PRINCIPLES FOR INTERPRETING DREAMS

PRINCIPLES FOR

INTERPRETING DREAMS









Lets look at the book of Job 33:14-18 a statement made by Elihu. If you remember there were three friends who came and then the fourth was mentioned later in the book of Job. Towards the end of the book of Job God rebukes the first three friends but not the fourth, implying that the statements made by the fourth (who happened to be Elihu) were acceptable to God and were prophetic.



In Job 33 is a statement made by Elihu, which carries a lot of truth. Verse 14-18 For God speaks in one way, and in two, though man does not perceive it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls upon men, while they slumber on their beds, then He opens the ears of men, and terrifies them with warnings that He may turn man aside from his deed, and cut off pride from man. Dreams in general sense is part of the series on how to be led by the Spirit. We mentioned that dreams are also referred to as a vision of the night. We can see here that dreams and vision of the night are dual phrases referring to the same thing. A dream to the Hebrew mind is a vision of the night. It is a vision that you see in your sub-conscious state.



We have also mentioned how there are three types of dreams and visions. There is a direct or clear dream or vision that does not need any interpretation. It means what it is. For example we find that Joseph the husband of Mary who was carrying Jesus in the womb being directed by an angel in a dream. Angels do appear directly in people’s dream. An angel led him to go into Egypt and then to come back to Israel and settle down in Nazareth where the boy Jesus grew up. So there is a clear cut direct dream or vision.



Then we have the second category that we called the message type where you could have the whole series of dreams but there is only one main message. We have illustrated with Acts 16 Paul before his Macedonian journey he was in Troas waiting. After he was told by the Spirit not to go to Bithynia or Mysia he waited at Troas. Then he had a night vision. If you take the Hebrew meaning he possibly had a dream. To them it was the same; dreams and visions are similar and can be regarded as one. Although he saw the Macedonian man he took it as a message and not as a parable. When he went to Philippi, which was the capital of Macedonia, Paul did not look for a man although he saw a man in a vision. The first people he encountered were women. So we know that it was a kind of message dream or vision.



Then the third category is like parable, where each picture in a vision or dream has a symbolic meaning. Daniel had dreams and visions in the night. He saw animals in his dreams. Each animal represents a nation. So these are symbolic visions or dreams.



We have also mentioned how Joseph and Daniel got into interpretation of dreams and some of the requirements that were given. And we have given some rules and guidelines on how to interpret dreams in a general form. We have mentioned how that in the parable kind of vision or dream every symbol has to be scriptural. In other words if a snake in the bible represents something evil whatever sort of snake you saw in a dream it still symbolizes evil. Even if the snake is white in color it still is evil. The symbols have to be scriptural. That is what we call the underlining guidelines.



As I meditate over dreams and visions I realize that there is a whole part in the leading of the Spirit through dreams. Apparently from this scripture in Job 33 a dream plays a significant part in the life of every one of us. Even if you sit right here this morning and you said I didn’t have any dream, there is no such thing. Every one of us dreams. But we do not remember our dream. According to the biological analysis of a person’s sleep you go through different stages. There is a stage of sleep where your eyes do not move. According to their study today they recognized that the first stage of sleep is for your body. Your body is having a rest. So there is no dream. Your eyes do not move. But there is a stage of dream where they call the R.E.M. sleep, which stands for rapid eye movement. Why do the eyes move? For in a dream it is as if you are watching a movie. And the eyes move and respond as if you are watching a big screen movie accordingly. But it’s an internal movie. It’s something that only you see. Today scientists who study sleep think an R.E.M sleep has something to do with the mind. There is a necessity for the mind to analyze whatever that thing it was. The activities of the day rearrange information, process the information that has been received thus far throughout the day. They have tested people. And whenever a person goes to sleep and whenever the R.E.M sleep starts they would purposely wake that person up. In other words they only allow the person to sleep without R.E.M., which is a dream stage. They found that even though a person may have had some sleep but no R.E.M. sleep that his or her mental faculty is affected. A person’s ability to concentrate and focus becomes affected when he or she is deprived of dreaming.



As we analyze this thing from the bible concept R.E.M. sleep is a dream stage and it’s at that stage that the bible says in Job. 33 God places His instructions. God places things that would lead us and guide us. We have actually a large portion of the leading of the Spirit in our dream life. But just as in a conscious stage so it is in the sub-conscious stage. That is when we are in our conscious stage about 90 or 95 percent of the leading we receive in our life is through the human spirit. It’s the human spirit that instructs us and tells us things that are right or wrong; this is the inward witness and the inward voice. The other 5 percent or 10 percent is what we call the spectacular leading like visions, prophecies and even angelic visitations. But the main primary leading is our inward spirit or the human spirit. This is the inward witness and the inward voice that we hear.



As I analyze this area here I realize that the direction we receive from our dream life is 90 or 95 percent from our human spirit. Deep in the corridor of our spirit are the instructions that are given to us. Then there are some dreams that are from God. Dreams can come from three sources just as thoughts can come from three sources. It can come from God; it can come from demonic activity or it can come from our self. And our thoughts can also come from three realms. They can come from God; it can come from our self or it can come from the enemy. As we work with we realize that most of our thoughts are either from God or within us. Our spirit searches within us. In a dream state if we walk with God and the blood of Jesus covers us, there is no open door for the enemy to come in our dream life. That leaves two categories; from God or from our human spirit. About 5 percent or 10 percent of our dreams may be from God. Once in a while you have a dream that is a message direct from God.



What do we mean by dreams that are from God and from our human spirit? Why do we make a differentiation between the two of them? If you understand how to be led by the Spirit, you must learn to differentiate the voice of the human spirit from the voice of the Holy Spirit. We mentioned that when it is God that says something we say, “Thus says the Lord.” By if have our human spirit is instructing us you have what Paul says, “I perceived in my spirit.” It’s a world of a difference. When we say, “I perceived,” we are saying we have only one small part and it is changeable. And the instructions may need more verification and clarification. Whereas when we a have a “Thus says the Lord” there is nothing more you can change; there is nothing more you can add; there is nothing except to obey.



In a similar way in dreams there are certain ways that are clear-cut “Thus says the Lord.” There is nothing else you can do about it except pray to God that He will reveal to you fully what He is instructing you. There are certain dreams you notice that are authoritative. They carry a direct message from God like Pharaoh’s dream in the Old Testament. Here is a clear-cut dream for his whole nation. If he did not understand that dream and interpret it his whole nation may perish. Those are important dreams. Those are direct messages from God. The two dreams of Joseph that were recorded were direct messages from God. He may have other dreams too but only two were recorded because those instituted messages from God. But these types of dreams only occur in about 5 to 10 percent of our dreams. The vast majority of our dreams come from the realm of our human spirit or our human soul. They interlinked together. And they constitute direction in our life.



Our human spirit can lead us as much as the Holy Spirit. And we are to train our human spirit with the Word of God so that we could be sensitive to our human spirit and do things according to what God wants. Why does God do it that way? God doesn’t want us to be robots where we always say, “Thus says the Lord, turn right;” “Thus says the Lord, take your coffee now.” We are not robots. So God leads us by the human spirit. And when He does it through the human spirit He demands that we grow. And when we are led by human spirit and human spirit is trained in Him not only are we obedient to God we have become like God because our human spirit has taken the nature and maturity of God.



In about 90 percent of our dreams our human spirit is indirectly picking up God’s instructions to you. The other 5 to 10 percent of our dreams are God’s direct messages to us. Either way, that is a vast amount of dreams and we need to understand them. That is the reason for this series so that we could understand and interpret our dreams.



Ecclesiastes 5:3 For a dream comes with much business, and a fool’s voice with many words. According to his understanding a dream comes through much activity. We realize that king Solomon is the wisest men during his time. And he had some understanding here about dreams. He says a dream comes through much activity. He is indirectly saying that the activities of our life would be related to the dream that we have.



A symbolic dream from God is always in the context of the Bible. In other words symbols in a dream like a snake represents evil; sheep represents something good; goat represents something religious. There are fixed symbols in the bible that are unchangeable. But besides that there are other symbols that are changeable. That can represents something in a person’s life and another thing in another person’s life. That is why the interpretation of dreams is not as easy as you look at it from the outside.



The reason why we teach on this area is because I sensed that in the secular world there will be a gathering interest in this kind of occultist thing. And there are several worldly books on that. Reader Digest has a little mini book on dreams. The Buddhists and Taoists have a little book on that. And Carl Jung the psychologist based in Europe has something to say about dreams. Christians like Mark Wrinkler has a book on dreams in one of his courses, written not by him but by another author. I have read these books on dreams carefully and found that except for the Christian book, which has a higher accuracy, the others are completely inaccurate. The non-Christian books on dreams have a dictionary of dreams that explains the symbols. What they have is they say this symbol represents that. A house represents this. Its fixed and they say when you have a dream refer to that dictionary. It’s too rigid. It’s so easy to misinterpret a dream if you use those books. That is the weakness in these books since they have fixed the meanings of these symbols.



I wanted to see what some of their interpretation were. They interpret a snake as something good. So obviously they don’t have a ruler to measure what is good and evil. So for them everything look quite O.K. Now we have a rulebook called the bible that classifies major symbols. You cannot change them. They will remain as defined in the bible; for example a serpent represents evil etc. But outside of symbols found in the Bible, there are other areas that need interpretation. What does a house represent in the bible? Its quite neutral a house represents a dwelling place. It can be a dwelling place for good or for evil. Things like that where the bible has no direct specifics of good and evil. A house just represents a dwelling place. So because of that the interpretation of dreams is not as simple as that.



Then I read the book “Dreams and its Interpretation”. Now this author is a pastor. He shared several dreams that he had in his life. At a certain stage in his ministry he even attended courses on Carl Jung’s theories. Carl Jung has died but his teachings have many followers. He has come up with some conclusions but I have reservations in some areas. Almost all of the dreams he had are in the category of personal interpretation. In other word it only refers to himself. He completely excluded the 5 percent or the 10 percent of dreams that comes from God directly. Like in that book if he dreams something about his father or his mother it means something about his soul from his father or his soul quality from his mother. Or if he dreams about animals they represent different emotions. In a sense it has some truth but it is not absolute. For example if he dream of a squirrel, to him that squirrel would represent a particular emotion of his. Or if he dreams of a tiger then that represents his emotion of fearlessness. So all the animals represent different emotions in his soul. Basically about 99.9 percent of his interpretations have to do with his soul. There is some truth in it but not always. And he interprets death as having a different meaning also.



