How to Hear from God in Your Dreams

Do you believe your dreams may have hidden meanings? Did you know the Bible teaches that God speaks to us in dreams? This little study is an introduction to understanding the dreams you dream and figuring out what God the Father might be saying to you in your dreams.

Note: If you want to go deeper into the subject of interpreting your dreams
check out THIS COURSE in our Online School

We all know that 1 Corinthians 13 is the “Love Chapter” of the Bible. Well, just like 1 Corinthians 13 is the “Love” chapter of the Bible; Job 33 is the dream chapter of the bible. Let’s quote a passage:

Job 33:14 For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not.

God is always talking whether we are listening or not. He speaks once or twice in our waking world, and if we don’t “perceive” it, then the Father drops back to “Plan B”: Dreams. Why are dreams, not God’s first choice? Because dreams proceed out of the natural man, specifically the soul, as opposed to the Spirit. The Father would rather communicate “Face to Face” with us as he did with Moses, but if we aren’t “there” with him because we are too busy or too stressed out, then he doesn’t leave us to our own devices.

There are many reasons why we don’t perceive the Father’s voice. The most common problem is we are just too busy. At night in our deep sleep, the Father can get a word in edgewise! It’s like we used to say about our kids: “They are perfect darlings…. When they are asleep!”

Also, the Father will speak to us in a dream about things that are sensitive or uncomfortable to us or about things we feel strongly about. When you feel very strongly about something and the Lord speaks to your waking mind, then you will tend to immediately bend and skew the message and then question, “Is this really God, or is this me?” So he waits till our minds are in abeyance in sleep and then sends the message in a dream, a riddle for us to figure out. If we have to figure it out then we know it didn’t originate with us. But again, God’s first choice is to speak to our waking minds. But for our sake, he will “drop back and punt” like in football when time is of the essence and he wants to get us over the goal line. Right?

verse 15 In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed;16 Then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction,

Why is it important that the Father speak to you in “deep sleep”. Because that is when the natural man is most heavily in a passive state. Read Joel 2:28: “Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.” Paul identifies this “old man” as the “natural man” (Romans 6:6). The young man is the Spirit man, the new creation in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17).

When God speaks to the “old man,” the natural man, he first will anesthetize him with sleep and speak to him in riddles and the dark speech of dreams. When he speaks to the “young man,” the new creation, he speaks FACE TO FACE in plain language with full explanations.

Dreams do fall within the nine gifts of the spirit, specifically tongues. They are God’s hieroglyphics, his picture language. He revealed this in his conversation with Moses, Aaron, and Miriam one day:

Numbers 12: 5 And the LORD came down in the pillar of the cloud and stood in the door of the tabernacle, and called Aaron and Miriam: and they both came forth. 6 And he said, Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I the LORD will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream. 7 My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house. 8 With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of the LORD shall he behold: wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?

Now a dream, like a message in tongues, has to be interpreted. And the interpretation is just that, an interpretation, not a translation. Did you ever hear a short message in tongues and a long interpretation? Or vice versa? Same thing with dreams. You can have a LONG dream with a very simple, short, and sweet interpretation. Or you can have a short dream that you will ponder for years and still get something out of it.

Also, remember that dreams are dark speech, God’s hieroglyphics. So the elements of the dream don’t often represent themselves DIRECTLY, but they represent something else. So if you dream your infant grandchild is driving a car, it doesn’t mean to wake up and go look for the keys necessarily.

So how do you interpret the symbols? You can interpret them by the gift of interpretation or by looking to the scriptures. When you dream of a child or an infant, it can very often represent your soul man. Psalm 22:20 and Psalm 35:17 speaks of the soul as “my darling,” like a suckling child.

So biblically interpreting that symbol would tell you a child, particularly a young child, very often represents your soul man, that your spirit man is looking after you like a parent caring for a child.

Some dream symbols can be interpreted very practically. A car represents transition because it is a means of getting from one place to another. A bridge is a universal symbol of transition and change. Etc., etc.

verse 17 That he may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from man.

It is also important to bear in mind that a dream most often is dealing with YOU, with your internal life, your motives, etc., It is a mistake to give a dream an outward application to someone else before discerning it as it may apply to you, to correct and instruct you.

