Dream Misinterpretation

This teaching series arose out of God giving me three dreams that I did not understand. I turned to some fairly strong prophetic resources for help in understanding the dreams, but the various interpretations I got did not agree with each other and they did not fit together very well. I did not get a witness in my spirit to any of the interpretations. God finally spoke to me directly to explain what the dreams meant.

This experience (different and conflicting interpretations) left a big question mark in my spirit about the role of dream interpretation in modern-day prophetic ministry. I am sharing the dreams and interpretations with you so that you can walk with me through the process that God took me through -- it was a process that got me to question our current-day practice of dream interpretation.

I already shared my three dreams in detail in lesson 3. But here is a quick summary of the dreams, to perk your memory.

Dream 1:

A dream of terrorists attacking a bank that I was in, killing many and taking others hostage. Then they forced me and one other person at gunpoint to become their spokespeople, to speak their demands to the authorities. However, their demands were cryptic, elusive and hard to understand.

Dream 2:

I was surrounded by God's presence and began to be lifted upwards as if being raptured. At first I was frightened but God assured me that it was Him and then I was excited and could hardly wait to see Him face to face.

Dream 3:

I had front row seats at a big conference, and three people came to it with me. One of them somehow got the speaker's shirt and started standing on his chair and waving it over his head. Embarrassed, I took the shirt away from him and tried to return it to the speaker.

When the meeting started, there was a mixture of both flesh and spirit. I was on guard and leery because I did not want to engage in any fleshy manifestations. But as the meeting progressed, I sensed God's Spirit beginning to touch me.

I will share the various interpretations with you in the next few lessons. Please understand that all of the people who I asked to help me understand these dreams are people who I view as credible/gifted in the prophetic. I am not trying to put any of them down or criticize them. In fact, I am grateful to them for trying to interpret the dreams for me when I came to them and asked them for their help. I am not going to use their real names because I don't want to embarrass any of them or put anyone on the spot. I will refer to them in this teaching as Prophet A, Prophet B, Prophet C and Prophet D.

The first interpretation came from Prophet A. His method of interpretation is to wait on God to get some impressions from God about the dream. Then he takes those impressions to a prophet friend of his, who I will call prophet E. The two of them discuss it, bounce it off of each other and look to get confirmation from God on what each other thinks and hears.

PROPHET A'S DREAM INTERPRETATION:

The dream is a warning against the practice of prophetic people misusing their prophetic gifting to gather income. Some prophets prophesy that people need to give them money or pressure people to give so they can receive the prophet's anointing by "sowing into" their ministry. God is very upset with that and He is starting to address it in the prophetic community and will soon judge them.

You are not engaged in that type of practice. You are a true prophet and do not misuse your gifting for financial gain, so you are not one of the ones who will fall under God's judgment in this area. But God wants to use you in His judgment process. He may want you to publicly renounce that practice and He may even want you to confront some of those who engage in it.

You should also take this as a warning to shy away from this practice of fleecing God's people in the name of prophecy if you ever feel tempted to do that. In that sense the dream is a warning not to begin to go in that direction just because so many others are doing it. All three dreams are related to this.

Here are some specific symbols from your dream.

1. Reading from a Script covering injustices and national holiday.

The good appearance of these demands would correspond to what appears to be valid reasons for asking for money. This can be applied to many requests for giving by different ministries.

The lady in black that justified these demands and tried to cover the casualties. But she did not convince you, Teresa, because you had some experiences in the past of such people. The demands may well have been far-fetched interpretations of prophecies and Scripture, which enabled these ministries to raise funds.

2. Getting killed if you read the demands wrongly.

The predominant emotion of fear, is a product of demonic working by these ministries. Your own personal part, is the fear of not being exactly right in what you say or do, that may result from some insecurities in your past, where LOVE has not been freely given, and you have to earn it by legal obedience. This may require going back into the past, and getting rid of some lies because of lack of emotional support, that you have to get everything right in order to be loved. Perfect love alone from the Lord, can cast out this fear.

Ask yourself, "Why do I need to please man?" The answer may overcome the lack of unconditional love shown you in the past, which has carried over in your attitude to the Lord and the ministry.

Financial concerns will be met by His provision, and you need not go the way of these other ministries who are prophesying and robbing poor people. Rely on HIM to meet your needs; this is the way to go with current financial pressures. (1 Peter 5:7)

3. "Not yet but very soon..."

The Lord is going to be bringing you closer to Himself so that you will overcome some of these fears, and you will walk in His conscious LIBERTY and LOVE, without having any fear of man. This is a process through which you are going right now, and will be vital if you are to challenge those who are ministering wrongly.

4. "Woman behind me was a real mother in the faith."

You have the support and prayer of some really mature people, who think highly of you. This will more than make up for any lack in your natural parenting. You should anticipate coming into greater anointing through praise and worship. The man you saw standing on a chair, was obviously using the mantle or anointing of a more famous person, for his own personal ends. You were instrumental in dealing with this problem through your discernment in the Spirit.

5. "Even though there was some flesh in the place, the Lord's presence was also here."

This seems to indicate you are not called to deal with all these problems of fleshly ministry, but keep your eyes on a few genuine people (like the Asian woman) and keep looking up to the Lord. He may allow weeds and wheat to grow together, until the end-time harvest by angels. Meanwhile, you are going to come into His real blessing very shortly.

[I need to add one piece of information to this interpretation. David Ravenhill had sent out an article earlier that day denouncing prophets who try to profit from their gifting. Prophet A had read it with interest and spent some time discussing it with his friend Prophet E shortly before I brought my dream to him. He personally related to David's article because he is providing pastoral counseling to a couple who were financially cheated out of a large sum of money and are trying to recover emotionally from the experience. I believe the article and his own feelings on the subject drove his interpretation, and he shared more of what God was speaking to Him personally rather than what God was saying to me in the dream.]