As I read that book up to certain point I could discern that demonic powers have entered into his life because he has opened himself to that kind of interpretation where everything is good. I could see that there were some representations that represent demonic powers trying to come into his life that he is not shutting off from. For example you dream of going into the jungle and in the jungle you meet some wild animals. And if you read that book and interpret solely by that book, it would mean the jungle represents the jungle of your emotion. And the wild animal represents a part of your nature that is wild. Then the tiger represents a part of you that is bold. And you are learning how to balance your emotions.



You could interpret differently for example wild things and tigers represent demonic power. And they could represent you are going to a certain stage where they are lurking in the dark. Perhaps you are entering into a stage in your life where it’s the unknown, the jungle means something unknown. Then hiding in the unknown are all these demonic powers in different forms. Tigers could represent things that try to put fear into your life.



So you see that the same dream if you have a different perspective can be interpreted two ways. You could interpret a hundred percent as from the soul. Or you interpret it as a hundred percent has to do with some spiritual message. You could see how interpretation is not as easy as it seems even though you understand the symbols.



That’s why we want to teach a little bit in detail on the interpretation on dreams. I realize that a lot of the leadings in our life that we tend to miss in our conscious life are repeated in our dreams. And if you would pay attention to some of the messages that are coming in our dreams you will not go astray out of God’s perfect will. There are warnings as mentioned. God places dreams in our lives to direct our lives to keep us from the path leading to the pit. I encourage you to write down your dreams even the most insignificant ones. You will be surprised that many of your dreams tell you about your job, your career, your business decision, your ministry and all the things that are missed.



As I pray in this area that’s why the Holy Spirit impressed me to teach on this series. He says my people are missing what I am telling them. They are missing what I am telling them in their dream life because they regard it the way the westernized educational system regarded it. Just for some background the world philosophy today and humanism is greatly affected by Aristotle. Before Aristotle was Plato. These two great scholars and philosophers have affected the educational system of the whole world. Plato taught that you could receive knowledge through three areas: the physical world, the intellect and through what he would call divine activity. To us we understand it to be spirit realm. But when Aristotle came he only accepted that knowledge could come only through the senses and through the intellect. And today the world system and education is based on the fact that knowledge can come through sense knowledge and the intellect. They ignored completely the spirit realm. And that is why the average educated person regards dreams as something wishy-washy that is nothing significant. They totally ignored the aspect of the spiritual, which is unknown as far as the intellectual man is concerned.



How do we interpret our dreams? What is the basis of such interpretation? We have the bible that tells us symbols. What about things that are more detailed? So there are certain rules that we want to look at.



No. 1 we look at some basic rules first. Dreams should be taken in the context of the Bible and in the dreamer’s personal life. It is easier to interpret your dreams in some ways but sometimes harder. Let me explain it before you can actually interpret somebody’s dream. I must understand what those symbols mean to him. There are certain quote unquote that we call international symbols. Snake represents evil but there are others that are not directly covered in the bible. So to interpret a person’s dream I will need to understand what the symbols mean to him. If to that person the squirrels have some significance, then besides the bible interpretation I will also need some details to interpret his dream and find out what squirrels mean to him. Perhaps when he was small he had a squirrel as a pet. It was something so precious to him that when that squirrel was taken away he cried very much. Then it has some different meaning besides the general meaning that represents unclean animal. It takes on an extra meaning for him in his dream.



Lets take something more common like cats. Let says A loves cats. He has a cat that he kept all his life when he was a young little boy. This cat means everything to him. So the cat represents to him something of love. It represents companionship and affection. So now when he dreams of cat I can have the general interpretation that a cat is an unclean animal. But that doesn’t help me in explaining some of the details of his dream. I would need details of what cat represents to him. I need to know a person’s life to help to interpret that.



Then for example a cat to another person B could represents witchcraft. Perhaps his only experience of cats has to do with witchcraft. Then when A dreams of a cat and B dreams of a cat, there are two different interpretations for the same cat. Cat to A means something nice, to B means something evil. So I interpret their dreams I have to pick up what that person’s understanding is. So you can see why it is sometimes easier to interpret somebody else’s dream that you know than whom you do not know. If you take that statement by itself then the other side logically means it is easier to interpret your own dreams because you know yourself. In a sense it is true but in another sense its not true. Our dreams sometimes reveal our blind spots that we cannot see. And because we cannot see that and the dreams try to tell us of our blind spots we find it difficult to interpret them.



With all these in mind we look at the book of Genesis chapter 40 the baker and the butler. A dream is No. 1 contextual. In verse 9 it says So the chief butler told his dream to Joseph, and said to him, “In my dream there was a vine before me, and on the vine there were three branches; as soon as it budded, its blossoms shot forth, and the clusters ripened into grapes. Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand; and I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh’s cup, and placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand.



In order to interpret the butler’s dream we need to know what those symbols mean to the butler. So Joseph has wisdom that is why in the bible the great interpreters of dreams are those who are wise. Joseph has God’s wisdom. Daniel too has God’s wisdom. When you are wise you understand another person’s life besides your own. So Joseph must understand what those symbols mean. What does the vine means to the butler?



A vine can means different things to different people. If you take that word generally it means something good. The word vine in the bible also represents the church. Of course in the butler’s dream it has nothing to do with the church. To the butler the vine tree produces grapes. In the dreams he was taking that cup and taking the grapes and squeezing the grapes juice and giving it to Pharaoh. Remember this was something he used to do when he worked. All the time when he was serving Pharaoh that was what he was doing. It would have been if you are an accountant and in your dream you dream about yourself doing accounts. Do you know what that means? That dream is talking about your job. You don’t need to dream about vine to know about your job because that vine has nothing to do with you. So the symbols are contextual. Joseph understood that handling cups was what the butler normally does in his job, so the dream has to do with his job. And there was the number three, which is important. That’s why don’t forget details. He mentioned that there were three branches. So that three was significant for it tells three days.



And for the baker he had a different dream. It says here in verse 16 When the chief baker saw that the interpretation was favorable, he said to Joseph, “I also had a dream; there were three cake baskets on my head, and in the uppermost basket there were all sorts of baked food for Pharaoh, but the birds were eating it out of the baskets on my head.” And Joseph answered, “This is its interpretation; the three baskets are three days; within three days Pharaoh will lift up your head from you and hang you on a tree; and the birds will eat the flesh from you.”



If you study it carefully it’s a very different interpretation from the normal dream. So we have to look at the context of the baker. The baker dreamt about bread but the butler dreamt about grapes. To the accountant he dreams about accounts. To the engineer he dreams about engineering projects. To the minister he dreams about preaching. You know what it means when you dream about preaching your ministry. So dream is contextual; we got to understand the context.



Besides that we just add another point that the context is limited by your work. Its very unlikely if your work is on a national basis for your dream to have an international basis. If your work has to do only with a local district, it is very unlikely that your dream has to do with international things. In other words its contextual to the size of your job or your ministry. For Pharaoh he was governing over a whole nation. So he dreams about things that have national perspective. It wan not just a personal soul dream. For Daniel who had an international perspective his dreams were international. In one dream he has four nations. He was functioning in an international perspective. He was the key leader and minister over two three nations. So his dreams took on an international perspective.



So to interpret a dream we also need to understand not only what the symbols mean to a person but the level that person is functioning in. If a person is called to be a soul winner but not directly called to the ministry, it is very unlikely that the dream would have significance in an international perspective. That is why we got a lot of misinterpretations. A soul winner who had a certain dream may misinterpret that he will have an international ministry that will impact the body of Christ. I heard people who were not called to the ministry and they interpret their dreams in terms of what their ministry will have internationally. It is very unlikely. For example a soul winner’s dream may looks like he will have an international ministry. He may interpret it as a worldwide ministry that is going to happen. When I heard it and not only judging the dream but also judging from what I am hearing from the Spirit I know that he is hearing the wrong thing. Or rather he has picked it up with a wrong interpretation with the right dream. You could have the right dream with the wrong interpretation and wrong application. So it is contextual to a person’s life.



Now to the baker here bread and carrying bread is something that he does all the time. How did Joseph refer it to death? It looks like he is just losing his job from the description of the three baskets and the birds eating the bread off the baskets. Since Joseph was in charge of the prison, he knew what happens when a death sentence is pronounced. There were many others before the baker who were sentenced to death. He must have seen them hanging on a tree and the birds pecking on the flesh. That was the concept of judgment and death in those days. So based on that he understood that birds pecking equals death, he interpreted that the baker would die. Today birds pecking may not equal death. But in those days when a prisoner is sentenced and condemned to death, there would be birds pecking the flesh of the corpse. Pharaoh didn’t mete out such a punishment just because it was the baker. It was something common to see criminals sentenced to death by hanging in Egypt. So with that understanding of what that symbol means in those days he understood that there was a picture of death.



The second difficulty that we need to understand is symbols in a dream can change even within one person’s sphere of meaning, let alone a different person. In the first point a same symbol to “A” and a symbol to ”B” means two different things. But the other difficulty is that even within one person the same symbol can change. In other words it was this symbol that represents something at a certain point of time and at another point of time the symbol represents something else. The same symbol changed with time.



Lets look at Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel chapter two the dream that Nebuchadnezzar forgot. Verse 31 and 32 You saw, O king, and behold, a great image. This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood before you and its appearance was frightening. The head of this image was of fine gold, its breast and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze. Now verse 36-38 “This was the dream; now we will tell the king its interpretation. You, O king, the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the might, and the glory, and into whose hand he has given, wherever they dwell, the sons of men, the beasts of the field, and the birds of the air, making you rule over them all – you are the head of gold.



So in the first dream that Nebuchadnezzar had the head of gold represents himself. Second dream that he had in chapter four verse 10 The vision of my head as I lay in bed were these; I saw and behold, a tree in the midst of the earth; and its height was great. The tree grew and became strong, and its top reached to heaven, and it was visible to the end of the whole earth. Its leaves were fair and its fruit abundant, and in it was food for all. The beasts of the field found shade under it, and the birds of the air dwelt in its branches, and all flesh was fed from it. verse 15 but leave the stump. Verse 19 Then Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, was dismayed for a moment and his thoughts alarmed him.



That means Daniel instantly understood what the dream is. The moment he heard it he was filled with shock because he knew what it meant. And it says in verse 22 It is you, O king, who have grown and become strong. In other words the tree represents Nebuchadnezzar. If you analyze it, Nebuchadnezzar had two dreams. In the first dream the head of gold represent himself. In the second dream the tree represent himself. The two different symbols referred to the same man.



It is possible that in different dreams at different times you have different symbols that represent the same thing. We want to recall Pharaoh’s dream of the seven thin cows and the seven fat cows. The seven sheaves of grain and the seven lean sheaves of grain. Two different symbols represent the same thing even in one dream. In two different dreams two symbols represent the same thing. In a single dream two different symbols represent the same thing. That’s why interpretation of dream is not as easy as you see it. But if you understand these points you can make it easy.