I’ve seen a lot of people get a dream and run out applying it to everybody but themselves and make people miserable with hidden accusations and confrontations about things that they thought were shown in a dream. We can’t hold people hostage, to things the Father tells us in a dream. (The one great exception to this is in the life of a prophet or prophetic person. When God speaks to him prophetically in dreams, that is what the scriptures seem to refer to when they speak of “night visions,”; which are not therapeutic in nature but address a wide spectrum of applications.)

The Father, in verse 17 here, is telling us the dream is to keep US from our (unwise) purpose and to hide US from pride. The dream, being to the OLD MAN, will often be corrective in nature.

Verse 18 He keepeth back his soul from the pit, and his life from perishing by the sword.

The Lord is looking out for us to keep us from unnecessary pain or aggravation. He shows us in the dream many times areas of our lives where he wants us to be careful to be a “part of the solution and not part of the problem”. And as we all know, we are our own worst enemy, particularly in matters very personal to us, where we are most vulnerable.

Verse 19 He is chastened also with pain upon his bed, and the multitude of his bones with strong pain:

When the Father speaks “once, yea twice,” and we don’t listen, then we might go through some physical suffering. God is talking to our SOUL in a dream, and he will also speak through our BODY. I’m not talking about plague or sickness here. But just acknowledging that the Father will speak to us in any way necessary to look out for us and protect us. But his first choice is to speak to our Spirit man in our waking time via a vision.

Other thoughts about dreams:

Dreams often reveal KNOWLEDGE but not always WISDOM:

Ps 19:2 Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.

God speaking in the night is like the CIA giving the president his morning intelligence report. They aren’t telling the president what to do; they are just telling him what is on his plate. So you can labor over a dream interpretation and finally get it and realize it wasn’t anything you didn’t already know (God was speaking once, yea twice after all, though we didn’t perceive it …).

Or we can get the interpretation but realize that the Father might be revealing to us what is “going on” but isn’t telling us what to do about it. So be careful not to jump to conclusions about any course of action we might perceive is prescribed in a dream. Other than “repent,” of course (smile). Remember to apply the dream first to any area of your own life; then from that purified standpoint, you can filter through things that apply to others (i.e., which may be prophetic in nature).

God gives us “knowledge” in a dream, but “Day unto Day,” he gives us his speech, his WISDOM of what to DO with what we know.

Another thought: How do we know what a dream is about?

Ec 5:3 For a dream cometh through the multitude of business….

What this scripture is suggesting is that we look at what’s on the front burner of our lives for an understanding of the context of a dream. This is an interpretive guide now, not a rule, but it applies and helps if we will use it. What is the dream stressed over? What is at the forefront, what is claiming their attention at the time? That will help us find the setting for what the Father is speaking.

Another thought: Learn to sort through the roughage of a dream:

Ec 5:7 For in the multitude of dreams and many words there are also divers vanities: but fear thou God.

Because a dream comes through the natural man, there are all kinds of white noise. It’s like watching TV. You have to fast-forward through the commercials, ignore the extraneous stuff, and pay attention to the episode the Father has programmed for you that night.

Lots of times, folks get all wrapped up in the minutiae of a dream and miss the point altogether. When the Father is speaking in a dream, he is painting with a broad brush, and it is not important to us to nail down every interpretive fact. Just get the gist of it, and if there is more you need to know, he will speak it.

In conclusion, when dreams come more than once, or different dreams come with the same interpretation, that is the Lord confirming the thing to us and really trying to get our attention.

2 Co 13:1 ….. In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established

How does this help us? That helps us by relaxing about what the Father is saying through dreams, prophecy, visions, or whatever. If we are hearing something for the first time, we don’t have to make a decision or act on it instantly. We are supposed to try the spirits, so it is legitimate of us to ask the Lord, the Angel, or whatever to give us a confirmed word. And he will gladly do that if it will help us clarify our understanding of Father’s voice. Some of the most precious experiences I have had with the Father have come as he has graciously and patiently confirmed through many sources and means things he was trying to get across.
God bless!