Understanding Your Dreams: Embracing the Journey

(Note: Today’s post is Part 4 in our Understanding Your Dreams series. You can find Part 1 here).

Our list continues 😊. You who are hungry to understand what God is communicating to you through your dreams – He sees you! He loves that desire that is in your heart! Here are some more pointers to aid your quest to grow as an interpreter of His mysteries:

11) Embrace the Bible. It is THE best Dream Manual out there. By far. Hands down. No contest. The better you get to know your Bible, the more inner resource you will have for dream interpretation. As Jesus pointed out, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit… will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26, ESV). Holy Spirit’s role is to remind us of what God has said, which of course especially applies to the Bible. Over and over, He will pull Scripture from your memory banks to help you understand your dreams. Therefore, you need your memory banks to have rich stores of His Word for this purpose, for Him to draw from.

I’ll give you a quick example here. I had a dream about a year ago, in which I saw my feet dangling in front of me. I was riding in a vehicle on a muddy road. My feet were hanging off the side, and some dirt from below splashed onto them. Afterwards, as I was seeking the Lord for the interpretation, Holy Spirit brought this verse to my mind: “Jesus said to him, ‘He who is bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean…’” (John 13:10, NKJV).

I immediately understood what He was saying: I was completely clean. This was His response to an attack I’d been going through spiritually. The enemy had been trying to burden me with false guilt; that was the mud that splashed on me. God was graciously communicating to me that He sees me as beautifully clean, and that He wanted to wash away that illegitimate sense of culpability.

Do you see how important it was for me to have that Scripture stored in my heart? The meaning of the dream was much easier for Holy Spirit to explain to me, since He had that particular reference to His Word already written inside of me. This kind of thing happens very regularly as I seek His help in decoding the night parables He gives to me.

12)  Assign a high value to your dreams. Our culture has a tendency to dismiss dreams as unimportant. If we are dismissive in our attitude towards our dreams, we will end up missing priceless opportunities to hear from God. We must decide to embrace dreams as an important means of God’s communication, if we want Him to speak to us through them. The more we value and pay attention to our dreams, the more He can use them to speak to us.

I will speak to you from my heart here. Without exaggeration, my dream journals (and prayer journals) are among my most treasured possessions. If I had to evacuate my house in an emergency, they would be among the top items I would want to save. A tender smile warms my heart at just the sight of them. I have such affection for the physical records of Daddy’s precious communication to me.

Not long ago, I heard Him say softly to my heart, “I love those who love me.” Through those words, I felt Him sharing His joy over my longing for Him. My friend, treasuring His dream messages to us is a vital way that we treasure His very heart. The verse He was whispering to me, Proverbs 8:17, comes with an amazing promise, too: “and those who seek me find me.” Dear one, as you press in to understand what He is saying to you, you will find Him! You will receive what you are looking for!

13) Embrace dream interpretation as a journey. Sometimes, you may receive the interpretation all in one download, immediately. More often, however, Holy Spirit will give it to you more slowly. He loves the process of mulling over the dream together with you. I have found that many times, He’ll give me a part of the understanding a few days after I have the dream. Then He may give me another bit the next day as I’m reflecting on the previous part He explained. The more I give room to it in my heart, the more He expounds on it. (My heart can just feel His face light up with enjoyment when I receive the last piece and my spirit jumps up in joyful recognition of the completed puzzle!)

Understanding will usually only come, however, when you carve out a window of time to focus on pondering the dream. If you don’t have time to do so the day you receive the dream, at least get it recorded. Then you will be able to revisit it later. Oftentimes, Holy Spirit does this on purpose. He’ll give you a dream on a day when He knows you won’t have time to process it yet. This is because He wants to explain it to you later, at a moment that is going to be more relevant to the issue in the dream.

There is yet more to come! Tomorrow is Audio Devo Day on a different topic. Don’t miss it! Then check back in Monday for Part 5 of our Understanding Your Dreams series!

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Have you had the experience of receiving a dream interpretation some time after the dream itself, in timing that was strikingly significant?