God Speaks Through Dreams

“‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke; the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.'”
—Acts 2:17-21

At my church’s VBS last week, the theme revolved around Joseph, the one who by God’s revelation saved all of the known biblical world. God spoke that plan of salvation to Joseph through dreams.

Evangelicals don’t do well with dreams. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in the average church who would claim to have the gift of interpreting dreams. In most churches, the mere mention of the role of dreams in directing the church, planning for the future, or meeting the needs of people too afraid to share their needs publicly will get you an initial blank stare that morphs into that “I smell a heretic” scowl.

Yet any pass through the Bible reveals dreams to be a common means of God speaking to and guiding individuals, groups, and nations.

Which is why the enormous pushback by some Christians against dreams is a big problem.

That passage in Acts that starts this post…a few questions:

1. Is the Bible the authority for how we should conduct our lives?

2. Are we still in the Last Days?

3. Is the Holy Spirit still being poured out?

If you answer yes to all three questions (and you should), then guess what? You affirm that God speaks to people today through dreams.

See, that wasn’t so hard, was it? 😉

Fact is, there’s no biblical argument that can be formed against dreams as a contemporary, God-ordained means of revelation. None.

Despite that truth, we Western Christians get upset at the idea of using dreams as a way to order our lives and the life of the Church. Why? Because dreams are messy and sometimes weird. And man, do we Westerners hate anything messy and weird in our churches! Still, that says more about our own foibles than it does about the veracity of dreams as a form of approved divine revelation.

I strongly believe, though, that our automatic rejection of any kind of God-ordained revelation that occurs outside the Bible’s chapters and verses is a major flaw in the contemporary Church. As much as I love the Bible and affirm it as the final arbiter of truth, the Bible may not speak to specific situations that are not explicitly stated in its pages. Yet the need for specific answers remains.

A case in point: For a church looking for a new pastor, the Bible does not say which of five great candidates would be the best choice. How then do we choose if all five meet the Bible’s exacting criteria for the role of pastor? By drawing straws? By hoping that the other four will get calls from other churches and leave us with only one candidate? By relying on our intellects to scry out the right man?

When the early Church had a similar issue, this is how it was resolved:

Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a member of the court of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.
—Acts 13:1-3

Plenty of good candidates, but the Spirit did not select Simeon, Lucius, and Manaen for the work, did He?

This is how the Church is to function in those specific, individual situations to which the Bible does not directly speak: by listening to the Holy Spirit’s extra-biblical voice.

I know that rubs a lot of people the wrong way. I’m sorry. Man up, because this is what the Scriptures say in response:

Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good.
—1 Thessalonians 5:19-21

So rather than tossing out all extra-biblical revelations—dreams included—we are to test them. We then retain and act on those that pass the tests.

We’re doing that, right? No? You say we’re just throwing them all out instead?

*Sigh.*

Should we be surprised then when our churches seem adrift and lacking in direction? Or when our rational church decisions produce irrational results? And what about when bad things happen to good people because no one bothered to address what may have been an unrevealed, yet fixable, problem before it got out of hand?

What would have happened to the biblical world if Joseph had despised his dreams and the dreams of others? Would we even have a Bible?

A city surrounded by enemies decides that maintaining a city army is messy, demanding, and costly. So despite what the city charter says, the city leaders decide to disband the army. When the barbarians storm the gates, won’t there be regrets for what was ignored?

Yet this happens all the time in our churches because we simply do not want to deal with dreams (and other types of supernatural revelation) as a means of legitimately hearing from God.

When I was about 18, I had a dream that a friend drove onto some train tracks and his car stalled just as a train was coming. The dream was so frightening and vivid that I awoke and started praying for my friend.

Just a few hours later, that friend told me how he’d been out in the wee hours of the morning when his car stalled on railroad tracks just as a train was coming. He couldn’t start the car and worried that he would have to leave it on the tracks, only to find his door refusing to open. But one last twist of the key got the car started, and he drove off the tracks just moments before the train came hurtling through.

What if I had ignored that dream and not prayed for my friend right then? Do you think the outcome would have been different? I do.

