Readers responded to the post Does God Speak to us in Dreams Today? with seven separate dream stories, both through the comment option and by direct email.
One dreamt of the death of her mother and was moved to write a letter telling her mother how much she loved her. The letter arrived and was read by her mother just before she suddenly went into a coma and died. One dream prepared the dreamer for her father's remarriage. One reader told of crying out to God in the pain of losing an infant to death. God answered her prayer by giving her a dream in which she held her baby for a time, turning her grief into lasting joy. Another dreamt of her father's funeral reception where he walked about smiling hugely, not in the body of the weak sick man but in the vigour of his early manhood.
Each dreamer considered her dream a gift from a loving heavenly Father in order to prepare her for a difficult time or to comfort her.
I wonder why all my correspondents were women. In every biblical incident it was the men to whom God spoke in dreams. So didn't God speak to women in dreams in Bible days? Does He not speak to modern, western men in dreams today?
A missionary lady told of working with an indigenous people group that often suffered from terrifying nightmares. A major theme involved dreaming about losing or breaking teeth which meant that the dreamer's relatives would die. Each tooth stood for a different relationship.
One night the missionary dreamt all her teeth were breaking off. She woke up spitting into her hand thinking her mouth was full of broken teeth. With a shock of fear, she remembered that her three married children would all be traveling long distances by car that weekend. And she and her husband were flying into the village the next morning in a single engine plane over a wide river and trackless jungle.
"I was now very awake and my heart was racing" she wrote. "And then I recognized I was under attack and I needed some armour. I prayed to my loving Heavenly Father and rebuked Satan.” Soon she was sound asleep.
When they arrived in the village she told her broken teeth dream and everyone was transfixed, staring at her with fear filled eyes knowing they were about to hear horrible news.
"I reminded them," she wrote, "how powerful God's Spirit is, far more powerful than even the chief evil spirit. I read them Ephesians 6, of God’s armour for our protection.” When she said that after prayer she fell peacefully asleep, the people were astonished and relieved. (Her whole family, by the way, returned safely from their travels that weekend.)
Sometimes God increases our faith in Him by giving us dreams that prepare us for difficult situations. Sometimes He allows Satan to give us a dream that leaves us filled with fear instead of faith. But we can turn this fear into faith by following God’s instructions in Ephesians 6:16: “ . . . take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.”
No comments:
Post a Comment