If you remember your dreams you know how dreams change and have different parts. You could be in a certain place in your dream and suddenly you were at a different place. Usually it means it is the same thing in different symbols. For example in Pharaoh’s dream about the seven fat cows, seven thin cows, Seven fat sheaves of grain and seven thin ones. The two different symbols were two different parts of a dream. It is the same thing referred to. The next time you have a dream that has three parts, scene one, scene two, scene three, all those scenes can represent one message given in different forms. Although you are there watching the dream the dream itself can represent you. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it represents somebody else. Even though Nebuchadnezzar was there and he was looking at the tree, he was right there in the dream himself. He was right there separate from the tree in his dream. The tree was the tree and he was himself. He was a separate person in the dream from the tree. But that tree was him. It was not even referring to the empire. He didn’t lose his empire. It was him who was judged. His empire continued to exist possibly because Daniel held it together. During those years when he was cast out as a beast who took control of his empire? If you look at it very carefully the empire didn’t collapse it was Nebuchadnezzar who collapsed.



Even in the other dream the one where he was the golden head, that represents both him and his empire, even though he was standing there and the statue was separate from him. So remember when you have a dream it does not mean that you have to be there to represent you. In your dream you could be there watching something that represents you. It could be a tree, or it could even be a person. In the dream it was another person but in the end it was you. Perhaps in a dream you see a little kid experiencing all kind of things. You cannot recognize the kid. You were wondering whether God is telling you about somebody else’s kid. No, most probably God is talking about you. That small little kid represents you. In the second point here symbols changed but the meanings are the same.



In the third category as we look and study the interpretation of dreams we are just introducing basic principles. Lets look at the book of Genesis chapter 37:3 Now Israel loved Joseph more that any other of his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he made him a long robe with sleeves. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him more than all his brothers, and could not speak peaceable to him. Now Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers they only hated him the more. He said to them, “Hear this dream which I have dreamed; behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and lo, my sheaf arose and stood upright; and behold, your sheaves gathered round it, and bowed down to my sheaf.



That made his brothers hated him more. Now although he was there and his brothers’ sheaves were there, his sheaf in his dream represented him. But the other thing here is his sheaf represented his job and his call. In those days they were agricultural based. It was a common thing for them to go out and harvest. So something from their work was brought into Joseph’s dream but an additional thing happened. When they put the sheaves together all the other sheaves bowed down to Joseph. It is saying that Joseph’s job or vocation or call will be higher than his brothers. See it is referring to his call. Not just to his present position it was a prediction that was to come.



His second dream is recorded in verse 9. Then he dreamed another dream, and told it to his brothers, and said, “Behold, I have dreamed another dream; and behold, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” But when he told it to his father and his brothers, his father rebuked him, and said to him, “What is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves to the ground before you?”



Apparently Jacob understood dream. He knew that the sun was him and the moon was the mother, eleven stars were the children. So he rebuked Joseph. So in that dream an inanimate object, sun represent papa, moon is mama. Now it is not always that way. Isn’t it strange how symbols are that way? We must realize that the language of the spirit world is symbolic. It’s just like I want to convey with my intellect a description to you I have to use phrases that you understand. We cannot use language which none of us understand to convey something. So for example there are a lot of debate over Charismatic terms like infilling of the Spirit, baptism in the Spirit. People quarrel because of that definition. To them the different terms could mean the same thing. But churches have fought and split because of definition. So when one person stands up and say something the other person understood it to mean something else. Misunderstanding, hurt, grievances has come because somebody said something that they don’t mean it. They mean it something in their context and somebody understood it to something else because of their background and they quarrel. That happens in communication.



Now as our human spirit wants to communicate to us it will take from within our experience. It will take symbols that mean something to us in order to convey a message to us in a picture form. So the spirit wants to warn you about danger. It will draw from your life things that represent danger to you. But it is difficult for our intellect to interpret because we may not understand that those symbols represent that. Because the same symbols that the spirit draw from our experience may represent something in the natural world. And when we wake up we tend to move into the natural world and look at that from that context rather than its actual meaning.



So the third in regard to dream and its interpretation is chronological context or time frame. A dream has a time frame. It may no more be applicable after some time. Time frame in what sense for example, we want to understand what a person is going through at the time that they have the dream. To interpret dreams you must understand not only what the symbols mean to that person, you must also try to pick up what that person is going through. Because what they are going through will have an effect on that dream. If you have been going through a time of difficulty, like perhaps you have just lost your job. You have been applying for job after job. The dreams you have will have to do with the chronology context of what you are going through. If I did not pick up that you have just lost your job I may interpret the dream differently. But if I have the chronological context of what you are going through I could interpret the dream better. Those dreams may have a message about your job. It may even tell you when you will get that job. Dreams can tell the time.



Joseph told the baker in three days you will be hanging on a tree. So a dream has its chronological context in the sense of what the person is going through at that time. Whether a person is fearful, happy, sad, anxious, all these things must be taken into account before you can interpret a dream. In this third point let me share a little bit further.



Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 5:3 that a dream comes through much activity. The word activity not only refers to physical activity. Behind it also it conveys a meaning of your soul state, whether you were fearful or anxious and all these. So it is important to see when that person has a dream chronologically what context are they going through? We apply that knowledge when we interpret our dreams. That means like David it is important to search our hearts before we sleep. If you sleep in a state of anxiety and fear that has not been removed or state of unforgiveness or state of anger let me tell you those will come out in the dream and it will color your dreams. And that prevents an accurate reception from God because our dreams are colored by our emotions. It is important to have emotions of love, joy and peace in the presence of God before we sleep in order to receive accurate messages from our dreams. Otherwise all the dreams do is just to reveal our soul’s condition and what we need to do to deal with it.



I know people who sleep in a state of anger and judgmental things and in their dreams their anger and judgmental attitudes come up. The dreams confirm their suspicion. They suspect this and they suspect that and it comes out in the dream. It is a projection. What you believe what you feel is projected into the dream. It will be the same like negative confession. People say this is going to happen. Later it happened then they say, “There I told you - prophecy fulfilled.” It is not prophecy; they just got what they said in the negative realm. So it is a kind of projection of their negativities, which materialized because they spoke out their negativities and they dreamed out their negativities.



It is quite similar to the conscious state. For example it is very hard to hear from God when you are anxious, when you are fearful, when something is troubling your mind. It hinders the accuracy of hearing the voice of God and the voice of your human spirit. The best place to hear from God is a place of rest, love, peace and joy in the kingdom of God. If you are filled with anxiety your thoughts are troubled. And it tends to magnetize and pull towards the wrong direction so your receiving is colored. That is why it is sometimes difficult to tell things about yourself. If you are praying about a job and you really want it very much. In the natural state when you are awake you keep hearing, “This is God, this is God.” Because of your strong desires 95 percent of your dreams are affected by the magnetic pull of your emotions. Your activity colors your dream that’s what Solomon is saying in Ecclesiastes 5:3. In order for accurate interpretation you need what this third point says: know the chronological context or emotion or spiritual context of the person.



Interpreting two dreams from the audience. Dream No. 1 She just dream she didn’t get the wake up call in the hotel and she was late for church by two hours. That dreams doesn’t tells me much. It only tells me the state in which she slept in. She was very concerned that she doesn’t want to be late. So that came out in a dream. You see the third point is affecting her dream life. It tells me several areas about her life. Like to her it is important to get ready for the church. A normal person may not have that kind of anxiety.



Dream No. 2 She has a dream that she is swimming in the water and then she has it again she was walking on the water. Now before we interpret the dream remember the other context that we mentioned. You have to understand what these symbols mean to her. Walking on water and walking through water are found in the bible. Walking on water or going through water symbolize spiritual movement. We all remember Moses crossing the Red Sea. That was like darkness and light moving from Egyptian land into the Promised Land. We also remember Joshua and the Israelites. They crossed the Jordan and it was like going from one aspect into something new. So this is the scriptural context.



Then we have other areas, which are important to interpret the dream. Because she is in the ministry, then the chronological context is important. She doesn’t know how to swim in the natural. That plays an important role in interpreting the dream. God specially use something that she cannot do in the natural and the Spirit use something that she cannot do in the natural to show her something that she is doing in a dream. General interpretation would mean that it is talking about some aspect of ministry that she is going to move in to. Something that is different for example crossing the Jordan to the land of Canaan. Something that is vitally important. Then the interpretation is affected by our own knowledge of what she is going through in her ministry. I understand that at certain points in her dreams it represents a crossover point from one phase of ministry to another phase. So that helps me to interpret her dream too.



Because she does not swim in the natural and yet she has those dreams, it would mean that there is something that she had never done before in the Spirit. Something that she has never done before that is new in the Spirit. The Holy Spirit brought up things that she could never do. That points to things in the Spirit that she has no experience before that God is preparing her for.



Then twice the dream occurs. Once when she was within the water the other when she was above the water. It depends now on when she had that dream. She had it twice means that she would have two different experience of what God will do in that phase of ministry. In the first phase she will be handling those things that she had never done before. As she moves into it she will get fully involved with it. The second dream means that she is going to dedicate whatever she has done there. She will move into some sort of ministry and going to establish it. See when she walks on water she is no more in it. She is above it.

THE IMPORTANCE OF DREAMS

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THE IMPORTANCE OF DREAMS









Acts 2 as Peter speaks regarding the out pouring of the Spirit he says in verse 16 onwards. This is what was spoken by the prophet Joel; And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; yes, and on my menservants and my maidservants in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth beneath, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke; the sun shall turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and manifest day. And it shall be that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.



We are going to look at dreams and visions that God has placed in our lives. And especially we want to focus on fulfilling our dreams that God has given to each one of us. I guess that all of us have dreams to a certain extend. In fact we all dream every night. But we don’t remember the dreams. Sometimes we remember the dreams when we wake up. We say, “I had a dream.” Dreams are an important part of our lives. It is just like thinking. It is interesting to know that all of us do dream. Even though some of you say you don’t dream at all you do dream except that you forgot your dreams.

We advise people that if you really want to remember your dream especially those that are from God, then spend some time with the Lord before you sleep, especially praying in the Spirit. Usually those dreams that you could remember have a significant message in your life. As we see the beginning of this New Year we realize that there could be dreams in some of our lives that you may see fulfilled this year. Perhaps some of your dreams were fulfilled last year but other dreams were not fulfilled yet that you thought would have been fulfilled last year. There is a great possibility that perhaps one or two or more of your dreams may be fulfilled this year. But whether they are fulfilled this year or not we must always develop a quality to be a dreamer of dreams. Dreams are the fertile ground for the Holy Spirit to work and move in our lives. However we know that there are dreams that are caused from daily activities, dreams that are brought forth from God and there are some that are infiltrated from the enemy.