Someone else was blessed because I took action regarding the content of a dream.

For several years, a terrifying recurring nightmare troubled me in my 20s. The dream was always the same. I’d awake thrashing and in a sweat, my heart pounding.

I was fortunate that the University of Cincinnati is known for sleep research, so there are a greater than average number of folks in the area who deal with sleep and dreams. I was able to find a Christian man who helped people understand their dreams. He and I spent several months working on my recurring nightmare, plus other dreams.

In the end, God gave us an answer to what the nightmare meant. Once I understood, I was able to take specific actions that resolved the issue behind it. The nightmare then ceased.

I was blessed because I took action regarding the content of a dream.

More recently, I had a recurring dream that troubled me. Going back about six years, I’d have this one dream about once a year. Then 18 months ago or so, I started having the dream about once or twice a month. I was stymied by what to do about the dream because it didn’t fit real life situations as I knew them. Nothing in the dream conformed, so I excused myself from taking action because I rationalized away the need to do anything.

Just a few days ago, I found out that this recurring dream had sadly come true. The dream proved more real than the shadowed appearance of “reality.”

I did nothing about a dream. A sad outcome resulted. Now I can’t do much about that outcome.

I believe that the outcome would have been different if I had prayed fervently about the dream, despite the seeming nonsense of it. Instead, I disbanded the army and let the barbarians storm the gates.

Four steps we can take to restore the value of dreams in our lives and in the life of the Church:

1. Believe that God wants us to listen to our dreams — He IS speaking to us, so we need to heed what He is saying.

2. Respect recurring dreams — If a dream (or dream theme) recurs, it may be God’s way of demanding our attention because the dream is important. (Genesis 41:32 — “And the doubling of Pharaoh’s dream means that the thing is fixed by God, and God will shortly bring it about.”)

3. Pray — Ask God for the following:

a. Discernment — We need to know which dreams are genuinely from Him (and not from the triple-meat pizza we ate before bedtime) and require us to take notice and action.

b. Interpretation — We must always ask for an interpretation of dreams, either by the Holy Spirit’s illumination within us or by the wise words of those blessed with a gift of interpreting dreams.

c. Direction — We must take action on God-ordained dreams once interpreted.

4. Share our dreams with other believers— A dream may not mean much alone, but when similar dreams are shared by others, a pattern may emerge; so if a dream seems vivid, don’t be afraid to talk it out with wise believers and other Christian dreamers.

Someone’s going to say it, though: “But Dan, can’t dreams be misinterpreted or mistaken?”

Yes, they can. But that’s OUR fault. Consider this:

And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I have had a dream, and there is no one who can interpret it. I have heard it said of you that when you hear a dream you can interpret it.” Joseph answered Pharaoh, “It is not in me; God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer.”
—Genesis 41:15-16

Joseph understood the source of interpretation. If we genuinely operate in the Spirit with regard to dreams and their interpretations, God is faithful to provide answers; He is the interpreter. Like Joseph, we must be tapped into God if we are to handle dreams correctly.

Here is the starting point for handling all dreams correctly: We establish the Bible alone as the arbiter of the meaning behind a dream and its interpretation.

If I have a dream in which I leave my wife and kid and become a meth dealer, the meaning of that dream is most certainly NOT that I should leave my wife and kid and become a meth dealer. No dream interpretation or subsequent action on that interpretation should violate Scripture—ever. Scripture stands as the authority over all dreams, interpretations, and actions taken.

This is not to say that the dream itself can’t be awful or that events in the dreams can’t stand contrary to Scripture. Just as people in the Bible sometimes act contrary to the will of God, the events of dreams may portray sin. It may be that God is trying to root out sin in our lives or in the lives of someone we know. Proceed cautiously, though.

If you or I have a dream, will God be angry with us if we take the simple baby step of praying about it? Will we be chastened by Him for taking everything—including our dreams—to Him in prayer?

If we take dreams seriously and always pray about them, I think God will bless us in mind-boggling ways. Yes, some dreams will prove to be nothing more than too much TV before bedtime, but God’s not going to be angry if we take even that dream to Him in prayer. It will just peter off into nothing of any consequence—except that we spent a little more precious time before the God who loves us.

