Interpretation of Dreams Bridge

How to come up with God’s Message:

It is important to not try to interpret the dream from any other source than the Bible and God Himself. I do not interpret other’s dreams. I can’t. No one can. I can, however, ask questions, that if the individual answers, will lead to the meaning of the dream.

I will show you:

First, write down the dream. A dream is like a piece of art. If you stand too close, then you can’t see the whole picture. If you have an empty notebook nearby the bed at night, then you will be more likely to write them down. Jesus said that if we are faithful in a little, then He will give more. If He gives you dreams and you do not write them down, then why would He give more?

One of the reasons, I am sure that I have so many dreams, is that I have made an effort to write them down and find out their meanings. I have many dreams, however, that I have not written down and still more that I wrote down, but have never figured out. Dreams are mysteries that need to be unraveled by the Word of God and the presence of the Holy Spirit.

After you write down the dream, step back. Often times, He plays on words. Sea doesn’t mean the ocean but see. A father in a dream can mean your real father or the Father in Heaven. A sister could mean your sister in the flesh, or it could mean your brethren at church. I use a dictionary to help me expand my thinking. I write each word on a piece of paper and try to think of as many meanings as possible for the words.

 A locked door in your dream may cause you to think about an entrance in your life that is ‘locked’. 

Dreams are metaphorical.

You need to expand your mind. It is a matter of starting to think outside of your box. It is the beginning to learning to think using the mind of Christ.

Next, ask God about the true message of the dream. He will guide and help if you ask Him. Take the written details of the dream and look up the words in the Bible

Some of the weirdest dreams have become the most profound, for me, when I took them back to Him. The first time I had a naked dream, I was worried that Satan had entered my dreams. So I asked. What He said is that my nakedness within the dream simply shows that I am willing to be open with Him. I am naked, just like when I was born. It is not a bad thing to God.

Allow Him to give meaning to the dream apart from human language. For example, In the Bible, Jesus is called a door, and individuals go ‘through’ Him. Try to take the language out of the symbols of the dream and allow them to be interpreted by God’s viewpoint. Many Bibles have cross-references to verses that can add understanding to passages. Read these for additional insight into meanings.

A concordance is helpful. It is a book, similar to a dictionary, which has words listed in the Bible. It is usually found in the back of a Bible and the words are listed alphabetically. It gives a reference in the Bible where a verse can be found with that word in it. 

Sit quietly and ask questions to God. Have paper and pen ready to copy His answers. I take my dreams to the desert hiking with me and talk to God. I ask Him questions and copy the answers. I used to take an index card. Now I take a notebook.

Once, when I had a dream that I could not figure out, God intervened in a special way. There were crabs in the dream. I don’t care how much you tear the Bible apart; there are no crabs in it.

So, I was perplexed about what those were. I had pretty much constrained myself to think that they were evil things lurking in dark places eating trash.

Two weeks after I had the dream, I was met by a friend in the hall. She was a work acquaintance who I did not really know. But, she stopped me dead in the hall and said, “Sheri, I had a dream last night. You and I were at bar eating crabs all night.”

Well, I was even more stumped. To think I was eating these evil things lurking!

So, I went back to God and the Bible with the new piece that she provided. It led me to the answer of the dream. The crabs did represent sin.

So, I went to the woman who had the dream, and I confessed to her that her dream had interpreted mine. So, I asked her if she would like my dream to be used to interpret hers.

She came to my house, and I did both dreams side by side. They formed a beautiful picture of how Jesus provides forgiveness for our sins. Her side of the dream related to how He forgives us once and for all. Mine was on how He forgives all other sins on a continuing basis.

She prayed with me and turned her life over to God at my kitchen table that morning at seven AM over a box of donuts. Don’t underestimate the power of dreams. 

From the book "And afterwards I will Pour out My Spirit."

There are over one hundred references to dreams in the Bible. The New Testament begins and ends with a dream. Both Mary and Joseph were visited by dreams that gave them guidance in what to do with Jesus. We, too, can gain guidance from our dreams when we learn how to unlock the messages that God has hidden within them. There are different types of dreams. (You can read Firefly, Dreamatrix for more information. They are books on interpretation of dreams, getting the works out of your dreams and trying to figure out what God wants you to do with them. I wrote them and you can find them through Glorybound Publishing.)

There are dreams that give guidance, warning of danger, tell of sin, and the future. A dream can answer any question that we want to ask God. I know, because I do it. With me, when I have a question, I ask God, and He usually gives me four dreams in the same night. But, remember, friend, that I have been faithful to write them down. If you desire God to answer questions through dreams, you need to become faithful to write them down in the middle of the night and bring them back to Him for interpretation.

Examples in the Bible.

In Daniel 2:3, Nebuchadnezzar had a dream. He was the king of the time and became anxious to understand the dream. He knew that He must interpret the dream because it was telling him how to run the kingdom. If we follow the story, he found Joseph, who interpreted the dream. With the interpretation, he made plans to help the kingdom get through a drought. He believed the dream and acted on it averting a problem.

Joseph knew what to do, because God gave Him a dream to interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. But, Joseph, did not become a dream expert overnight. He had dreams at a young age that told him of future events. He knew about things because he paid attention to the dreams. He copied them and brought them to God to help him with them. (Genesis 37).