Why is it important to dream? In our modern world dreams have been pushed aside where we don’t give them a much emphasis. Do you realize that just maybe several thousand years ago dreams were considered important? In our modern society we put it to the side as something insignificant and unimportant.



God wants us to be dreamers. This is not to mean dreamers in the sense of someone who is of no earthly good or who does not know how to be practical in his life. We are not talking about that definition. But there is a necessity to be one who dream dreams if you want to reach into the height and greatness of God’s plan for your life.



One of the reasons why we want to dream dreams is usually in a dream you are not limited by what you are limited by in the natural. For example in the natural your income may be lets say about seven hundred dollars a month. And you are just struggling to live by. Do you know all you have to do is just close your eyes and dream? And in your dream or imagination you could be living in a farm with lots of hills to meditate. In your dream, you are not limited by your income. Then in that dream you are not limited by education or ability. Some of you could never play any musical instrument. All you have to do is close your eyes and dream. And you could see yourself playing the musical instrument. Don’t you think that’s a powerful tool that God has given to us? You are not limited in your dreams. Whether by your financial standing or by your education or by anything at all in your dream there is a fertile ground for anything to happen.



In a dream strange things happen. You could be for example driving in a car and suddenly your car turns into a truck. Or going by a hill and suddenly the hill turns to a diamond hill. Anything can happen in a dream. There are no limitations, as we know it in this natural world. And what we want to stir in your life is the importance of dreams. And how we need to cultivate ourselves so that we become dreamers of dreams. And that’s where faith can began to take hold of some of the things you dream about.



Let me read a few scriptures to show how important dreams are. The book of Job 33:14 For God speaks in one way, and in two, though man does not perceive it. Now God speaks to us all the time. Sometimes through the soft inner voice, sometimes through people, sometimes when we are really hard of hearing then through circumstances.



Verse 15 In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls upon men, while they slumber on their beds, then He opens the ears of men, and terrifies them with warnings, that He may turn men aside from his deed, and cut off pride from man; he keeps back his soul from the Pit, his life from perishing by the sword.



God speaks through dreams. In verse 15 it tells when those dreams occur, in deep sleep. The dreams only occur when you enter into very deep sleep. Even according to modern dream research, our night sleeping hours are in cycles. As you fall into sleep in the first phase of your sleep there is no dream. Then in the second phase of your sleep dreams occur. They know when dreams occur because of your REM sleep or rapid eye movement sleep. The first part there is no REM. The first part possibly has to do with the physical body resting. But they have not fully understood why we should dream dreams.



Dream researchers noticed that if a person is prevented from dreaming, their creativity during the day is diminished. When you fall asleep your body is actually resting. But when you are dreaming all the biological activity in your body functions as if you are awake. It consumes much energy in your dream state. The eyes move and the body is activated but its like you are in a different realm. You are not conscious. Then whenever the subjects under study fall asleep and just as they are about to dream when their eyes movement becomes rapid, they are woken up. The researchers try to stop the subjects from dreaming. Every time they dream they wake them up. Then they fall asleep again and then they wake them up. They found that these people became less and less creative. Creativity is an important part of our lives. Those people become reduced to almost mere robots or zombies in their waking state. So there is something about the ability to dream, which must be cultivated in our lives. Now here it speaks about a dream that comes when you are asleep.



In the book of Acts chapter 2 it is not necessarily speaking about a dream that occurs when you are asleep. In Acts 2:17 it says your old men shall dream dreams. The word dream dreams is the word enupnizomai enupnion. The normal Greek word for dream is the word onar, which is used in the book of Matthew when Joseph had a dream. Here in Acts 2 he is talking about a dream state not necessary a sleep state dream. The word enupnion speaks about a kind of dreaminess. It is almost like what we use in the English word dreamy. Like some one sitting quietly in a corner and they are like in a world of themselves dreaming. This is from the special Greek word for dreams enupnion and not from the ordinary Greek word for dreams onar.



And this word enupnion has been used of people who are dreamers in their waking state. Job 33 is referring to those in their sleeping state. It had been used in the negative sense in the book of Jude verse 8 Yet in like manner these men in their dreamings defile the flesh, reject authority, and revile the glorious ones. He is talking about those who in a negative sense dream of the wrong things. They are not asleep they are awake. We immediately see that there is such a thing as a dreamlike state while conscious and a full dream state while in deep sleep.



Today modern psychologists tell you that there are different states of consciousness. Some try to tap into the sub consciousness as deep as possible. Actually our brain waves have two to three different patterns. Some psychologists try to get people into some of these patterns. But they are doing it without Jesus. They don’t understand how dangerous it can be. If there were no devils and no demons it would be fine. But because the other realm is full of demonic activities and power we need a source of protection, which is the blood of Jesus. Which is why people who go deep into transcendental meditation without Jesus many of them end up inviting demonic activities into their lives unknowingly. They don’t have the protection of the Lord.



So the ability to dream is an important one. It does occur even in your waking moment and as well as in your deep sleep. What we encourage you to do is to dream dreams and go beyond those areas that have limited you. If you could dream of things that are impossible to you, you can move into that realm. Is your mind limited by only what you think is possible? You refuse to think of things that are impossible. You dare not even think of such things. Perhaps the attitude is wrong. You need to think of things that you never thought before. It may not be God’s will for you to go into the ministry and preach to millions of people. But yet in your dream you could do it. You could see your life affecting others. It may not be God’s will for you to handle millions of dollars but yet in your dream you can do so.



Why must I dream of things that are not of God’s will for me but still in line with the Word? Because faith is the substance of things hoped for. Dreams are the seeds of hope. Sometimes when I fellowship with people and we sit around, we talk about the many things we could do for the Lord. Not that we want to do them. But we said we are just dreaming dreams. I said how wonderful if we could just hold healing services for multitudes in our own premises instead of renting stadiums. As we walk through town we see these multimillion-dollar buildings owned by unbelievers. I said how nice if we could get a whole floor just for Christian entrepreneurs. Some of these things may materialize and some may not. But its fertile ground to dream dreams. Some of your dreams may travel along and somebody else picks it up and actualized it. And we will just sit down and dream dreams. I remember some time back and we were talking about how Christian entrepreneurs will own a whole building and Christian music is played all the time.



How wonderful if we have a Christian hospital that applies not only the laws of natural healing and medicine but incorporate prayers and the Leviticus laws to bring about healing. I tell you we could have more people healed than other hospitals in the world. I may not be the one who fulfill that vision. I may not be the one who do it. But if I dream dreams one day somebody will catch hold of that dream. I could dream dreams I could see Christian doctors get together perhaps one day they would open a hospital that is based on God’s healing principles. They not only dispense medicine they will give their best and the most modern technological medicine but on the top of that they will pray. Some thing will happen. I believe that somebody somewhere had that dream that they will fulfill. But yet I could have that dream too. Because if I were to have that dream too and he would have that dream whoever he is, where two or three agree on earth although we don’t know each other, it is going to cause something to start happening. That’s why we need to dream dreams. We need to talk about dreams since it is the fertile ground for faith to take place.



Heb. 11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. I could phrase it in another way. Faith depends on hope to bring a substance of reality. Without hope there is no faith. Dreaming dreams is like doing weight lifting in your spirit. If you have ever lift weights before you know what its like. You stretch your muscles beyond its normal usage. And unless you stretch your muscles the muscles will not grow. Muscles need constant stretching to grow. Dreams are the weight lifting of the creative part of your soul and of your spirit. When you are dreaming dreams you are weight lifting. And you stretch your imagination. Not a hundred percent of your dreams may come to pass but they keep your muscles healthy. I lift weights not to enter the contest. I lift weights to keep myself healthy. In the same way we need to lift dreams in our lives. Sometimes I used to share with those in the ministry and say how wonderful if we just have a place for Christian retreat. For some others they have already actualized that vision. We could just call all those five-fold ministries in, accommodate them and say lets have a time of praying together. It’s a dream and we need to dream in order for it to come to pass one day either in our life or somebody else’s life to bring it to pass.



Dreams are the fertile ground of faith to take root. As we stretch our muscles of dreams some of them may be God’s destiny for our life. Some of them may be for another people’s lives to fulfill. I may not own a Christian hospital with all the Christian doctors, but if I dream it and share my dreams somebody else who is in the medical profession may catch hold of that dream. And for them that dream becomes a vision. Which is why the bible calls it old men dream dreams and young men see vision, because the old would have finished their work and their call. But they continue to produce seeds that the young men could take hold of and become their visions. The vision of their life becomes their destiny.



It is good to be a dreamer of dreams. Strangely it’s the dreamer of dreams that contact the prophetic realm. In Acts 2 we see that out pouring of the Spirit, dreaming dreams and seeing visions are all in line with the prophetic realm. It didn’t say that only prophets will move in prophecy. It says young men, young women. Menservants, maidservants they shall prophesy. They shall contact the prophetic realm. And the testimony of Jesus Christ is a spirit of prophecy. What is prophetic realm? The realm of things to come.



God calls prophets dreamer of dreams. Turn to Deut. 13:1 If a prophet arises among you, or a dreamer of dreams. The way he classify it a dreamer of dreams is equivalent to a prophet. Not all dreamers of dreams may be prophets. But all prophets are dreamers of dreams. A dreamer of dreams reaches a realm that is equivalent to the realm that a prophet moves in. It is on a higher level of consciousness. Most of us in the modern world are trained and educated to function only on the intellectual realm. We rationalize and think but there is a higher level that we could move into. It is a level of consciousness beyond our intellectual mind. It’s a level of dreaming dreams and seeing visions. It is not just rationalizing something.



Today they have discovered that people can develop ability to control things that are beyond what they thought possible. I have a book on quantum fitness and there is a research on the latest scientific application in the area of physical development. Long ago they tell you that the physical body has two sets of actions one voluntary and one involuntary. One is a reflex action where you don’t think before executing an action. If you have to think you may die due to the slowness of your actions. Lets take for example a hot pan or fire touches a part of your body, and you didn’t feel your flesh burning immediately. You rationalize and say, “Now a smell is coming from here, I feel pain in my arm, there is burning, this pan is hot, I know I should move away from that pan.” You don’t think you immediately say “ouch.” Reflex action. If you have to think that there is danger here you may die. Our heartbeat is involuntary. We don’t have to make our heart beat. You should thank God for that. Otherwise the day you stop thinking, you will drop dead. We don’t have to tell ourselves to breathe. If so many of our physical body have to come under voluntary action, our minds would be so exhausted doing all the thinking that you got no time left for other things. So God places a portion of our body into involuntary area.