The ramifications of ignoring dreams are huge, though. In the face of an approaching famine, the words of God that come to us in dreams may be all that stand between life and death.

So, what’s the problem with us and dreams?

Evangelicals and the Realm of the Supernatural

On Saturday, I was out walking my property and something clicked in my head. One of those seemingly obvious bits of insight, yet it only came together at that moment. Call it a Unified Supernatural Field Theory of Evangelicalism, sort of the holy grail of understanding most evangelical churches’ positions on the supernatural.

Consider these passages:

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
—1 Peter 5:8
Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
—Ephesians 6:11-12

When you ask many evangelicals to name what opposes them, you’re likely to get a number of answers, but I’m not sure the number one answer would be Satan.

M.C. Escher gets all supernatural

If you read a lot of Reformed/Calvinist books or blogs, Satan is barely a footnote—very odd considering what the Bible says of his place as the prime foe of the Christian. My own experience as part of two large, conservative Presbyterian churches would confirm that Reformed/Calvinist churches tend to place sin over Satan as the primary source of opposition, though sinfulness is a state of being not a personal foe. The Bible, on the other hand, is quite clear (as the two passages above note) that the foe is an entity, the devil.

Consider this: If an enemy drops a bomb on you, the bomb is not your foe; the person who tossed it is. Yet if one reads enough Reformed/Calvinist literature, it’s impossible to escape the reality that the devil doesn’t get much mention, with sin getting almost all the press. This, at least to me, seems a major oversight.

In many other Evangelical churches today, especially nondenominational, the devil gets a minor mention (as does sin), but the real enemy is made out to be negative thoughts patterns and practices. Again, this avoids the very real teaching that our foe is a being.

There’s a reason why these blinders exist.

The problem with these two viewpoints is they both avoid the truth that the enemy of the Christian is a supernatural entity that can’t be dealt with by human knowledge or through behavior modification. Yet this is how we deal with him in too many of our churches because to deal with him as a supernatural being necessitates holding a worldview that is consistently open to the daily intersection of the supernatural world with our own.

And the supernatural is…well, messy. It involves all sorts of nonrational thinking and practice, which scares the willies out of folks who like to be able to wrap their brains around everything they equate with the realm of God.

So I think that the reason you hear almost nothing about the prime foe of the Christian in large swaths of Evangelicalism is that acknowledging him as a supernatural being mandates believing that the supernatural is the “natural” state of the Christian life. By relegating the devil to a mere mention now and then some evangelicals think they can avoid dealing with the plane beyond this existence. In fact, I would say there’s a distinct inverse relationship: The more an evangelical places the opposition to the Christan in non-demonic sources, the less likely he or she will be to accept visions, charismata, and “mystical experiences” as part of the normal Christian life.

This argument may seem obvious to some of you, but it explains a great deal.

I also find it interesting that we possess this tendency to write off the devil and blame our problems on everything BUT him. Again, though, the Bible clearly states that he and his minions are the foe. And by purposefully downplaying his position as the opponent of the Christian, we naturally underestimate him.

This makes for problems for a Church not given to seeing the devil in his true guise. If anything, the entire book of Revelation depicts an entity doing its damndest, quite literally, to cause as much anguish and horror as possible before it’s cast into the lake of fire. We underestimate such a foe at our own peril, and I would say that, in many ways, we already have. Worse, by underestimating him, we’ve reduced our reliance on the supernatural power available to us Christians to combat the Enemy and use the tools the Lord Jesus gave us to defeat him.

Remember folks: This is not a flesh and blood battle, but a supernatural one.

100 Truths in 30 Years with Christ

'The Thinker' by Auguste Rodin This year (2007) marks my 30-year anniversary of coming to Christ. I met Him at a Lutheran camp on a confirmation retreat weekend. Even to this day, I can remember much of that evening.

I’ve kept my eyes, ears, and spirit open over that time, storing away what I’ve learned. Obviously, what I share here isn’t the sum total of all I’ve learned, just some basic truths God taught me that inform my every day.