 Jacob’s ladder, and Peter’s trance, along with the book of Revelation are all indications that God speaks through dreams and visions into our minds to direct us and give us His voice.

Another Joseph in the New Testament, had several dreams telling him what to do with Mary and Jesus. They told him how to avert Herod who would seek to destroy Jesus. The dreams provided him with guidance. (Matt 1:21).

 Remember, Harod’s wife had a dream when Jesus was on trial? The dream said that Jesus was a pure man and had done no wrong. I believe this dream was from God.

How do you suppose God gave the instructions to build the Ark of the Covenant? I bet He used the pad of the mind of Moses to draw on. The Bible says that it was the finger of God that inscribed the 10 commandments, but what about the rest?

Dreams are pictures in our minds given at night when we are asleep. God speaks to us in several ways. When we pray, God promises to answer us. When He does, often, we don’t recognize it because it comes to us like a foreign language. We need to interpret it for it to make sense of it to us. It is like we are on one shore, and we can see where we want to be across the channel of water. We are looking for a bridge that will get us there. God has not provided a bridge. He has provided a channel with a ferry boat. We have to get on the boat and trust Him to direct us down the channels that He has for us. This is the channel of His love. The boat is the vehicle of communication that He has provided through the Holy Spirit.

Dreams are riddles that have to be solved to get the answers. They provide direction, teaching, confirmation, and encouragement directly from God. There is no middle man, no preacher. They are God’s word given to us individually. And, everybody dreams.

Often, we don’t see the dreams as messages from God because we don’t fathom His Love for us and His constant desire to be in our lives.

 He comes into our world in unusual ways. He uses pictures we can relate to. He has a lot of things to choose from, but our world limits Him. I see dreams in this way, suppose we were humans, and wanted to raise an ant family. We needed to send messages so that they know what to do to make things go smoothly.

We have to use things that they understand to communicate with them. In the same way God uses dreams for us. When He wants to tell us about Himself, He puts our ‘father’ in the dream. When He wants to give us a message about our ‘brethren’, He uses our brothers and sisters. If we have a dream about a house, it could be us, for we are the temple of God. Get it?

The interpretation of dreams does not replace the Scriptures. It is separate. They are pictures that help us to understand the truths of God. We are to be careful not to spend all our time on them instead of studying the Word of God.

Through the ages God has spoken to people through individuals who became His ‘mouthpiece’. He would put words into their mouth and send them to speak to groups of people to get them to follow His ways. These individuals were consecrated (set apart) and anointed (given special ability) to do whatever mission God wanted them to do. Moses, Aaron, Jeremiah, Isaiah, John the Baptist were prophets. They were sent for God to communicate His voice to people.

After all the prophets came, God sent His Son, Jesus, to solve the problem once and for all. Jesus Christ is God’s Word revealed to mankind in the flesh. He shows us who God is. He is the very voice of God Himself. Jesus became the message IN Himself apart from human messengers (Prophets). The Word continues to speak to us today because Jesus has Eternal Character and does not change.

Dreams mix creation with the Word of God to help us understand Him better. We are stuck in our world, and He understands this. We cannot move, so He does. He uses language we understand and mixes it with our life experiences to help us know how He feels.

 A dream is similar to the Word of God. It is words of God. It pierces between our soul and spirit. When our will has been submitted to Him, and our flesh is asleep, it is a perfect time for Him to talk to us.

We do not have any of the distractions of the daytime schedule. He has us in a position where we don’t have a choice of whether or not to listen to Him. The dream is like a message on the end of a sword. When our flesh is asleep and our will is submitted to Him, then He can commune our spirit with His Holy Spirit to send us clear messages. We become open and broken and the message pierces through.

When we sleep, our flesh is silent. Our stomach cannot tell us it is hungry because we are not awake to listen to it. If our mind is committed to the purposes of God, our will does not get in the way, either. Only our spirit is awake. It is an open path for God to write on the screen of our mind with His pictures.

Message of the Dream

The message of the dream should move us closer to God because that is the goal of God in all of His interactions with us. The dream might reveal areas of sin. If we have been praying for God to reveal some hidden sin in our life, perhaps He will give us a dream (Psalms 51). Maybe there needs to be a change in our life. Perhaps we are off the track that God wants us to be on. He will, often, reveal this to people in dreams. If we are in a position of authority, God often will speak to us about individuals whom are under our authority. This will provide direction on what to do with them to help them to move closer to Him.

Another area where God talks to individuals through dreams is with “Strongholds”. Strongholds are areas in our lives of bad teaching where have learned something wrongly, and God is trying to tell us to relearn it His way.

Dreams may be prophetic, insight to provide direction to decisions for the future. They also provide heart direction if your heart needs to be realigned to God. The direction may be immediate or lifelong.

Remember that dreams are like boxes to be delivered to our doorstep. They have stickers on the other side of the box.

This means that if we had a dream several years ago, there is another message if we ask God to turn it over again.

 We can revisit each dream time and time again. A dream may be timely with a message, but it also has a bigger message for another time. Only a message from God could do that!