In his blog this morning, Stephen Jones of https://godskingdom.org/ addressed a topic which ties in with the principles of Christian dream interpretation. I’ll let you read the post for yourself, but here are some excerpts.
“There is no biblical faith apart from Christ speaking, for faith is defined as a response to His word. Faith is not something we build in ourselves through positive thinking, nor is the exercise of faith a matter of telling God what we think He ought to do. When God hears the words of men, He does not suddenly obtain a download of faith to respond positively to our demands…”
This particular blog is part of Dr. Jones’ commentary on the book of Isaiah, and he is currently commenting on the famous “Year that King Uzziah died” passage in chapter 6, where Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up in the temple and Adonay says, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Isaiah responds, “Here am I, send me.”
Dr Jones continues,
“The prophet’s faith, however, is clear by his immediately response. This means the word of Christ resonated with Him, and he found himself in full agreement with the word. His response, then, was both immediate and automatic, even as Jesus Himself always responded to the word of His Father. Revelation 3:14 refers to Christ as “The Amen,” for as the Father’s Agent in the earth, He was the Father’s double witness to bring heaven to earth…
“…This is the work that Isaiah accepted by faith. Adonay’s call was for men on earth to be sent out as divine agents who would say Amen to the mind and will of Christ. Hence, Isaiah’s response is normal and typical of any who are of that Amen company.”
Then Dr. Jones points out something that is completely mind-blowing to the modern evangelical Christian mindset. Now that Isaiah has indicated his willingness to be God’s witness on Earth, God reveals Isaiah’s calling to him.
9 He said, “Go and tell this people: ‘Keep on listening, but do not perceive; keep on looking, but do not understand.’ 10 Render the hearts of this people insensitive, their ears dull, and their eyes dim, otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and return and be healed.”
Isaiah 6: 9,10
Stephen Jones continues, “With that, we are introduced to the theme of Israel’s blindness and deafness, which the prophet mentions many times hereafter. In essence, Isaiah was commissioned to say Amen to the divine plan to make Israel deaf and blind so that they would not perceive and understand the truth!
“Say what??
“Isaiah’s call has been used often as a model to call people into the ministry. When I was young, the church used it often to call for more missionaries to be sent out, since that denomination was a missionary society. No one suggested, however, that their call would be to blind the people and to stop their ears, lest they should ‘understand with their hearts and return and be healed.’ That is no way to promote successful evangelism and ‘save souls.’
“Yet later we find Jesus teaching the people with parables in order to accomplish this very purpose. says,
13 Therefore I speak to them in parables, because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. 14 In their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says, “You will keep on hearing, but will not understand; you will keep on seeing, but will not perceive; 15 for the heart of this people has become dull, with their ears they scarcely hear, and they have closed their eyes, otherwise they would see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their heart and return, and I would heal them.”
Matthew 13:13-15
Then Dr. Jones goes on to point out that without understanding the concept of the sovereignty of God and His revealed plan to save all mankind in the end, men “…conclude that God intends to lose the vast majority of humanity and that He did so deliberately by blinding their eyes and stopping their ears from hearing.
Calvinists thus see God as an unjust tyrant, for they know He is sovereign (Romans 9) but they do not know the love of God in Romans 5, by which He saves all sinners and reconciles all of His enemies. Arminians revolt against this and reject the sovereignty of God, while attributing enough love to His nature to help men be saved by the power of their own free-will decisions…”
Then Dr. Jones quotes the law of tribulation.
28 The Lord will smite you with madness and with blindness and with bewilderment of heart; 29 and you will grope at noon as the blind man gropes in darkness…
Deuteronomy 28:28,29
64 Moreover, the Lord will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth; and there you shall serve other gods, wood and stone, which you or your fathers have not known.
Deuteronomy 28:64
This may sound tyrannical and doomy-gloomy, but Dr. Jones explains the mercy behind this seemingly despair-inducing tactic.
“…In other words, because the Israelites had persisted in worshiping false gods, the divine judgment decreed that they would be put under the authority of those foreign nations who worshiped those same gods. This would serve to show the Israelites how oppressive were the laws of those gods. Further, God was to blind their eyes so that they would indeed serve false gods. In this way, they would learn by contrast that the laws of God are not as oppressive as they had thought…
“…Paul again explained in Romans 11:7 that the remnant of grace was not subject to blindness, whereas ‘the rest were blinded.’ In other words, the remnant of grace, though expelled from Judea by persecution, were not subject to the general blindness of the nation that suffered under the law of tribulation. The Jews as a whole, however, remained blind, and hence, Jesus spoke in parables, for He was careful not to overturn the judgment of God during the season of captivity.
