It is very common for God to speak to men through dreams, especially when we do not LISTEN by reading His word – the Bible. In his sovereignty, He can speak to a man through dreams to give the man a clear understanding of his will, without hesitation.
MATTHEW 1:20-21
But while he was thinking about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a DREAM and said: “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to receive Mary as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit .
21 And she will give birth to a son, and you shall call his name JESUS, for he will save his people from their sins.”
The above Bible verse narrates a very important message that God needed to convey to a man, because the name of the Son of God must be JESUS. But here the Bible says that God (represented by his angel) spoke to the man Joseph through a dream. Why for a dream?
The only way to convey this important message to Joseph is through a dream (night vision) or a day vision, and God chose to speak to him through a dream because Joseph was neither a prophet nor a priest, only Prophets, Priests and a King (King David) had the Spirit of God upon their lives in the Old Covenant. Therefore, God could not communicate with Joseph by his spirit, because the spirit of God was not upon him, and a natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:14).
Therefore, for Joseph to fully understand this important message, God had to communicate it to him in a dream. In the old covenant, it was common to receive messages from God in a dream, because they did not have the Holy Spirit within them, and it still happens in the new covenant, in which we live now. However, when God comes to speak to us (Christians) in a dream, or has been trying to communicate with us through our spirit, and we have been slow to hear or in His sovereignty, He chooses to communicate through dreams. .
JOB 33:14-15
Because God can speak one way or another,
However, man does not perceive it.
15 In a dream, in a vision of the night,
When deep sleep falls on men,
As they sleep in their beds
When a man is sleeping (deep sleep), everything in the man (body, soul and spirit) is completely at rest; so a man is capable of receiving any communication in this state.
Now, an important thing to keep in mind is that communication through dreams is an open field: anyone can communicate with you in a dream. God can, the devil can do it, including yourself; because it is a middle ground in the fourth dimensional realm that anyone has access to control, including Satan and his agents. Therefore, a dream can also come from satanic agents to mislead and manipulate someone’s life. Therefore, this means that dreams must also be judged by the word of God.
Once again, dreams can come from God, and also from yourself: when you have thought long about a wish or have a problem in your heart, the Bible says that “For a dream comes from much activity, … (Ecclesiastes 5:3) and it can also come from the devil to a weak Christian or any man (unbeliever) to manipulate them.
Generally the best guideline to follow is prayer. Ask God in prayer to confirm if your dream is from Him. He can give you a similar dream, or He can speak to you through specific scriptures that can jump right out of the pages of the Bible to confirm that the dream is from God.
Dreams, as well as other subconscious channels by which God communicates with man, must be clearly understood. Some dreams are not immediately clear in their interpretations or meanings, they come in what the Bible calls ‘Dark Sayings’, but the full message is always embedded in the dream or vision. God said about Moses: “…I speak with him face to face, clearly, and not in obscure words;…” (Numbers 12:8).
Peter in the book of Acts 10:17 had a vision that was in dark sayings
ACTS 10:17
The next day, while they were on their way and approached the city, Peter went up to the housetop to pray, about the sixth hour. 10 Then he was very hungry and wanted to eat; but as they prepared, he fell into a trance
11 and he saw the sky open and an object like a large sheet tied at the four corners, which descended towards him and went down to earth.
12 In it were all kinds of four-footed animals of the land, wild beasts, creeping things, and birds of the air.
13 And a voice came to him: Get up, Peter, kill and eat.
14 But Peter said, “No, Lord! For I have never eaten anything common or unclean.” – [dark sayings, author’s emphasis]
15 And a voice spoke to him again a second time: What God has cleansed, do not call it common. 16 This was done three times. And the object was taken back to the sky.
17 While Peter wondered within himself what this vision he had seen meant…
Pedro wanted to know what the vision meant, because the message was in obscure sayings; Actually, the message of the vision was to tell him to accept the Gentiles as God’s people.
When God gives messages (speaks) in dark sayings, it will require a man who is versed in His word (the Bible) to understand the message it contains or someone whom God gives understanding when asked.
Sometimes you can receive such a bad dream and yet it is from God. It is a revelation of something from the past that is bad and needs someone to destroy it in the spiritual realm, before it expresses itself in the physical world we live in. Some Christians do not understand that there is a spiritual world and a physical world, and that all Christians live in both worlds (John 17:14-16). Before something happens in our physical world, it is first agreed upon and established in the spiritual realm. That’s why the Bible says in Matthew 18:18
MATTHEW 18:18
“Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you BIND on earth will be BOUND in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
Whatever you stop in the SPIRITUAL REALM will not happen in the PHYSICAL WORLD where we live, and likewise what you allow will also happen.
In a dream (bad dreams), you may see yourself, a close relative or someone you know in a really bad state or even dead. Be very careful and prudent to act when you receive such dreams, do not fear if you are a Christian (1 John 5:4), but if you are not a Christian, you are already in danger because you have no power. that he can destroy such an intentional occurrence (as seen in the dream), unless he surrenders his life to God and immediately becomes a Christian; only a Christian is protected from evil (Psalm 91:10). When you receive such dreams, it is intended to inform you, so that you can take preventive measures to destroy it or inform the ministers in your church to help prevent it from happening by praying against it, because you (as a Christian) have the power to do so. (Matthew 16:19).
Before my earthly father died, I had a dream – In the dream, I saw him going to his car, he started the engine and was about to leave, I quickly went to meet him, to ask him where he was going, suddenly my brothers. he joined me, and we all asked him where he was going, he didn’t say a word about where he was going, but he said to me alone, “go back and take care of your brother and sisters”, he didn’t mention a word about my mother, but her words – “go back and take care of your brother and sisters” kept clouding my thinking. And I thought to myself, it is my responsibility to take care of my brothers, because he is our father and he was still alive.
After a few months, my father fell ill and died. As normal as anyone would do, I started asking God questions-While you will let my father die, why couldn’t you save his life from his death? Well, the good Lord answered me, said: “I wanted him to come home (heaven) to end his suffering from the disease, and I showed you before it happened, so that you prepare yourself for the responsibility that lies ahead. of you”. It reminded me of the dream, it brought the words “go back and take care of your brother and sisters” and the scene of him driving the car, as the symbol of his departure from us because of death: dreams are always in symbols.
For me, the dream was as normal as any day’s activity would be, except for the thoughts of those words that kept getting my attention: “go back and take care of your brother and sisters.” I only understood the message of the dream after it happened. This sometimes happens to many of us, when an event or situation occurs, it seems familiar, then suddenly we remember and express “I dreamed about this before”, the event makes us remember. Every time a dream catches your eye and keeps coming back to you, that dream (which is a message) needs your attention, either to search for its meaning or to take action on the message it reveals.
God uses dreams a lot to speak to His children, but since dream communication is a medium of the soul, the devil can take advantage of that medium as well. Remember, 2 Corinthians 11:14 says, “And no wonder! For Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.”
But he (the devil) can never take advantage of any communication from our spirit; only God has access to our spirit (1 Corinthians 2:10).
Someone may ask, how do I know if a dream is from God?
Read this: “But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, kind, generous, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality or hypocrisy” (James 3:17).
Any dream that is from God will bring a message of hope, predicting what to take advantage of (accept) or resist (fight against), without confusion and always wrapped in the wisdom of God. And the wisdom of God is always pure and peaceful.
But, a dream thrown by the devil will always bring fear (without hope); he seeks to throw his target into confusion and fear. – “This wisdom is not the one that descends from above, but is earthly, sensual, diabolical. For where there is envy and selfishness, there is confusion and all wickedness” (James 3:15-16).