And the other part voluntary for example you choose to sit, you choose to stand. You don’t sit involuntarily. They have discovered that there is a way which people can affect even their involuntary reflexes. They have analyzed some of those people who did it. Like some gurus who could even stop their heart beat. And they have an experiment where for a moment of time they stop their heart and restart it again. The scientists were amazed but some of them may use demonic power. But there is some aspects of what I call latent soul power. And there is this person who sits on a chair full of nails and there were holes poked into his skin all over the back. On one of the holes there was blood coming out. And he did something and it stopped. How could they do such things? There is only one thing that they did. They controlled their involuntary action through visualizing. Today it is documented scientifically that there is a certain extend by which we control our involuntary action through vision. Even out in the secular world people are healed of cancer by visualizing their white blood cells killing the cancer cells. They discovered the door into the involuntary area of a person’s life. Vision. What does that person do? They visualize the very part of the body and in that vision they make it to work they want it to. Not by the rational thinking but by something deeper than that.



So there is a consciousness that is very deep that God wants us to enter into. To dream dreams. I dream dreams and I could see a building that sits a hundred thousand people. The engineers will be scratching their heads and asking how are they going to build that kind of building? I know that in our dream we defy a lot of natural laws. It is not so much that we want to do so. But because we could see in our dream we would discover natural laws and principles and engineering abilities to do what we dream about. We need to dream dreams to keep our faith healthy. If you stop dreaming dreams your faith has very little catalyst to work with. Faith is the substance of things hoped for. Who knows one day we may be able to build a canopy that covers a million people before Jesus comes. Could you dream it? In a dream all things are possible. These kind of dreams cause our faith muscles to stretch all the time. Say I love to dream dreams they are important for my faith.



Perhaps you are in the business world and you are struggling. You are living by your rational intellectual mind. You are always seeing what can be done that is not impossible. You are not a dreamer of dreams. You are a calculator. You calculate over the possibility. You dare not even think of things that are impossible. For a moment of time put aside those little things that are limiting you. Take time to go aside and just dream dreams. See your business grow. See yourself owning your own business premises. And dream dreams of the day that you own your own premises and your business going nation-wide and worldwide. You could dream dreams of things nobody dream about. Dream dreams may not be God’s will for you but you need to stretch your muscles. Then after you dream of dreams you come back into reality and you find yourself refreshed. Then you began to look at some of your problems about planning to own your own business premises they don’t look so impossible any more. You have been weight lifting with 45 pounds and you come back and you take the 25 pounds, no sweat. It becomes easier for your muscles have been stretched. And we need the stretching of our imagination of our dreams, especially in this New Year because this year is a year of great possibility. This is a year of power I would call it. It is a year of impossibilities becoming possible. This is the year where your dreams can be fulfilled.



How do we stimulate those dreams? What are those things that will help us to stimulate those dreams?



Lets look in the book of Daniel. In Daniel chapter two Nebuchadnezzar had a dream; Daniel received an interpretation for Nebuchadnezzar’s dream and brought to Nebuchadnezzar some of the reasons of those dreams and why they occur. As he brought forth the dream he gave some background in verse 28-29 But there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and He has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days. Now Nebuchadnezzar was only the first part of the dream the golden head the others had nothing to do with him, the Middle Persian Empire etc. But yet in his dream he could contact areas that go beyond his life span. Your dream and the visions of your head as you lay in bed are these; To you, O king, as you lay in bed came thoughts of what would be hereafter, and He who reveals mysteries made known to you what is to be.



No. 1 we need to think in the general area of those dreams for those specific visions of your life to come to pass. For example, if you are in the business world your mind needs to hang loose what will become of your business, what is God’s will for you. As your thoughts revolve around in the area of wondering, you are hanging loose you are not limiting yourself to what you know or what you have. You are just wondering. In a state of mind of wondering what is to come to pass, the answer may come to you in your dreams.



Here is king Nebuchadnezzar he is a mighty king. One day before he slept he wondered what would come to pass after his kingdom. What is the end of all these things? And with all these thoughts coming strong on him, it brought him into a position where God gave him a dream. The question we ask is if Nebuchadnezzar did not wonder about what is to come would he have that dream? The answer is no. Which explain why many people do not allow their consciousness to rise beyond their natural ability of what they have. God never could reveal to them what is to come in that area because they never let go of their limitations. They began to wonder what goes beyond their limitations what will come to pass.



Daniel does it in a different way. In the book of Daniel chapter seven verse one In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon. Daniel had a dream and visions of his head as he lay in his bed. Then he wrote down the dream, and told the sum of the matter. Apparently Daniel who serve in the kingdom was wondering what is to come to pass too. And in seeking after God’s best for his life, he had this strange dream. Now that dream that he had in chapter seven there are several verses that he mentioned. In verse eight he says I was considering the horns. Verse nine As I looked. Verse eleven I looked. Verse fifteen As for me, Daniel, my spirit within me was anxious and the visions of my head alarmed me. He didn’t understand but it did disturb him. Daniel was like a watcher. One who considers. One who seeks God’s understanding. Look at chapter ten verse one In the third year of Cyrus king of Persia a word was reveled to Daniel, who was named Belteshazzar. And the word was true, and it was a great conflict. And he understood the word and had understanding of the vision. Daniel was a seeker after truth and after things to come. And there is something about people who long to know the future, long to know what is to come. Right now in God’s book everything written about your life is already there. Everything written about what you are to do is already in God’s book. And if we desire after it God will reveal and bring it forth into your life. So one of the first keys is to be able to dream dreams in the category or have thoughts in your mind in the area that you would like to move into. It can get beyond these areas but it is the same general vicinity and it will stimulate those dreams in our life that is your destiny and vision for your life.



Turn over to the book of Genesis chapter 41 in Pharaoh’s dream. We see Joseph coming to interpret Pharaoh’s dream. There are some statements that he made as an introduction to his dreams. In verse 25 Then Joseph said to Pharaoh, “The dream of Pharaoh is one; God has revealed to Pharaoh what he is about to do.” Now there is no record of what is the condition of Pharaoh before he slept and had the dream. But he had two dreams occurring in the same night. When he woke up and he slept he had a second dream. Two dreams that took place one after the other. Joseph said God has shown Pharaoh what He is about to do. Doesn’t that sound like Job 33? God seals it upon our lives what He is about to do.



No. 2 the dreams that God gives to you relate to the area in which you either have something to do with it or some influence in that area. Pharaoh had the ability to protect all these millions of people from staving. God was not concerned just for Pharaoh. God was concerned for all human kind. So God gave a dream to Pharaoh so that through Pharaoh He will do something to protect His innocent people from dying. The dreams that you have relate to the position you are in. And by position here in Pharaoh it has to do with the area where he was supposed to do something about. See God does not simply gives dreams. Dreams have a purpose in our lives. We saw in our earlier areas how it stimulates faith. Now we are looking at areas that could stir up more dreams in our lives.



If God place you into business world, let go and let God dream dreams through you. And cause dreams to come in that area of your life. Don’t stop those dreams. If you are in the ministry let go and let those dreams of your ministry come forth. Don’t stop there. Those dreams may save other lives and help other lives. Do you notice something about those dreams? Pharaoh didn’t have the interpretation. It was Joseph who having the interpretation helped to fulfill that dream. That doesn’t take place necessary all the time. But we cannot understand fully some of our dreams until we come up together with people who are a part of the fulfillment of that dream. Perhaps you dreamt of something in the business world or something in the ministry. And you cannot fully comprehend that dream. But one day when you are with the people, who become a part of that dream, the interpretation becomes clear both to that person and to you. And together as a team you will be able to fulfill and bring that dream to pass. So write down those dreams even if you don’t understand them or even if they look ridiculous to you. They are the fertile ground of your faith working in those areas.



By positioning yourself you stir up those dreams. You see if Joseph were anywhere else, he would not have the interpretation of dream. By position we are saying be in the right place at the right time and doing the right thing. When you are in the correct place dreams will come. Some are in the wrong place and the dreams are not coming forth. You need to be in the right place for those dreams to come forth in your life.



No. 1 you need to be filled with thoughts in regards to those areas of your dream. You need to be always wondering about things to come.



No. 2 being in the right place at the right time doing the right thing. Joseph was in the right place at the right time doing the right thing. Pharaoh was in the right place at the right time doing the right thing. And the dreams just came to pass. If you are in the wrong place doing the wrong thing, something stops your dream and it just won’t come to pass.



One more example of that. Paul and Silas were traveling from place to place seeking to preach the gospel. No matter where they go they seemed to be in the wrong place doing the right thing. So in Acts 16:6 And they went through the region of Phrygia Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the Word in Asia. And when they had come opposite Mysia they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. It seems that they were just knocking on blank walls. So passing by Mysia they went down to Troas. Troas was a seaside town. Only when they came to a place where they could take a boat did the vision occur. But he knew that he was in the wrong place doing the right thing preaching the gospel. And he had to get into the right position for the dream to come forth. And Troas was the right place because God wanted them to take a boat. Troas was a seaside town and when he went there he had a Macedonian vision that began his second missionary journey. Do you know what the second missionary journey was? He had to go into areas he had never gone before. You see Paul tried to go into areas that he had gone before. God wants him to totally make a break and just go by boat and go forth into areas he had never gone before. He tried to stick around areas where Jews congregate and not in Gentiles areas. And so the vision may not come.



Why did they go to Troas? I believe that there was some how an inner inclination to go there perhaps something more will come from there. It is just like going and lying down at the airport. You know that God called you somewhere some place but you don’t know where. So you go to the airport and just look at the planes and dream. And then God speaks in your heart, “Go to Macedonia.” It doesn’t mean that after this a few of you are going to gather in the airport and dream. But you need to be in a place where you could make a move to fulfill that dream. Are you in the right place doing the right thing at the right time? If you are those dreams will keep bubbling out into your life. If you are not, then get into position.



Sometimes God call you out of your home into a mountain into another place so that there He can give you that dream. Why is that so because there is a multitude of others things that prevent that dream from getting in your life. Ecclesiastes 5:3 says a dream comes through much activities. He is talking about the type of dreams that come from your daily life. It is like a noise that continues from your daily life. You need to get out from those activities and get into position. So that God could cause you to dream dreams. The basis of this message is to bring you to this point to face your life to ask, “Have the dreams in your life stopped?” Because the day it does creativity stops. It’s the hassles of this New Year. Do you know something about being dreamy? You have to somehow detach yourself from this world and its activities. It is really hard to get dreamy while you are in the peak of activities. It is just impossible. You can only do it when you get out of these activities into the right position. Then those dreams will come. Sometimes it means just getting out to a hillside by our home and just looking over the whole place dreamy.



All the great men of God who have done great things are dreamer of dreams. Cho Yonggi’s biography is a dream comes true. He is a dreamer of dreams. In his recent biography he showed a place where he likes to go and it was like a little kind of garden. That’s where he likes to go to dream dreams. Get into position. By position it could be physical, it could be social, it could be geographical.



