Dreamweaver

Missy and I are part of an awesome small group of 12 people. Every two weeks we meet together at Calistoga's Restaurant and use their party room. For the summer, we all decided that we should do an open topic (instead of a book or Bible study) and each couple would pick one subject, which would run us through the summer.

Earlier tonight, the topic was on "Dreams". What do our dreams mean? Does God still speak to us in our dreams? Should we even listen to our dreams? Sleep labs have proven that everyone dreams one to two hours each night. Personally, I rarely am aware or recall any dream activity. Most everyone in our group dreams in full color, but a couple do dream in b/w.

In the Old and New Testament,  the words "dreams" or "visions" are mentioned 224 times! God has always talked to His children in dreams. Our culture has lost the significance and value of visions and dreams. God gives us dreams to help us solve our problems, to tell us things we did not know, to show us His tender love and care for us and to help us along our way.

God declares that He will communicate through dreams and visions in the New Testament. Acts 2:17 says, "In the last days,’ God says, ‘I will pour out my Spirit upon all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams." (NLT)

God declares that He will counsel us at night through our dreams. Psalm 16:7 says,  "I will praise the LORD, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me."

Here is just one of many instances where God spoke in a dream and granted supernatural gifts;             I Kings 3:5, "That night the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream, and God said, “What do you want? Ask, and I will give it to you!” During this dream, Solomon cried out to God and asked for wisdom instead of riches. God granted his request and so much more! Then, in verse 15, "Then Solomon woke up and realized it had been a dream." However, it all came true. 

There is a free PDF download, available here at (copy and paste this in your browser) http://www.cwgministries.org/books/Christian-Dream-Interpretation.pdf with much more detail about all of this dream interpretation.

Hang in there with me, the best is yet to come! One member of our group described a re-occuring dream, which was more like a nightmare. They went into great detail and shared the effect this dream has had on them. I asked the group if we could try something different. The Quakers have been doing this for a very long time. It is called gaining "clarity" or having a "clearness committee." They were up for it.

I began this time of discernment by praying this: "I plead the blood of Jesus over me and our small group. I command that Your presence and only Your presence, God, draw close and prosper at this time. Lord, you have heard us talk about this dream and ask that you bring some clarity as to what this means by speaking to us and we ask that You make Yourself known."

Then, we paused for about 30 seconds. Out of the nine of us that were there, almost everyone had a specific word or perception for our member who has this re-occuring dream. To my knowledge, none of them had ever done anything like this before. It was so awesome to experience this as a group and a blessing to hear what was shared. There was a continual theme and agreement in what everyone said. We all felt that God showed up in a big way, just because we invited Him to.

From now on, before I go to sleep, I am going to ask the Lord to share something with me in my sleep and then have a notepad with a pen ready to write it down.