33:14-18 tells us some
amazing truths about why God speaks to us in dreams. In verse 14 He says: “For
God may speak in one way, or in another, yet man does not perceive it.” That’s
just so true. How many times has the Lord tried to tell us what direction to go
or give us an answer to prayer and we just are too busy or too distracted to
really listen? But God is very clever.
So He’ll visit us when we’re
napping or sleeping, when our bodies are trying to slow down and rest, and we’re
in a more subconscious state. The Lord communicates with us, like it says in
verse 15-16: “In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls upon
men, while slumbering on their beds. Then He open the ears of men, and seals
their instruction.”
Why? “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” (vv. 17-18). Everything the Lord does
for us is to give us a wonderful life. So what this section of scripture is
telling us is that He will try to get to us in any way He can, and since He
already knows we sometimes don’t listen so well when we’re awake, He
communicates with us while our body and soul take a rest.
In studying what the Bible
says about dreams and visions, I’ve seen that God either talks very directly,
or He communicates with symbols. Proverbs 25:2 tells us: “It is the glory of
God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter.” We
are those kings, as John tells us in Revelation 1:5-6: “Jesus Christ has made
us kings and priests unto God.”
Both the clear dreams and
the symbolic dreams are very intimate from God’s point of view, but the dreams
with symbols require us to do some searching. Because we have to search for
what the symbols mean, the journey necessarily requires a more intimate
relationship with the Lord.
There are lots of books on
interpreting dreams, but I never quite knew which ones were “right,” so I
pretty much avoided them. Two books would interpret the same symbol in two
different ways. Then I heard a Bible teaching on dreams that made sense as far
as sources for symbol interpretation. They are:
1.
Think about what
the symbol means to you personally
2.
Look up the meanings
of the items in your dream in the Bible itself
3.
Look up their
meanings a Dictionary
4.
Get the help of
the Holy Spirit. “The
helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things” (John 14:26).
One important
thing, before we go looking up dream meanings, is to actually get some clear
details on the dream. “Write the vision and make it plain on tablets, that he
may run who reads it.” In this case, that would be us! The dreams I remember are usually the ones I
have right before I wake up in the morning. The other morning, I tried to
remember my dream and it was amazing how much more became clear as I began to
write the dream down.
So even as you
write down the dream, the Holy Spirit will teach you some things about what the
dream means. And remember that it is YOUR dream, so some items in the dream
will be specific to you. For instance, “a cream-yellow car” for me would
indicate the dream has something to do with my grandparents. If you had a
cream-yellow car in your dream, you would not be thinking of my grandparents.
So, you start to
look at the dream and if you aren’t exactly sure what God is trying to tell
you, start with one of the main items in the dream. My dream the other night
had two kinds of chairs in it. I examined the two chairs and asked myself, “What’s
the difference between these two chairs?” In other words, what do the chairs
mean to me personally? When I answered that, the next thing I did was look up “chair”
online at https://www.blueletterbible.org
and found the Hebrew (OT) and Greek (NT) words and definitions for chair.
It’s so awesome
to look up the definitions of words used in the Bible. When you read the
definition that is right for your dream, the Holy Spirit resonates with your
heart and you know it’s the one that makes sense. Then you can look up chair in
the Dictionary and the Holy Spirit will do the same with the definitions there.
I know this
sounds fairly simple and it is. God doesn’t want it to be complicated. He wants
you to get the message and He knows if you really want to receive it, you will
do what it takes to find it out.
“It is the glory of God to
conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter” (Prov. 25:2).
The word “glory” means “abundance, riches, honor and splendor”. God wants us to
have this glory and when we discover the meaning of some of those dream
messages from the Lord, that’s exactly what happens.
Because I was an admitted
dream skeptic, I wanted to be convinced that dreams were from God. I wanted to
know they contained important messages from the Lord, not just a re-hash of my everyday
circumstances. So I looked up multitudes of scriptures and records in the Bible
on dreams and visions. In my next article, I will be sharing some of them with
you. You’re going to be just as amazed as I was!
Love, Carolyn
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my books and booklets on your Christmas list? They are inexpensive and valuable
gifts for yourself or someone you love.
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