“This captivity was not to last forever, of course. The law of God specified a period of ‘seven times,’ which was general enough to be applied in various ways, while always ending at some point in time…
“In the end, every knee will bow and every tongue will profess Christ to the glory of God the Father (Isaiah 45:2; Philippians 2:11). Hence, God’s righteous judgment upon the nation, which resulted in many centuries of captivity and blindness, has not doomed all those individual people to be lost forever. Yet they must await the resurrection and their summons to the Great White Throne, where they will finally see Christ face to face and know and understand.”
So what does all this have to do with dream interpretation?
Well, because of the law of blindness, God encodes his truth in parables and symbols so that those with “ears to hear” and “eyes to see” will dig and pray and research and explore those symbols until they find the treasure hidden inside…exactly like Jesus did with His parables.
On the other hand, those whose hard hearts have resulted in them being blinded to spiritual truths won’t recognize anything of value, and will summarily dismiss those symbols. Thus the precious spiritual truths, like pearls, will be kept safe and not cast before swine to be trampled in the mud.
That being said, human beings were wired to relate to dreams and visions on a visceral level. Symbols are actually more intuitively understood than didactic explanations of abstract concepts. For instance, a quantum physicist can drone on and on about string theory until our eyes glaze over. However, when a skilled animator puts those physics concepts into a video clip, all of a sudden the light returns to our glazed eyes and we say, “Aha!”
Likewise, we usually don’t get what God has to say until He draws us a picture. It might be a word picture, like Jesus’ parables, or it might be a vision or dream. That is how He will continue to communicate to humankind until “that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.”
For those new to dream and vision interpretation, let me give a short checklist of how to get started. I won’t elaborate much in this blog post, but simply provide an outline to think about for now.
Prepare by inviting God to communicate with us.
Journal the details of your dream. Here are the bare basics to record:
Date of the dream.
Time of the dream, if known.
General emotions.
Scenes.
Characters.
Narrative of events. Actions, words, emotions, setting, context, orientation…
Every symbol, including its:
Shape
Color
Quantity
Add interpretation as it becomes clear. Use Biblical and Christian interpretation methods. Avoid the temptation to use secular, pagan, New Age or Non-Christian religious dream interpretation aids. The reason for this is simple. If dreams come from God, we want to discover His meaning for a particular symbol. Since any given symbol can have multiple human or spiritual meanings we can find ourselves going down some bunny trail which has no relevance to the message that God is actually trying to communicate. We want an accurate interpretation, not a biased or distorted or outright false one. Some symbols cannot be found in the Bible and some are personal to our lives. For this reason, we cannot use a Christian dictionary only but we need to seek God in prayer to determine exactly what God wants to tell us.
Abandon Idols of the Heart in interpretation. Idols of the heart are strong opinions, assumptions, and man-made traditions that would hinder Father God from altering our views, character, and behavior.
Don’t rush it. Let the dream marinade as you pray, research and reflect. Most dreams take at least a few hours to unpack fully. Some aspects of the dream may not be revealed for days, months or years.
Consult the Holy Spirit. We need to seek his face for wisdom, knowledge, and truth. Let Him give understanding.
Apply the interpretation to yourself first before others.
Private or Public? Ask God if this is to be shared or not, and if so, who with.
The Golden Key! Connect the dream to the relevant incident, event, trauma, experience, discussion, circumstance, query or pondering and you will interpret the dream correctly!
Fear Not. Dreams and visions come from God. He is the Dream Giver. He created us according to his image. We were born of his Spirit. We are like Him. He knows us inside out. Dreams can be confusing, frustrating and even frightening. But remember that dream and vision interpretation is supposed to be difficult. They make us dig a little bit to seek God’s face and to speak to God. God wants us to have a two-way dialogue with him and He wants us to know what He is talking about when He talks to us. He wants us to be consciously aware of his interactions with us in this regard.Even warning or scary dreams are a gift from God. He is revealing a secret to you. Often a secret about yourself that he wants to transform.
Don’t waste your dreams. They are not given so that you can gloat in your spiritual gift, or to feel like a member of God’s inner circle whom He loves more than others. Information given in dreams is imparted so that you can act upon it. That being said, the action must be spirit action, not flesh action. Don’t transition from the spiritual realm to the realm of logic and start responding in a way that seems right to you Now that He has shown you something, ask Him what you are to do with it. Repent? Intercede? Perform some specific task? Make a life change? Talk to somebody? Only He knows the proper response. Ask Him for it.
Don’t take ownership of your dreams and visions. They are gifts that originate from God, they are not something that you have mastered or that you own.
If you would like to support this work, you may become a patron at patreon.com/dRhema. Your investment into this journey frees me up to spend more time in study, prayer and dreaming. In turn this enables more people to benefit from the process. Thank you, and God bless you for your support.
The dRhema 