Let me give one last point on things that stimulate our dream life. I Sam.10:5 After that you shall come to Gibeathelohim, where there is a garrison of the Philistines; and there, as you come to the city, you will meet a band of prophets coming down from the high place with harps, tambourine, flute and lyre before them, prophesying. No. 3 music stimulates the dream. God has put a song in our heart to sing to Him. Eph. 5:19 tells us be filled with the Spirit speaking to one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. If the melody and music in your life die the dreams will stop. The music needs to continue. And sometimes we need external help. If you are not a dreamer of dreams possibly you are also someone who seldom hear music. Perhaps you are so engrossed in other things, in study, in research and you are not one who just listens to music. I am not talking about music while you are in our beehive of activities. If you just put on good Christian music and you just sit and allow the music to take your spirit off into a dreamy state, you will once again stir the ability to dream in your life. All of us before we became adults we were dreamers of dreams. Somehow as we get educated as we get into a profession we get into the beehive of earthly worldly activities we lost the ability to dream. We need to put that music back into your life so that we could dream dreams again. Learn to wait on God. Do you notice that the greatest period of mankind has been the period when great music came forth? In the Renaissance period that’s when the great classical music all came forth. And people took time to just listen to music. Their ability in the natural even rises. By all means have music in your life 24 hours while you are in activity. But learn to just be still and let the music take you off. And you will be able to dream dreams again.







We are taking about the importance of dreams and why we need to develop the ability to dream dreams. But we tend to lose them when we are adults. If we have lost that ability to dream, then we need to get it back so that we can develop our spiritual, soul and physical life more fully.



We have mentioned how there are two categories of dreaming dreams - one is while awake and the other is while asleep. Using the Greek word enupnion we consider its usage in the book of Jude and realize that it speaks about a dream like state while conscious and it can be also in total deep sleep like in Job 33. In addition to that we also spoke about how in dreams there is no limitation to the physical areas of our life. In a dream anything can happen. It’s important for us to allow our dreams to soar to the heights ordained by God because dreams relate to hope.



Dreams and hope are almost synonymous. If you lose your dreams you lose your hope. Hope is different from faith. But yet faith is built on hope. In Heb. 11:1 faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. If there is no hope there is no environment and no atmosphere for faith to grow and for hope to develop. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Hope comes by dreaming and dreaming the things of God. When we dream our hope increases. No matter how sore or how depressed you are if you have a good dream it encourages you. When your dreams die your courage dies. We need an environment of dreams.



I dream dreams. Some of those dreams may not be for me to fulfill. I said about how in dreams we can go beyond our ability like you could not sing before you can sing in your dreams. And who knows one day it may become a reality. As you keep dreaming and you cannot sing maybe your voice is like a frog but in your dream you dream how you are turned into a singer and you are singing with a lovely angelic voice. And one day who knows that can turn into a reality if you dream it often enough and long enough. Perhaps you could never play a musical instrument but in your dreams you could do it. Perhaps you have never own any house. You could hardly make your payment even for your rental. But in your dream you could live in a mansion. So don’t limit your dreams. Not that all your dreams may come true. But they are the fertile ground by which faith can take root. And some of your dreams may materialize.



Other times some of your dreams could be other people’s dream. Like for example I dream of a day that medical doctors could come together and set up a Christian medical specialist center where they incorporate the principles of prayers and all the best medicine and technology could offer. Who knows it could bring healing to people who have no more hope. That dream belongs to somebody but I could see that dream. Even up to this time Pastor Cho Yonggi still dreams of building his hundred thousand sitting capacity church building. He spoke of it some years ago. His dream hasn’t materialized yet. Who knows one day God may send all the expertise and all the finances to build the building. One of the reasons why we are looking into our new place is so that we can have all our services co-coordinated in Tamil, Chinese, Malay as well as in English. We could have most of the Sunday evenings free. One Sunday nights we can have an orchestra presentation and the next Sunday night we can have a drama. Then the next Sunday night we can have a musical presentation.



Dreams are the spices in which faith builds up. Faith takes from your dreams. Faith takes from your hope and builds it into reality. And we need to dream because in dream we contact the great things and the wonderful things of God. We all know the scripture Isa. 64:4 and I Cor. 2 eyes have not seen nor ears heard the things that God has in store for those who love Him and for those who wait on Him. But in our dreams we contact those realms. I could dream of a Christian hotel and we could use it for conventions. We could bring all the ministers in and feed and house them. We tell them just say just come in you don’t have to pay a cent. You just come in here and just fellowship and pray together. How wonderful the five-fold ministry will impact all the nations that come from. When they pray together I wonder whether we will have another Acts 2 experience or an Acts 4 experience. Will God shake the place and pour out His Spirit again like in Azusa Street?



I dream of a scenic place in the mountain or by the seaside where we can have our prayer house. There would be people who like Anna the prophetess, loves to pray and wants to give the rest of their life through prayer. We would provide the accommodation for them. We could provide the food for them and have one or two vans for them to drive around. All they do is give their lives to prayer. These are possibilities. One day God will help us to bring it into reality. But we need to dream dreams. Great faith comes from great hope. Great hope comes from great dreams. And we must dream dreams to keep ourselves growing. When our dreams stop our faith will stop down the line. Some of those could be your dreams.



I dream for the businessmen. I could see some of them rising up to be multimillionaires. To them a million dollars mean nothing. They could just build a whole building and they look for Christian entrepreneurs and they say, “Look since you are starting out in your business, here is a place rent free for you to start off.” The whole place is for all Christian businessmen, selling all kinds of Christian products. Can you see it? It’s possible. These are dreams and if your dream is big enough your dream can contain other people’s dreams. When something strikes you as a great dream let it flow. You may not materialize it but it is the muscles of your spirit and your inner resources exercising so that one day some of those things that are similar are achieved.



The reasons for this two part message is to stir up your desire and your ability to dream dreams. We close in the last message with three points. How to bring about those dreams? More often your dreams are in the area or field that you want to dream. Secondly is in the area of position. You must be in the right position to dream those dreams. Thirdly we talk about music in bringing about those dreams. If you sleep with music there will be a tendency to stir up some of those dreams. Or sometimes in the conscious state while listening to music it can bring you to dream dreams of the areas that God wants to build in your life.



There is another fourth little thing that you could do. If you really want to dream dreams the last fifteen minutes or half an hour before you sleep is important. Spend sometime with God pray in tongues and you will notice that there is a greater frequency of dreams that come from God.



We see the role of dreams in the life of Joseph. In Matthew 1:19 And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to send her away quietly. But as he considered (notice the first principle operating, he slept with this thought.) this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.” Verse 24 When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.



Now he had a dream and the word dream here is different from the Greek word in Acts 2. The word in Acts 2 where it says that old men dream dreams is the word enupniozomai enupnion and here the word in Matthew 1 the word dream is the word onar, which is the actual Greek word for dream. Joseph was moved by the dream and in the dream he had an angelic encounter. It was almost like a vision except that he was asleep. This is not his first encounter. In Matt. 2:13 Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. This is his second recorded dream. So God continues to speak to Joseph. Dream No. 3 in verse 19 But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt. See the right place, the right time, the right position, he dreamt. All his dreams were directional and God met with him in a dream.



This morning we talk about the importance of a dream. Dreams are the inner workings of the spirit man and of the inner resources of our soul. Once upon a time before Adam and Eve fell into sin, Man had an ability to see into the spirit realm. That spirit realm was something very visible to them. They don’t have such thing like II Cor. 4 where there are things invisible and visible. Both eternal and temporal are both visible. And if an angel came to the Garden of Eden Adam will see it. He doesn’t need the gift of the Spirit to operate because he knows all things. He was made perfect in God. He doesn’t need the word of wisdom because he lives in that wisdom. He doesn’t need the word of knowledge because he lives in the knowledge of God. He doesn’t need the discerning of spirit because he could see what is in the spirit world. He doesn’t need the gift of healing because he is in health. He doesn’t need the working of miracle because miracles are part and parcel of divine life. See all the gifts of the Spirit are necessary only in the fallen state of man. Man in the perfect state has more than just the gifts. Man lives in those gifts as a part and parcel of their nature. The gifts of the Spirit in the book of Hebrews chapter 6 are called the powers of the age to come. The age of perfection the heavenly age which we only partake of while in this life. Once upon it was always a part of our nature and not just a gift that operates as the Spirit wills. But when sin came the part in man’s life that was affected was the area of the eye of the spirit.



Turn to the book of Ephesians chapter one verse 18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened. He is not talking about physical eyes. He is talking about the eyes of our inner soul. There are inner eyes that we need to train and have them enlightened. Now these same eyes were darkened when man fell into sin in Ephesians 4:17-18 Now this I affirm and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentile do, in the futility of their minds; they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God.



So something took place in Adam’s life when he fell into sin. There was a darkness that came on his inside that prevented him from contacting a part of his soul and a part of his spirit. It was cut off from the life of God. And from that day onwards man begins to have dreams. The conscious mind of man and the sub-conscious mind of man and the spirit of man are now all separated. We use only between five to ten percent of the ability of our mind and our brain and the only contact that we have with the inner recesses of our mind is in the area of visions and dreams. I shared in the last message how some people have discovered how to control the involuntary actions of their bodies through visualizing. We all know that in our body there are voluntary and involuntary actions. Like your breathing, your heart beat and when you step on something painful you automatically withdraw your foot. That is an automatic involuntary action caused by your nerves reflexes.



Today as man discover the mysteries of the mind, man discovered that there is a way they could affect even the involuntary area. And the key they found was through visualizing. There are people who are healed of cancer by visualizing their white blood cells destroying the cancer cells. Scientists have documented such healings. These are areas that are beyond the control of our conscious minds and the keys into these areas are visions and dreams. All these belong to the inner part of our soul that we have lost contact with. For most of us we only contact the part in our sleeping time. When we are in deep sleep the other part of our mind began to work. In fact when you are in deep sleep and you are dreaming, your biological physical activity is equivalent to being wide-awake. They have hooked up instruments onto sleeping subjects under study and found these electrical instruments responding in a way as if they are awake although they are asleep. It’s like a thick line that is drawn. When you are awake all these biological functions are going on. Then as you fall into sleep there is a period where there is just stillness. Then you seem to enter into a different realm. It’s as if a different part of your mind is working. And it’s called REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. Your eyes move as if you are awake. That’s when you are dreaming.



