I Used to Think Dreams Were Just for Sleeping

           Last week I gave you a #wewontshrinkback challenge of writing down a story from your life. I’ve enjoyed reading your stories, and it’s not too late to send them to me! I told you that I would share this week about something NEW that I’ve learned in the past few years. I have no idea if this is going to sound eccentric or bonkers to you, but here goes…

One way that my thinking has changed in the last 2 years:

I used to think dreams were just for sleeping,
but now I think that dreams can be a way that God speaks to us.

            I’m not sure of the exact date, but if I had to guess, I would say that it was sometime March 2014. That’s the day that my brother Dave and I were talking after dinner, and he said he wanted to pray that God would begin speaking to me in dreams.
            “Is that okay? Can I pray that for you?” he asked.
            “Sure.” I didn’t have any preconceived ideas of how the Lord might answer such a prayer, but I had no reason to say no.
            Dave placed his hand on my shoulder and prayed that the Lord would begin to give me dreams that are directly from Him—dreams that would contain some messages He wanted to communicate to me.

            Have you ever had a dream that you thought might have been from God? Did you take it to heart or brush it off?

            It’s interesting how many times we see in the Bible that God speaks to people in dreams. Off the top of my head, I think of Daniel, Joseph from the Old Testament, and Joseph from the New Testament. I teach these stories to children in my church and usually don’t blink an eye at how crazy-amazing it actually is that--

• God gave King Nebuchadnezzar a vivid dream. The king was angry that no one could interpret his dream (even though he hadn’t told them what the dream was about), so the king threatened to kill all his wise men. But Daniel believed God could show him the dream to spare all these men’s lives. So he prayed, and in the night God gave Daniel a vision that revealed the mystery of the king’s dream. (Daniel 2)
• As a teenager, Joseph had dreams that foretold his authority over his older brothers (and yes, it came true!). God gave the Pharaoh of Egypt a dream as a warning of a coming famine, and then God showed Joseph how to interpret it. This knowledge from God helped Joseph to prepare for the coming famine, and that saved countless lives from starvation. (Genesis 37, 41)
• When Joseph (in the New Testament) was planning to divorce Mary quietly after he found out she was pregnant, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. The angel told him that the baby was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and this child would be the Savior of the world. The angel commanded Joseph to take Mary home as his wife. When Joseph woke up, he did exactly as the angel had told him. (Matthew 1:18-25)

Lauren’s Dream
            It’s probably because of these stories from the Bible that I have no problem believing stories about God-dreams that I hear from friends or read in books. I remember reading a memoir by Lauren Winner about 6 years ago. In her memoir, Lauren shares how she had converted from Judaism to Christianity. She believes that God had been “foreshadowing” her conversion for several years, but one main event in the process was a dream she had.
            In her dream, she and several others had been kidnapped by mermaids and had been living in captivity underwater in the ocean for a year when a man came to rescue her. She chuckles about how her dream included mermaids, but still she knew that this dream was different. She says, “I woke up certain, as certain as I have ever been about anything, that the dream was from God and the dream was about Jesus, about how He was real and true and sure.”[1]
            She told her dream to a Christian she knew, her teacher from high school. The teacher asked her if she knew who the man was in her dream, and Lauren said, “Well, it seemed pretty obvious to me that it was Jesus.”[2]
            Lauren remained an Orthodox Jew for two more years, but she continued to think about the dream and began to open her heart to Jesus. Jesus, her Rescuer.

When I Dream…
            It’s one thing to believe that it happened in the Bible, and it’s fun to believe that it can happen to other people. But isn’t it humbling and outrageous that God would speak to me through a dream?!!
            But sure enough, after my brother prayed that prayer for me, I began having dreams (maybe once a month, sometimes more, sometimes less). These dreams included some vivid details, and I’d wake up suddenly, with a feeling that the dream was significant somehow. Whenever I have a dream like this, I try to write down all the details of the dream as soon as I can.
            Some of the dreams are easy to understand, and they leave me with a feeling of peace and security.
            But believe me, I don’t know what all of the dreams mean. Still, I write them down to show God that I’m “listening” even in my sleep. I try not to freak out about the dreams. Okay, sometimes I do freak out and call my brother or tell Erin and jump to a million conclusions.
            But I’m learning to identify which part of the dream was the key message, and I search for that word or object in God’s Word for a clue to what it might mean. I try to store the dream details on a shelf in my mind (and journals), trusting that down the road God will show me how the pieces come together to point me in the right direction.

            I confess, though, that I have often doubted whether these dreams are really from God or if I’m just making things up in my sleep.
            Just as I was wondering this, something happened last December: For several months, I had been praying for my friend Emily and her husband to have a baby. Then one night in December, I had a dream that Emily was pregnant with a baby girl, and she was due in August. Since I had been thinking and praying about that a lot, I wasn’t sure if that dream came from my own thoughts or if it came from God.
            A few days after that dream, Emily texted me that she found out she was pregnant! When she told me that her due date was in August, I knew that she would have a girl just like in my dream. Sure enough, her ultrasound showed that she was carrying a girl.
            I took a photo of my journal entry where I had written down the details of that dream and sent it to Emily. I told her that that dream confirmed two things to me:
            1) God knows all about her daughter’s life and has special plans for her!!
            2) God was showing me to keep listening to Him through my dreams—that I’m not crazy to anticipate that He wants to speak to me in this way.

            Emily and her husband Chris named their daughter Selah. I was able to visit Emily, Chris, and Selah in the hospital in August when Selah was born. And last Friday I got to spend most of the afternoon holding little Selah. What a sweet baby. And what a sweet reminder that God speaks to us, that He cares, and He is involved in the details of our lives.

            So that’s where I am right now. I’m still learning lots. If you want to hear from God in your dreams, ask Him to reveal things to you—then be patient and willing to listen and obey. If you have any questions about God-dreams, I’ll direct them to my brother. :)

[1] Winner, Lauren. (2002). Girl Meets God: A Memoir. New York: Random House Trade Publishing.
[2] Winner, Lauren. (2002). Girl Meets God: A Memoir. New York: Random House Trade Publishing.