~ A place to find answers to gnawing spiritual questions ~
Question: What do I do with all my dreams and visions I am having?Answer: Respectfully, I'd like to note, although I appreciate a pointed, brief question, yours was general to the degree of not allowing me to answer it specifically. What kind of dreams? Your visions, were they while awake or asleep? Why are you bothered by them, etc.?
However, let's look at dreams in general. Then let's look at what the Bible implies about them. Perhaps, such an investigation will give us some insight.
First, dreams are not only very normal events, they are necessary. On average a person dreams 90 minutes for every 8 hours of sleep. Studies have shown that dream time is a necessary part of the sleep cycle. If a person is prevented from dreaming by special procedures in laboratory studies, that person's waking behavior is altered. Everybody dreams, even those who claim they've never had a dream. Some never, unless awakened in laboratories, remember them. Thus, dreaming is simply a normal activity inseparable from and necessary to normal sleep.
Second (and this is from a very limited understanding and knowledge), the sources of dreams are understandable:
- The main source is our memories we made in conscious states. The confusion of our dreams isn't from the material of our dreams, but from how our sleeping mind connects and associates it. In a dream a memory from 20 years ago may be connected with a memory of the day before. Thus, even the weirdness and craziness of our dreams can be traced to the hodge podging of disassociated memories from various times and events of our lives. The new conglomeration gets crazy. Here, I think that there are things we'd agree effect how our mind arranges our memories in sleep. One would be a strong emotional experience of the day. Another would be the physical state of our body. Too much food or fever certainly effects what our mind does with our memories. Thus we have the old question in response to someone telling us a crazy dream, "Did you eat a lot of pizza before you went to bed last night?" The third thing that effects our sleeping mind's handling of our memories in dreams leads to another source, the one that follows.
- As we sleep, external stimuli that is actually occurring can be incorporated into our dream. A wind storm hits outside. We hear it while asleep, and in our dream it becomes the roar of a jet engine. A passing emergency vehicle with its siren blazing actually becomes a part of our dream. The door bell rings and in our dream we are a kid listening to the neighbor's doorbell ring after we pushed it as a joke and ran. This possibility leads me to another source.
- The supernatural world can influence our sleep. This could be the evil realm. Many a nightmare has awakened a person to the feeling of an evil presence in the room. Now a naturalist might say the disturbing dream resulted in the hangover fear when the person awoke. But a Christian world view, though not denying that possibility, would observe that an actual evil presence affected the dream of the person just as the passing siren did. The Devil definitely can speak to our minds while we are awake. Could he not do so while we are asleep, troubling our dreams? The Christian need not fear this; for only those suggestions of the devil that God intends to work through for good in our lives will God allow to get through to us in our dreams. He'll deafen and protect our sleeping minds from all others. This matter of outside influence on our dreams opens us to the possibility that God or one of His ambassadors (such as an angel) can speak to us as we sleep and that be incorporated into our dreams. And, of course, God as Creator, can simply nudge the workings of our mind to result in the message He wants us to receive. This probably opens a lot of theological, physiological, and psychological questions that we need to avoid for the purpose of this answer.
The very nature of dreams might help us understand their significance.
- Dreams are sensory. We only dream what we have sensed and are able to sense. A person who has been blind all his life, never has dreams in which he sees something. A deaf person(especially one who has always been so) never dreams of sound. It is impossible. Helen Keller's dreams consisted only from what she could sense through touch. This shows the naturalness of our dreams, but also shows how our dreams are influenced by our senses.
- Dreams are most usually passive. In dreams things happen to a person. Rarely is a person actively aggressive about anything in a dream.
- Dreams only deal with the immediate present. They may be made of things of the past, and, if from God, may tell of the future, but while we dream we experience them in the present.
I think also that there are three possible dimensions to dreams:
- There is the intellectual. It is our brain at work. Often, unhindered by the many distractions of waking moments, our intellect is unleashed in dreams. Personally, I remember in high school struggling with a particularly difficult Algebra problem before going to bed. All night in my dreams I struggled at working that problem. Suddenly, in my dreams I solved the long problem and woke up quickly writing down the steps and the answer. Nothing supernatural. Just my thinking capacity unhampered by the distractions of the world of the awake.