What are we saying No. 1 it is in dreams and visions that we contact the spirit world. I don’t know why God has to contact Joseph through a dream. But possibly when he is awake he could be quite a rational intellectual man. You could tell that by the way he keeps thinking how to put Mary away. He couldn’t understand this virgin birth concept. See he was a rational man. As he thinks rationally how could he believe Mary? It’s very hard to believe. Here was his beloved coming and saying that she is pregnant with the Holy Ghost child. He can’t compute intellectually. And in fact he has already rejected her. You look at Matthew chapter one he has already rejected her. He was already making a decision that he was not going to take her neither does he believe her. What would Mary have told Joseph? Mary would have reported everything. If you know the great abilities of ladies they will report everything to you. Usually when ladies tell a story they will go to the details. We men will say please summarize. I believe Mary would have told him how she saw this angel but Joseph was a rational man. He was definitely not given to this thing of the spirit. Not all men are that way. Matthew 1: 19 being a just man not wanting to make her a public example was minded. Past tense he was minded. He has already made up his mind, past tense, to put her away. He has already rejected the facts, the evidences, and the testimony of Mary. And because of his state of mind God cannot speak to him directly. His mind was turned to a different direction. When he was asleep, when his conscious mind was knocked out an angel came and spoke to him.



It’s in our dreams that we encounter the spirit world. Every time you are asleep you encounter the spirit world. Now we encounter it when we are conscious too. But if your life is filled with the hustle and bustle of activities, you probably just encounter the physical world (although the spiritual atmosphere around you was influencing you). But it’s in your dream that you cannot run from the spirit world. You were made to contact the spirit world all the time. That is why no matter who you are even if you are not born again you still dream. Because there is a latent power of the soul and of the spirit of man that is till there. We still dream and in our dreams spiritual encounter takes place.



Matthew 27 verse 19 records an encounter of the spirit realm by a different person and the most unlikely person, Pontius Pilate’s wife. While he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, “Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered much over him today in a dream.”



In a book by Mariette Davis “Within the Gates” Mariette Davis went to heaven and she visited children’s paradise. While she was in children’s paradise she saw a replay of Jesus being betrayed, judged and crucified and resurrected. She saw the whole scene and she even saw the part that the angel coming to Pontius Pilate’s wife and opening the spirit realm to her. She saw what took place in the spirit world happening on that very day that Jesus was on trial. That is a particular dream that Pontius Pilate’s wife had. She was disturbed; she was troubled because the spirit had contacted the natural in a dream. And she warned Pilate to be careful what he is doing because this man Jesus is holy and just.



In Jewish history and tradition there is a story recorded about Alexander the Great going forth conquering and conquering. He proceeded to the nation of Israel to also conquer that land. The night just before he entered Israel, he had a dream and in the dream he saw the high priest in his full robe coming to him. That very day that he entered into Jerusalem, the Lord spoke to the high priest to wear his full garment, take the scroll of Daniel and walk up to greet Alexander the Great and show Alexander the Great that the Lord had already prophesied of His coming. It can be frightening to have some of these dreams. But dreams are real.



Jacob was running away from his father-in-law Laban, who was seething with anger. Now in that state of mind there is no direct contact you can have with the things of the spirit. And Laban was determined to give Jacob a piece of his mind. But that night after much chasing, that very night before he met Jacob God came to Laban in a dream. Laban is a crafty sly shrewd man. God said to him not to speak evil against Jacob. The very next day when he saw Jacob he didn’t do anything because the dream had warned him. The story of Jacob and Laban is found in the book of Genesis chapter 31:24 But God came to Laban the Aramaean in a dream by night, and said to him, “Take heed that you say not a word to Jacob, either good or bad.” That was the very night before he was to meet Jacob and God warned him in a dream.



Then God warned Abimelech in a dream in regard to Abraham and said to Abimelech, “You will die.” It is always in a dream that you encounter with the spirit world. That is our first consideration. Don’t take dreams lightly. In fact when you lose your ability to dream it’s either your spirit is either malnourished or there is too much pollution of this world in your soul and too much worldly activities that you don’t have enough spiritual activity. Some of you who are so busy in your life say that you hardly dream. In fact all of us dream everyday except we don’t remember. And you say you hardly dream. You know why? Once upon a time when you were young you have dreams. But as you got into the cares and concerns of this life that suck the energy of your soul, your spirit is malnourished and your soul is underdeveloped. That most important area of your life I call the creative part of your soul is left in a very weak state and the ability to dream disappears. No matter what kind of background you come from even if you are forty years old you never remember a single dream in your life. Very strange thing takes place when you are born again and baptized in the Spirit. When you began to spend time in the Word and in prayer a very strange thing takes place. You suddenly begin to dream again. It is like the fountains of creativity are opened once again. And in actual fact if you lose the ability to dream you are like a cripple in your soul and a cripple in your spirit. There is a part of you that has not been developed that God wants to develop.



Because our dreams are our contact with the spirit world, they can be so powerful that you actually receive things in your dream. In the book of I Kings 3:5 At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, “Ask what I shall give you.” Please bear in mind that it was a dream. It was not even a vision. God Himself came and said, “Solomon, ask what you want.” In the dream Solomon replied to God, “I want wisdom to rule your people.” God said, “It is done and I will give you riches and honor too.” And that very morning when he woke up there was something deposited in his life because of that dream.



I remember when I was in the third year of seminary I was fasting for three days and three nights without food and water. It was on the third night that I saw that building that was being built and the two mountains between the buildings. There was another part of the dream. The other part of the dream was I saw myself in an old house where I used to live when I was small. And my father who has gone to be with the Lord came and he represented like Father God. He brought a pile of white-looking pieces of pancakes. I ate one piece, two pieces and then slowly until I finished them all. That was the end of my three-day fasting. That was in the dream just before the vision. I knew on that day that I had received something during that fast. Some gifting, some grace was deposited in my spirit when I ate those things in the dream and it felt so real. And possibly today I am receiving the benefit or seeing the materialization of what I received in my dreams back then. My friends, dreams are real. We contact the spirit world in our dreams that some times its so hard to contact in our conscious state. That’s why we need to pay heed to our dreams. And if you lose that ability to dream you may be losing like your right arm or your right leg. Please get it back restored in God. It’s highly important that you be a dreamer of dreams.



No. 2 dreams being in the spirit world are in what I call a timeless zone. You see God is, was and is to come. It is just like imagining a bicycle wheel. God is in the center of that wheel. Where God is, there is no time. Time doesn’t exist. Yesterday, today forever is the same. He pushes out that life and creative force from Him. And He created the universe and all creation around Him. All creation in the universe around Him was functioning in time. So at the center of the wheel time doesn’t exist where heaven and the spirit world is. But as God created the material world, we live in the outer spokes of the wheel. That’s where time exists. When time began functioning there is a beginning and there is an end. When we dream we come out away from the outer spokes of the wheel and we enter into the area where time doesn’t exist. In that timeless zone we sometimes see the future things in our dreams, sometimes the present and some times our past. Time doesn’t exist in our dream in a sense.



And the second area why dreams are important is this. In our dream if we are not progressing out of the time span of our physical life then our dreams are too bounded by the physical forces of this life instead of by spiritual forces. For example if you have lived in four houses from the time when you were born until the time when you were fifty, and if in your dream as an adult you still always go back to the first house you lived when you were a child. Always all your dreams keep going back there. Then God is telling you that there is something in your life that is being dominated by forces from the past that you haven’t let go yet. And interestingly when we progress in our life and we grow, you will notice even in your dream that you move from one house to the other house and you could in the end be dreaming that you are staying in the house where you are presently staying. Don’t you know that your dreams have caught up with you? See dreams are supposed to be timeless. They are not supposed to be affected by time. But in some of us, we keep being affected by time and by something in the past. We keep dreaming of the old wooden house that we lived in when we were young. It has to do with an underdevelopment of a part of our life that was stunted from the day that we were in that house. We have to grow out from that.



Why must we shake off our past from our dreams? So that your dreams can begin to reveal what you are designed to do. Dreams are designed to reveal your future and not your past. Job 33 tells us that God speaks once and twice in a dream in the vision of the night, to warn us and to keep us from evil and to keep us from wrong decisions. Dreams are designed to help us handle the future. To handle the things that is to come. But for many people’s life their dreams are bounded by their physical circumstances or their past.



Turn to Ecclesiastes chapter 5 The reason we are teaching on dreams is because this year will be a year fantastic things will happen. A year of power, a year of great things being done in the Lord in each one of your lives. And if you were to allow God to dream dreams in your life and remember those dreams God gave to you, this year may be the fulfillment of the dream that you have always dreamt.



Ecclesiastes 5:3 For a dream comes with much business, and a fool’s voice with many words. When you vow a vow to God, do not delay paying it; for He has no pleasure in fools. It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay. Verse 7 For when dreams increase, empty words grow many; but do you fear God? The context of the multitude of dreams he is talking about is in verse three where in the multitude of dreams that has to do with your daily life. And if all your dreams are just concerned with your past and your daily life and your activity and they have nothing to do with the spirit realm, somehow you are in a dangerous realm. Your dreams that are supposed to contact the spirit realm are no more contacting the spirit realm. It becomes just a hibernation ground of activities from your daily life. That’s not what God wants and designed your dream realm to be. It was designed as a contact with God. Angels could appear in your dreams. God could speak to you or God could reveal things to come. It is dangerous ground to fill your dream realm with so many sensory stimuli from your so many worldly activities that you cloud out God’s voice and message from contacting you there. The bible calls it vanity. Waste of energy, waste of spiritual energy, waste of soul energy that God could use to His glory.



Turn to the book of Genesis chapter 37:5 Now Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers they only hated him the more. He said to them, “Hear this dream which I have dreamed, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, (Notice the dream came from his daily activity. But it was not limited by that) and lo, my sheaf arose and stood upright; and behold, your sheaves gathered round it, and bowed down before my sheaf. Now the binding of sheaves is something they do everyday. His dream was not bounded by the past. It used the illustration of the present to point to things in the future that God wants to do. So in a dream it is all right to see yourself as you are but you will find an added thing that you never experienced before. There may be dreams of great and hidden things that you have not comprehended before or seen before. Have your dreams moved up to the house where you are living in. Or are your dreams still stuck somewhere behind. You need God to break it and to shake off that past.



That past is like the dirt and dust that gather onto us when we go out. If you go out in a country road and as you walk and explore, you will find the dirty dust and mud sticking to your shoes and your pants. You are not going to leave the dirt there. If it was a raining day there will be mud all over your shoes. Are you going to leave it there? Most of us will clean it up. But for many people in their soul they never clean up their dreams. When their dreams had the past sticking to them they never clean it up. They go around accumulating more and more dirt until it is so thick that they completely lose the blessings of dreams. Remember when your dreams die your hope dies. Interestingly it’s the same type of people who get depressed easily. It’s the same type of people who lose their hope easily. It’s the same type of people who lose their courage easily.



