Can God Speak Through Dreams?

During times of discouragement, if
answers to prayer are long in coming or not what we had expected, we
can begin to lose hope and even doubt that God will answer our prayers.
To help us through, God sometimes encourages us by dreams or visions.

He did this for me and my husband shortly after I gave
birth to a son with a facial birth defect. A woman who lived 45 miles
from our home had a vision of a baby with socks on his hands and feet.
She began to pray for the baby even though she did not understand the
vision.

Later that week we were dedicating our son to the Lord
during a Friday night service. Our son’s birth defect was so sensitive
that we had to keep socks on his hands to keep him from harming himself.
When our son was held up during the dedication, the woman, who was
visiting that night, recognized that he was the baby in her vision.

God used the vision to inspire this woman to organize
prayer for my son during his early days of infancy and corrective
surgery. The vision and prayers blessed us with fresh encouragement and
hope during a very traumatic season in our lives.

However, our experience was not an unusual one. There are
many examples in the Scriptures of God’s bringing comfort and hope
through visions and dreams.

Prophetic Promises

Abraham was a wealthy man to whom God gave great promises.
He owned cattle, silver and gold, but he had no son to inherit his
wealth, for his wife was barren. The Lord appeared to Abraham in a
vision and promised him an heir (see Gen. 15:4).

God also said that his descendants would be as many as the
stars in the sky. Abraham believed God, and the Lord credited it to him
as righteousness (vv. 5-6).

After God spoke to him, Abraham fell into a deep sleep,
and God gave him a prophetic promise through a dream. The Lord showed
him his descendants would be enslaved in cruel bondage in Egypt for 400
years. Then the Lord would deliver them, and they would come out of
Egypt with great possessions and return to the land He had promised to
Abraham (vv. 12-16).

The birth and destiny of an entire nation was revealed in
this dream. Abraham had longed for an heir, and God gave him a promise
far beyond his expectations.

Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, received great promises from
God, also, not only for himself but also for his descendants. When he
was a young man, Jacob had stolen his elder brother Esau’s birthright
and obtained the blessings normally given to the firstborn. Esau sought
to kill Jacob for his deceit, so Jacob’s mother, Rebekah, sent him away
to seek a wife in the land of her brother Laban (see Gen. 28).

On the way, Jacob stopped for the night, and as he slept,
he dreamed: “And behold, a ladder was set up on the earth, and its top
reached to heaven; and there the angels of God were ascending and
descending on it.

“And behold, the Lord stood above it and said: ‘I am the
Lord God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which
you lie I will give to you and your descendants’” (vv. 12-13).

The Lord assured Jacob that He would be with him wherever
he went and that He would bring Jacob back to the land He had promised
to him (v. 15).

Two wives and 11 sons later, God spoke to Jacob again in a
dream (see Gen. 31:10-13). Jacob had been working for his
father-in-law, Laban, who continually cheated him. In the dream, God
revealed a plan for dividing the cattle of Laban’s flocks fairly and
giving Jacob his rightful portion.

This is the first recorded instance of God’s imparting
sound business strategy through a dream. God also used this dream to
tell Jacob to take his wives, his children and his flocks and return to
the land of his father.

The Lord let Laban deal deceitfully with Jacob. God was
purging Jacob. It was a long, arduous process, but through this process
the promise was fulfilled and Jacob became Israel, meaning “prince with
God” (Gen. 32:28).

Dreams often challenge us to change just as Jacob was
challenged to change. God had not addressed Jacob’s character flaws in
his dreams, but that did not mean that God approved of all that happened
in Jacob’s life.

Similarly, when we receive a word from the Lord, whether
through a prophecy, a dream or a vision, we must know that the outcome
will depend on our obedient cooperation with God’s maturing and purging
work in our lives.

Joseph was a young man of 17 when he had two dreams that
seemed to bring him nothing but trouble. He was Jacob’s favorite son,
which made his 10 older brothers intensely jealous.

The strife in Jacob’s household was exacerbated when young
Joseph had two dreams—one in which his brother’s sheaves bowed down to
his sheaf, and the other in which the sun, the moon and 11 stars bowed
down to him. Joseph shared these dreams with his brothers and, perhaps
understandably, his brothers hated him all the more. Even his father
rebuked him, although he also kept in mind what Joseph had said (see
Gen. 37:5-11).

