Ways God Speaks To Us

Sometimes God speaks to us in dreams. The Bible is full of examples of this. The wise men were warned in a dream to go home another way and avoid Herod (Matthew 2:12). Joseph, when returning from Egypt, was warned in a dream to take his family to Galilee instead of back to Judah (Matthew 2:22). We know that God speaks to believers and unbelievers alike in dreams. We see God speak to Abimelech (a heathen king) in a dream to return Abraham's wife Sarah to him (Genesis 20:3). We see pharaoh having a dream about seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine in Genesis 41:1-8. He acted on that dream and built up grain store houses, enabling him to feed his people when the famine hit.

God speaks to some people in their dreams quite frequently. For others, this is a rare occurrence. This is not one of the primary ways God speaks to me, but sometimes He does use dreams to communicate information to me. One time I was seeking Him for direction about whether or not to do a missions trip to India, and He answered me by a dream. Another time God warned me in a dream that a ministry partner was going to break away and do his own thing instead of working together. So, when it happened, I was neither surprised nor devastated.

I know people who God frequently and constantly speaks to in dreams. I know others who think they never dream and are not aware of any time in their life where God spoke to them through a dream. However, most believers will occasionally have dreams from God, where the Lord communicates to them to give them understanding or direction or revelation.

Dreams can be symbolic or they can be very distinct. When I had the dream to go on the missions trip to India, it was all symbolic. I dreamed that I was at a ski resort and an indoor avalanche drove us outside of the lodge. When we got outside, we were not in the slopes, but we had somehow been transported to the center of the village. We began to walk down the main street and passed a bus station. A metal model of a bus was fixed on the top of the entrance to the bus station. It fell off, and as it fell, it grew in size. We had to dodge out of the way to avoid being hit by it. By the time it landed, it was a full-size bus, lying on its side. I remember looking at the chrome tail pipes, clear and shiny, realizing that bus had never been used and it was never going to go anywhere. Then I woke up.

Typically I am not one to remember my dreams, but this one stayed with me. I don't know how I knew it, but I understood the symbolism in the dream and knew what it was communicating. The ski lodge represented the church. The indoor avalanche was the move of God's presence and power in the church. We were experiencing a renewal and a fresh revelation of God and an empowerment. But the snow from the avalanche began to fill up the building we were in and drove us outside. I understood that the renewal God was pouring out was to take His power and anointing "to the streets," to share the good news of the Kingdom in His power and anointing. He was literally pushing us out of the church to go be His witness. The bus station and falling bus represented our old approach to missions. They were ineffective and would not accomplish the task. God was reworking the concept of missions to be one of bringing His presence and His power along with His message. It was a clear "go ahead" to me for this trip to India. We saw God perform several mighty acts on this trip. The most dramatic was when He turned a monsoon (a very destructive storm) away from a village in response to our public prayers. In response, many people came to our meetings to hear about "the Christian God who turned the storm" and many of them believed on Jesus.

The confirmation to go on this missions trip to India came by a symbolic dream. The warning about a ministry partner breaking away to start his own ministry was not symbolic at all. It was clear and distinct. And it happened in real life shortly after I had the dream. It was easy to bless and let go because God had spoken to me about it beforehand through a dream.

The tricky part about dreams is that God's "voice" is not the only voice that will speak to us though dreams. A lot of times, our own fears or issues may rise up and represent themselves to us in our dreams. People are frequently sending me dreams to "interpret" that fit into this category. Sometimes they dream a loved one dies and they wake up shaking and want to know what God is telling them. In some cases, this type of dream is not God speaking at all. It can be our own fears or issues surfacing in our dreams. Occasionally, demons will torment people in their sleep with horrible nightmares. And some dreams are caused by physical or external stimuli. For instance, some people have bizarre dreams after eating a large and spicy dinner. They are experiencing indigestion as they sleep and it can give rise to some very strange dreams. In prophetic circles, these types of dreams are frequently referred to as "pizza dreams." Sometimes when we watch a graphic or violent movie on television, our short-term memory will play parts back while we are sleeping and we end up dreaming about the movie we watched. These types of things can sometimes be confused with prophetic dreams where God is speaking to us, and we have to bear that in mind when trying to interpret or understand the dream. God does speak to us in dreams, but not every dream we have is God speaking to us.

When God speaks to us in dreams, we don't always have an instant understanding of what the dream means or of what He is trying to say. Sometimes God does give us the understanding, as with the "go-on-the- mission-trip-to-India" dream. When I woke up, I understood the dream. But many times God speaks to us symbolically (or a bit cryptically) on purpose, to drive us to seek Him for an interpretation.

There have been a lot of books written on dream interpretation and some of them turn into dangerous formulas. Be leery of people who say that a dog always represents rage and a car represents ministry, etc. I do not believe God uses "universal symbols" in dreams very often. He uses them some times, but it is always better to interpret a dream by seeking God from the meaning than by looking up the symbols in a dream book. One time I looked up the objects in Pharaoh's dreams from Gen. 41:15-24 in a dream-interpretation book. The meaning from the book came out totally different from the interpretation Joseph gave Pharaoh in Gen. 41:25-36. So exercise some caution when trying to use "recipes" or standard meanings of symbols to interpret dreams.

If you receive a dream you believe is from God and if you don't understand what He is saying, go back to God and ask Him. Pray about it. Ask Him to give you more clarity and understanding. Spend time with God discussing this dream and ask Him to clarify it for you.