You see the relationship. If you stop dreaming you stop hope, you stop faith and you stop courage. In each one of us is a driving desire to live life to the fullest. Sadly for some they are just getting by and by. Some others really want to do something about their lives. Some others just live by. Some others have given up on their life and waiting for it to close. Once again my friends old man shall dream dreams. When you have reached the peak of your maturity you thought you have done it all. They tell you today that it is not retirement that kills people. It is inactivity and the lack of zeal in life that kills people. But people who are active in life and who have something always to do tend to live longer and reach ninety, hundred and twenty and they are still full of energy. But when they just sit and watch everything go by with nothing to do, something inside them die.



This is why God said old men shall dream dreams. The word old men here may not be physically old men. That old man could represent people who have reached the zenith of their lives. Or you thought you have tasted everything you could have. Maybe you have reach your highest point and you could see no way out. You know what you should do. Dream dreams again. Because when you dream dreams again your youth is renewed like the eagle. You are charged up once again, and you will have great things to do. The future looks as if you are a teenager again. For teenagers their future looks bright I mean those in the Lord. And they are looking forward to growing up in life. Many wonders and many things they haven’t seen and tasted in life. And you will put fire back into your soul. Old man dream dreams that the fire in you will come again alive. No matter how old you are you have to remain young by dreaming dreams. They will keep the fire in you alive. Renew your youth like an eagle because you are always seeing more things to do in the Lord.



Lets look at another dream in the book of Genesis 40:5 And one night they both dreamed, the butler and the baker of the king of Egypt, who were confined in the prison, each his own dream, and each dream with its own meaning. The butler’s dream is in verse 9 So the chief butler told his dream to Joseph, and said to him, “In my dream there was a vine before me, and on the vine, there were three branches; as soon as it budded, its blossoms shot forth, and the clusters ripened into grapes. Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand; and I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh’s cup, and placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand.



Now the butler has always been serving Pharaoh. So his dreams had caught up with him. It was right where he was. For some people maybe right now you are an engineer or a businessman. But if you are always dreaming of your student days, then that dirt from that past is still not wiped out. As long as that is happening you will not see the future. You must be dreaming right where you are and then from there you can see the future. We need a platform to see the future that God is revealing in our dreams. As long as your platform is somewhere in the past you can only look from your past into the present. But if you stand on the platform on your present then you can look into the past and you can look into the future. The butler was right where he was. He was still a butler in his dreams.



The baker had a different kind of dream, but he was still a baker in the dream. The baker dreamt he was a baker. The baker didn’t dream that he was an apprentice in a baker’s shop. He dreamt he was a baker. The butler dreamt he was a butler. It is important to see that your dreams must catch up with the present to see the future. Because both butler and baker dreamt of their present, their dreams could show their future.



So we need to examine our lives where we are. We could say where are you in your life. Where are you in your spiritual life? Adam, Adam where art thou? “Where art thou?” could be asked in many ways. Where are thou physically. Where are thou spiritually. And this morning we ask you a new question, “Where are you in your dream life?” If you are constantly dreaming of your past, there is something in your past that you must resolve and clear before you get into the will of God for your present. If you are constantly dreaming of your present, then you should look for indications for the future in your dreams.



One more little passage – Pharaoh’s dream. Gen. 41:17 Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Behold, in my dream I was standing on the banks of the Nile; and seven cows, fat and sleek, came up out of the Nile and they fed in the reed grass. I have done a little research there. Do you know where Pharaoh’s house was? Next to the river. So that river represents many things. But just to let you know that in the custom of those days in Egypt, Pharaoh’s house was the best house. The Nile River was of course the source of everything and Pharaoh’s house was right there. Pharaoh could take a walk by the riverbanks, which he possibly may have done many times. Pharaoh was right where he was in his house. Pharaoh didn’t dream about the time when he was in school. What would have happened if you were dreaming of something in your past? You were still in your past although you are now in a different area in the present. It is because there is a blockage in your soul that your dream is revealing. The dream is revealing something blocking your life from progressing that you need to remove. If you remove it the dream will shift forward in time to your present to get into the future. That’s the second area that has to do with our dreams that we need to look at.



The third area in regards to our dreams and the dreams that God gives us in our life. Lets look at the book of Daniel 7: 1 In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head as he lay in his bed. Then he wrote down the dream, and told the sum of the matter. Then verse 15 As for me, Daniel, my spirit within me was anxious and the visions of my head alarmed me. The question we ask here is this. By verse 15 was Daniel still in a dream or has he woken up? He says in verse one that he had a dream, visions in his head while on his bed. And he wrote down all the main facts. And in verse 15 he suddenly says I Daniel was grieved in my spirit within my body and the visions of my head troubled me. It is very obvious that in verse 15 he was already outside of his dream. Because he says in verse 15 the dream or vision of his head disturbed him like the way Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar were disturbed in their dreams. Apparently there was a continuation to the dream but it came to him possibly in a vision or another dream.



Let me show Pharaoh’s dream. In Gen.41:1 After two whole years, Pharaoh dreamed that he was standing by the Nile, and behold, there came up out of the Nile seven cows sleek and fat, and they fed in the reed grass. And behold, seven other cows, gaunt and thin, came up out of the Nile after them. And stood by the other cows on the bank of the Nile. And the gaunt and thin cows ate up the seven sleek and fat cows. And Pharaoh awoke. So he must have wakened up in the middle of the night. Then verse 5 And he fell asleep and dreamed a second time. So in between the two dreams he woke up and he slept again.



Now here is Daniel in chapter 7 he had a dream. And in verse one he was writing about the dream. That tells you there must be some time that has taken place. And by verse 15 he was still disturbed about the dream. So we know one thing. Either his second part after verse 15 was in a vision or in a second dream. But definitely there was a break point between verse 1 and verse 15 onwards. The third point is important. Dreams can be continued or repeated in a person’s life. And even if you were woken up halfway in your dream and when you get to sleep again you will get the same contact. Here we are talking about dreams as if it’s a real spiritual contact. If you contacted the spirit realm and something was broken in the contact, there will be a continuation.



And these are the things that you can learn. When you wake up from a bad dream, you could tell yourself what to do and sleep again. Start the show by seeing the last part of the old dream. And then continue with something good like for example in your dream there was this hairy monster that came and grabbed you by your neck. You feel yourself shaking and you woke up with cold sweat. You look at the time it was 3 a.m. So you are not sure what to do now. You spend some time in prayer. But do you know what you could do? You could pray and you could cause that same dream to reverse provided you have the Word of God inside you. It is only possible through the Word of God and through faith and you don’t allow fear to come in your life. You could say no that is not going to happen. And you just began to get into enupnion in a dream like state see the whole thing but see yourself chasing that demon. See yourself grabbing that hairy fellow and kicking it away and then go back to sleep and dream what you have premeditated. Part two of your dream continues. Is that possible? Yes, because part of our dream is the inner healing of our self. Some of us have uncompleted dreams. And we get frightened and disturbed by them. We need to have completed dream. Sometimes your dreams can be completed over three or four nights and some times over many months. We need to learn that dreams are not beyond the area of control like what we think. You could actually control them to a certain extent. Remember what the key to control that area of the deep recess of spirit is – vision. What you see will enter into the recesses of your spirit. If you see the right things it will enter in and bring a conquest into that.



Lets look at Daniel 7:15 As for me, Daniel, my spirit within me was anxious and the visions of my head alarmed me. Here we are not sure whether in a vision or in a dream possibly vision. I approached one of those who stood there and asked him the truth concerning all this. So he told, and made known to me the interpretation of the things. So apparently Daniel had a vision. And he asked for the interpretation of the dream and he got the complete interpretation that God gave to him.



In chapter 8 verse one he had another dream. In the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar a vision appeared to me, Daniel, after that which appeared to me at the first. What does he mean by after that which appeared to me the first time? The word after could mean many things. No. 1 it could be in a similar form or similar manner. Or it could be something that he knows it is related. But in Daniel 7: 1 the dream happened in the first year of King Belshazzar’s reign and in Daniel 8: 1 it was in the third year of King Belshazzar’s reign. So what does he mean by after that which appeared to me the first time? It was nearly between two to three years in chronology. I mean he had a second dream and the second dream was like a continuation of the first dream and the first dream happened two or three years ago. I am sure he had many dreams between those times. But this was so significant that he knows that the second dream was related to the first.



This is why in our teaching on dreams and interpretation we tell people please write down your dream like Daniel did in Daniel 7: 1. It is because some of your dreams could develop in different areas. When you are here in the outer spokes of the circle, and as you dream you enter into the area into the spirit realm which is a very interesting unique realm – timeless. And in timelessness sometimes some portion of your dreams could be speaking of your future five years down the road. If you notice some of your dreams do not continue in the same night. Some dreams continue over the years like Daniel’s.



But how would you know the continuations of your dreams if you didn’t write them down? How did Daniel remember? Because in Daniel 7: 1, it says, Then he wrote down the dream, telling the main facts. He knew this was different and special. Do your dreams have parts? Yes. Unless we are aware of the messages that are coming in parts and we keep a record of them, you will not be able to interpret that dream properly. That is the third area that we bring forth in the importance of dreams. And because it is so important we need to write down our dreams. If you find it difficult to write everything and every day, at least write down the most impressive dream you have had. The most remarkable one that stayed with you and that sort of stirred your spirit, grieved your spirit or troubled your spirit. Write them down for there may be a next one that will bring meaning to this one. Most of us forget our dreams after two to three years. Let me tell you the most significant dream in my life I have never forgotten even up all these years. We need to always learn that there is significance in dreams and they could be different in time. Therefore it’s important to note them down.



The fourth point dreams are so powerful that they can change your life and your personality. In fact if you really allow them to minister to you your whole personality and life can change. You notice in the bible that dreams had come at critical points in people’s life and at critical points of a nation. Joseph received a dream when he was very young because he would need that dream to keep him for the rest of his life. And that was the dream that kept him alive through those years of rejection. When he went through all those sufferings, all those misunderstanding, he held on to that dream. If you don’t let your dream die your life will not die. It came at a very important point. Have you notice in Genesis 37 that the dream that came to Joseph’s life was just before he was sold to some passing merchants. God could have given him the dream when he was 12 years old. But God gave the dream at the most important point in his life. Two dreams that the bible records. He may have dreamt many other dreams but these two stand up above the others. And they came just before he was to go through the hardest time in his life: to be sold by his own brothers. What did God give him to last for his whole life? Nothing but two dreams. Yet those two dreams will last for his entire life. What did God give to Pharaoh at the most critical point of his nation? After all they were just at the edge of a great harvest of seven years of plenty. But after that came the seven years of famine. They were at the edge of something great happening and God gave a dream for them to act on that dream. In the book of Matthew, dreams came at the most critical point in Joseph’s life. If he had not listened to his dreams he would have died; Jesus would have died and Mary too may have died. If Pharaoh and Joseph did not hearkened to those dreams that were given in Genesis millions would have died.