Perhaps Joseph was unwise to share these dreams with his
jealous siblings. I believe he shared them not because he was prideful
but because he had more zeal than wisdom. Whatever the reason, the
outcome was that his outraged brothers sold him into slavery.

Joseph’s story shows us the importance of praying
carefully before we share our dreams. Much unnecessary turmoil can be
avoided if we act wisely. Paul prayed that God would give the Christians
at Ephesus wisdom in addition to revelation (see Eph. 1:17). Revelation
without wisdom can cause great heartache and pain; both must be
utilized in proper balance to accomplish God’s ultimate purposes.

After many years in slavery and prison, Joseph became
prime minister of Egypt and helped the country survive seven years of
famine. When his brothers came to Egypt for provisions, they bowed
before him just as the dreams had foretold.

The dreams gave Joseph hope, guidance and encouragement
during difficult times and kept him from forsaking the God of his
fathers. God had a destiny for Joseph that would be fulfilled only after
many years of holding fast to Him in a strange land and under trying
circumstances.

Joseph’s faithfulness to God was the key to his success.
God in turn remained faithful to Joseph and, in His time, fulfilled His
word and brought these dreams to pass, saving not only Joseph and his
family but the future nation of Israel as well.

Dreams and visions may reveal your future ministry and
destiny, but they rarely reveal the process God will use to bring about
their fulfillment.

Assurance and Healing

We were building a new home, and anxiety about the cost of
the tile roof was stretching my faith. Then one night I dreamed that we
were putting a very strange roof on our house—a roof made from dried,
preserved tarantula spiders!

In my dream, everyone was excited about our new roof, but I
couldn’t see what was so exciting about these strange tiles. Then I
visited the homes of people I knew and found them raising baby
tarantulas with great joy and excitement.

I awoke perplexed. I looked up “tarantula” in the
encyclopedia. It said that in the Middle Ages people believed that
anyone bitten by the tarantula spider became ill with tarantism—an
imaginary disease that gave the victim a strong desire to dance! In
reality, the bite of a tarantula is not harmful to humans.

The dance, the disease and the spider were named after a
town in Italy called Taranto—which called to mind the Canadian city of
Toronto, where there had been highly publicized outpourings of joy among
God’s people.

The Lord used my dream to tell me that He was going to
cover our home with rejoicing—symbolized, strangely enough, by a
tarantula. In the Middle Ages, people feared the spider’s bite without
cause in the same way I had feared not having the provision for the
roof. God was assuring me that my worries were unfounded because He
would provide joy and abundance.

The dream showed me that His joy would be poured out in
every home in our congregation, producing a boldness to go forth in His
name and destroy the strongholds of the enemy. I was overcome with joy
and laughter and filled with faith. Who would guess that a tarantula
could cause rejoicing?

Just as dreams can bring assurance, they can reveal
unresolved matters in our hearts. When we dream about suppressed issues,
we become aware of them so we can deal with them and be made whole.
Often when we have built walls around areas of emotional pain to shield
us from the hurt, God uses dreams to bypass those walls and go directly
to the source of the pain.

On a conscious level, we may feel that we have dealt with
those past wounds, but our subconscious minds recognize areas that still
need healing. By bringing such matters to mind, God makes us aware and
begins the healing process.

A man who had lost several family members in a short
period of time came to me because he was troubled by dreams of his loved
ones. Consciously, he felt that he had accepted their deaths, but still
he dreamed about them.

I asked if he had grieved over his losses or if he felt
that he had to be strong for others who were grieving. He replied that
he had never let himself grieve. I prayed with him, asking the Lord to
help him process his grief. From that night forward the dreams ceased.

This man’s conscious mind had not let him feel his grief,
but his subconscious mind would not let him forget it. God spoke to his
need through his dreams and prompted him to seek the Lord for emotional
healing.

From these examples we see that God often identifies a
need in our lives, then gives us a message related to that need. The
need may not be met immediately; however, promises revealed in dreams
and visions give us the determination we need to press through difficult
circumstances until promises are fulfilled. 

Jane Hamon is a gifted teacher and author of Dreams
and Visions (Regal). She and her husband, Tom, pastor Christian
International Family Church in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida. Adapted from Dreams
and Visions by Jane Hamon, copyright © 2000. Published by Regal
Books. Used by permission.