- There is the ethical dimension. Often, the rawest of our basic desires and hidden fantasies manifest themselves in our dreams. Some are just from the Adamic, fallen nature of our being. Others arise from harbored evil in our characters.
- Then there is the spiritual. Sometimes, as I've said before, God does speak through dreams. The message was intended to be spiritual and was spiritually induced. But spiritual people can garnish spiritual truths from dreams just as they could from a visit to the Alamo. Spiritual applications of natural dreams are fine as long as they are not introduced as a "God spoke to me..."
Now, the Bible record is clear that God spoke to people in the Bible in dreams and visions (visions being dreamlike experiences when one is awake). But remember that if God speaks to a person through a dream, that is just what He is doing--speaking, communicating. It should be a simply conclusion that God is completely capable of communicating through whatever mode He chooses. That means that if it is God speaking through a dream, there will be no wondering or guessing. It will be clear it is of God and it will be clear what He is saying--no guessing or presuming. From the Bible record, as far as I can remember, when God spoke through dreams, the gist was immediately understood, or God sent an interpreter, or He made it clear that, yes, it was He that was speaking, but He was withholding the interpretation for the time being.
What must be remember is, that although God may yet today speak to someone through a dream, His primary way of speaking to us is through His Word. Secondly, He speaks to us through the witness of the Spirit in our hearts that becomes clear through prayer. Dreams today should never be taken as Revelation. Nor should they be taken alone. If they are of God, they will confirm what God is speaking to us through His Word and Spirit. Hebrews chapter one says that God used to speak to His people in many different ways, but now He speaks to us through His Son. His Son is the Word in the flesh, but we have the Word in print. That is how He speaks to us.
As a pastor, one thing I always ask a person who has a struggle with something--whatever area it might be in--is, "Have you been feeding this problem?" If the problem is lust, have they been feeding that lust through movies, pornography etc. The same with bad dreams. Are they being fed? For example, if a person is watching horror movies, reading science fiction, listening to scary stories, most certainly that will affect his dreams. That is only an example. There would be many ways to feed a dream. That is why some of the sweetest dreams are when one unintentionally falls asleep while praying and seeking God. What he is experiencing in God becomes the stuff of his dreams. In this sense we are responsible for our dreams--not for the dream itself, but for the stuff we provide out of which our dreams will be made.
I'd like to offer some cautions and boundaries.
Paul was clear that he never wanted anything to hinder the expression of spiritual gifts, but that they must be brought within boundaries. My sincere advice is...
- Never let dreams and visions become you primary source of guidance or spiritual enlightment. The Bible must remain the primary means from which we strive to hear God's voice. Any experience, such as dreams and visions, must be brought under the Scripture's scrunity. The Bible alone must be the guiding influence of our lives. Dreams and visions must never take precedent. I'm not saying that you have put the premium on dreams over the Word, it just seems to me to be a needed caution. To be opened to the supernatural of the spiritual realm is to be just that--opened to the supernatural of the spiritual realm. Without constantly checking with the absolutes of God's Word, the enemy can easily move in. The book of Jeremiah is a good book to read to get a feel of of true messages from God versus false messages one assumes are from God.
- Dreams and visions are experiences. Experiences are wonderful. They are thrilling. The only trouble is, they give little growth to our life. It is a committment to the principles and doctrines of the Bible that bring growth to our lives. A thrilling experience may be the catalyst, but it is the daily learning, obeying and adhering to the doctrines and teachings of Scripture that preserve our life in God and result in growth.
- Concerning your dreams that give revelations about other people, I think of what one man said. I can't remember who, but I believe that it was Oswald Chambers (or perhaps A.W. Tozer). He said something to the effect, "God never reveals something to someone so they can criticize that person; only that they might intercede for that person."
Please, don't think I'm assuming any error in your experiences or your life. As a pastor it is instinctive in me to give cautions.
This answer, I'm sure, is getting to be like a bad dream so I'll quit providing the stuff for it.
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