I hope these observation get you thinking and praying. Most of all, I pray that they are a blessing that brings lasting fruit for the Kingdom. Thanks for being a reader.

In no particular order…

Love God. Love people. It’s that simple.
Anytime we interact with another person, we should ask the Lord, In what ways can I help this person grow closer to You?
Christians who take time to observe the world around them see God and gain wisdom.
The most worthy lessons of the Kingdom take the entirety of one’s life to fully learn.
You are never more alone than in an unfriendly church.
God could directly feed the widows and the orphans with manna from heaven, but He instead chose us in the Church to bake the bread through the resources He’s already given us and then distribute it.
The world is tired of hearing Christians talk about the Gospel; they want to see it actually lived.
In the end, nothing in life satisfies but Jesus.
It’s a terrible indictment against men and young people in the American Church that old women are praying most of the intercessory prayers.
Always lead with love. Love should precede every act we perform in the name of Christ and love should be the finale.
Small home groups are fantastic for relationship-building, prayer, and sharing, but usually not the best venue for serious Bible study (especially if they’re co-ed).
Admonish an adult once, perhaps twice, then turn the issue over to the Lord in prayer. Never hound people.
We won’t find ourselves transformed, much less change the world, if we pray less than an hour a day.
Most Evangelicals have little or no understanding of the Holy Spirit.
The American Church needs to learn a truth Ben Franklin uttered at the signing of the Declaration of Independence: “We must all hang together, gentlemen…else, we shall most assuredly hang separately.”
Too many Evangelicals long to see Jesus thrash those they view as heretics rather than help them come to a better understanding of truth.
One of the most easily seen fruits in mature Christians is that they pray for people who oppose them rather than complain about them.
A simple truth we constantly forget: Do unto others as we would have them do unto us.
If all other aspects of Sunday meetings were removed, prayer would be the one untouchable, yet we spend less time doing it in our meetings than anything else.
The mature Christian is more concerned with being loving all the time than being correct all the time.
Each of use should know our neighbors’ names and the names of their children. We should also know their birthdays, if possible, because the card we send might be the only one they receive. And that’s a powerful witness.
It is a sign of our trustworthiness as Christians that other people seek us out when they need help. If that’s not the case, then something is wrong with our witness.
There is no shame in confessing a need, especially before fellow believers. That’s one reason why the Church exists.
Many of Evangelicalism’s most intractable problems would vanish if we adopted the confessional booth.
We must start seeing discipleship in terms of an entire lifespan and not what we can accomplish in the moment.
Preaching is most effective when it’s lived by the preacher.
We do a great disservice to families in our churches when we split them up the second they hit the lobby.
If we wish to see the American Church be all She can be, then let’s welcome persecution.
A youth minister’s primary responsibility isn’t to teens directly but to their parents. A good youth minister teaches parents how to teach their own teens, leaving the bulk of the responsibility to them.
The way we so easily judge people offends the One who said, “He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone.”
We are too obsessed with heretics and not concerned enough with understanding what their heresy says about our own shortcomings and failures.
It costs us nothing to judge others, but an enormous amount to walk beside them and help them grow.
Bible study works best when led by highly-trained, Scripturally-knowledgeable people who have lived what they believe.
Busyness is crippling the effectiveness of the American Church, but no one wants to fix the root causes because doing so would call into question the very nature of our modern society.
True love is laying down our plans and schedules to help a person in need.
One of the worst things a Christian can be is unteachable.
God never rescinded His first command to Man: Steward the Earth.
The man who recognizes the goodness of God in nature and sees Christ in the stranger has the more complete theology.
A man is only as deep as his prayer life.
A message every church in America should learn: You never have to advertise a fire.
The more we restrict God in what He can and will do, the more He’ll honor that restriction.
The Holy Spirit is a gentleman; He only shows up where He’s gratefully invited.
Our neighbors should know that our houses are always open to them.
Love truly does cover a multitude of sins.
If we haven’t died at the cross, we’re worthless to the Kingdom.
Who we are in secret is a better gauge of our spiritual maturity than who we are in public.
Not seeng results in prayer? Better check how grateful we are to God for the little things He gives us.
We never know enough of someone else’s story to judge them perfectly. Better to listen carefully, then admonish…carefully.
No great, wise saint of God started out that way. We never know at what stage we meet one of those future saints, so we must always be gracious when interacting with others.
The perfect recipe for helping someone grow in Christ: Six parts love to every one part admonition.
God makes all things beautiful in His time, not ours.
If there were no people, there would be no reason for the Gospel.
If we are unwilling to help others work through the admonitions we give them, we should instead remain silent.
On Judgment Day, God will be far less concerned with how well we knew the Scriptures than how we practiced what we knew.
Too much of what we supposedly do for the Kingdom comes from the arm of flesh, not from the power of the Spirit.
There’s no reason each of us can’t lead at least one person a year to Christ.
Most churches never once consider what it feels like to be an outsider, which is why so few visitors take root.
Most of the West has heard about Jesus (even if they’ve heard incorrectly), which is why our practice of our message is as vital as our pronouncement of it.
A person may have perfect doctrine and a form of religion, but if he doesn’t care about his neighbor, it’s all for naught.
The reason we learn the Scriptures is to be equipped for every good work.
The more tender my heart is toward the least of these, the more tender it is toward God—and vice versa.
We minister best from the overflow of our Spirit-filled hearts, not from being poured out until empty.
For some reason, we stopped making heaven the ultimate destination.
Unless the Lord builds the house, the laborers labor in vain.
We make an idol of the nuclear family if we raise it above the needs of the household of Faith.
If a fellow Christian has a financial need, forget about buying that plasma TV. And remember this: someone is always in need.
The first thing the new Church did after being filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was to see that no one among them lacked for anything.
Fear drives almost all human failings. The opposite of fear is love.
You can tell the effectiveness of a church’s discipling program by noting how many of the leadership staff came from within.
A king’s ambassador, when sojourning in a foreign land, is the full representative of the king and wields his complete power and authority. Never forget that we are Christ’s ambassadors.
We perpetually underestimate Satan’s wiles; at the same time, we underestimate our authority over him in Christ.
Most lost people aren’t consciously looking for ways to sin; they’re only trying to get by.
You and I have benefitted greatly from the prayers of others, but most people have never had someone pray for them.
Because our God is a God of beauty and truth, we Christians need to honor our artists and intellectuals as much as our pastors and preachers.
Most of the Lord’s finest servants labor in obscurity.
We Christians should spend every day working to depopulate hell.
We may know what it means to be a sinner, but few of us have appropriated what it means to be a saint.
Our communion meals should be feasts as big as we eat on Thanksgiving Day.
Wine is the drink of celebration, not Welch’s.
A church-hopper is a carrier of dissension.
We need to treat our pastors as imperfect fellow laborers, not as Grand Exalted Poobahs.
Without the Lord, we can do nothing.
If we Christians stopped worrying about what others think of us, the Church would be transformed and the world along with us.
We spend too much time trying to keep our youth from sleeping with each other and not enough time teaching them to be husbands and wives.
Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.
We were all born to serve.
American Christians are more concerned about what’s in their bank accounts than in their treasure chests in heaven.
Joy can only well up in a grateful heart.
Gossip destroys anyone it touches.
In Christ, there is no shame or guilt.
Christians who pray prayers with enormous faith get enormous results.
If we don’t reach people with the Gospel before they are 21, most will never come to Christ.
We have not because we ask not.
It is best to think of the Scriptures not as what we can read through in a year, but as what we can read through in an entire lifetime.
We come to Christ full of holes. Whatever hole we forbid Christ to fill will instead be filled by the world.
If we’re discipling correctly, no Christian in a church should be irreplaceable.
A community of Christians is only as strong as its weakest members.
If our lives are filled with everything but Christ, then we are impoverished indeed.
We are all dust.
God is always nearer to us than we believe Him to be.

Blessings! Have a great day.

Cerulean Sanctum

Looking for the 1st century Church in 21st century America

Supernaturalism

God Speaks Through Dreams

Evangelicals and the Realm of the Supernatural

100 Truths in 30 Years with Christ