Dream a Little Dream
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
“And it shall come to pass afterward,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams,
and your young men shall see visions.” (Joel 2:28; Acts 2:17)
The ancient people of the Bible believed that dreams were among God’s special ways of communicating.
Abimelech, king of Gerar (located in today’s southern Israel and just east of the Gaza Strip), was warned by God in a dream that he was a dead man walking because he had unknowingly taken Abraham’s wife as his own (Genesis 20:2-7).
God spoke to Jacob in a dream and gave him a plan to counteract his uncle/father-in-law Laban’s cheating ways (Genesis 31:10-13). The plan succeeded. Of course it did. It came from the Lord.
After a while, the Lord told Jacob to return home and to be quick about it, because Laban was hot. As he pursued his son-in-law, God spoke to Laban in a dream, warning him to “be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad” (Genesis 31:24).
And then there was Joseph, Jacob’s son. He really had a hotline to God. Through dreams, Joseph knew that one day his family would bow down to him (Genesis 37:1-11), and, through dream interpretation (Genesis 40:8-22), Joseph understood that God had revealed the fates of the Pharaoh’s chief cupbearer (restoration to duty) and the chief baker (permanent retirement via execution). God told Pharaoh of an approaching seven years of plenty followed by another seven years of famine (Genesis 41:15-32).
God told Moses’ siblings, Aaron and Miriam, that although He would speak to His prophets in dreams, He would speak directly to Moses. “And He said, ‘Hear my words: If there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, make myself known to him in a vision; I speak with him in a dream. Not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house. With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in riddles, and he beholds the form of the Lord…’” (Numbers 12:6-8, italics author).
God spoke to Gideon’s enemies through a dream (Judges 7:13-14). When King Saul disobeyed God, the Lord no longer spoke to him, including in dreams (1 Samuel 28:6). Other biblical examples of God speaking through dreams include King Solomon (1 Kings 3:5-15), King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon (Daniel 2, 4), and Daniel himself (Daniel 7).
Does the Lord speak through dreams today? Absolutely. The Bible set the precedent, and the Lord Himself promised that when the Holy Spirit is “poured out” upon humanity, divine dream communication will happen on a much broader scale. Here is Joel’s foundational prophecy in Joel 2:
28 “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh;your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.29 Even on the male and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit.
Let’s break these verses down. 1) The context is the Day of the Lord (Joel 2:1), the time when the Lord will intervene in human history and begin to change the world system under His dominion radically. 2) The Day of the Lord will be marked by the Holy Spirit being poured out on everyone. 3) The Holy Spirit will enable divine communication, i.e., prophecy, directly from the Lord. 4) The communication modes include visions and dreams, and 5) there will be no age limit.
What Joel describes is the culmination of God’s restoration process. That process, however, began on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2.
At Pentecost, when the Father poured out the Holy Spirit upon Jesus’ born-again disciples gathered in one place (likely on the Temple Mount, the place of prayer), Peter exclaimed loudly to the gathering crowd, “…this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel” (Acts 2:16).
So, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Peter declared that the Day of the Lord began that day, and has continued to sweep humanity into God’s kingdom for the last two thousand years, marked by people being born again via the “poured out” and currently indwelling Holy Spirit. We’re just waiting for the day when the whole of humanity gets soaked with the Spirit upon Jesus’ return.
Yeah, this is all fun to know, but now you may be asking, “So what’s the point, Dr. Jay?” Simple.
I believe the Lord still uses dreams to speak to people, and we should leave that as a viable option for divine communication.
Now, not every dream is from God. Dreams are mostly our brains working through issues, processing times of stress or tension, or are the offspring of that questionable leftover burger that we ate just before bed. Let’s not over spiritualize everything. But let’s not de-spiritualize everything, either.
I look at the dream communication issue this way. When I read God’s Word, it usually hits me as if I were only reading a book. But there are times when the words seem to leap off the page, almost like they form a hand with one finger pointing directly at me. When that happens, I know I need to pay close attention, shut out distractions, and process what the Lord is saying to me through what I just read. The same thing happens with dreams.
Most of them are nondescript nonsense. But there are a few that are vivid, impactful, and memorable. They also carry a heavy weight of importance that settles upon me, causing me to take special note of what I experienced.
Dreams can convey information from God to you or someone else through you. When it’s a divine communication, a dream becomes a prophetic message. They can be forthtelling (God speaking to the present) or foretelling (God revealing the future). From my experience, forthtelling happens far more than foretelling, though, and is easier to discern and understand.
So, let me give you a very recent example. Actually, it happened today, and it was the impetus for this piece.
As I walked into my church’s Men’s Group this morning, a delightful disciple, relatively new in the faith (a believer of almost two years), and a retired firefighter from New York, came up to me with, “Hey Jay, I had a dream about you last night.”
First, it’s fun to hear things like that because the dream can be really weird and strangely entertaining.
Second, as a new disciple, he’s learning how to walk with the Lord, and is yet to be messed up by the traditional church thinking that “those spiritual things don’t happen anymore. The spiritual stuff was just for the first century to kick-start Jesus’ movement and lasted until the Bible was written.” Baloney. In my opinion, that line of thinking is often an excuse for refusing to believe the Lord and His Word.
Third, this guy is an “old man,” i.e., in his seventies.
Wait! An “old man who has the Holy Spirit is dreaming dreams?” That sounds like the Book of Joel and the Book of Acts kind of stuff. Okay, he had my ear. Here is his dream, paraphrased.
He and I were working on a short stairway of only a few steps. We were fashioning the stair treads together. I drew a pencil line on a board and handed it to him. He had a choice about how to cut the board with a circular saw. We both knew he had to follow the line precisely. If the blade’s center followed the line, the board would come up short. And if he didn’t follow the line, the ever-so-slightly long board wouldn’t fit. He had to follow the line along the inside edge of the blade so the line would be followed and the board would turn out as designed. (End of dream.)
I felt like Joseph standing before Pharaoh.
The dream’s personal application hit me big time. I won’t share that at this time, but it aligns with many things the Lord has been speaking to me about in recent weeks. I’m excited to see what the Lord has in store.
But the dream also contained wisdom we can all learn from. Who knows? Perhaps this part of it is for you, dear reader.
We’re all on a stairway of spiritual maturity, stepping up ever closer to the image of Christ in our lives. Our growth must be step by step, with each step building upon the previous one and leading to the next. The stairsteps are God’s Word.
If we divide (interpret) God’s Word to the letter without regard to the Spirit’s illumination, we’ll come up short. (Such was the case with many of the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day.) Sadly, if we interpret it wrongly, we will most assuredly apply it wrongly. Thus, coming up short.
If we disregard the clear letter (the line) of God’s Word and add our opinion, tradition, or whatever, it won’t fit into place in our lives, leaving us standing on the previous step with no forward or upward movement—a static spiritual life.
However, if we divide God’s Word properly, with an eye to the letter and the intended design as revealed by the architect (the Spirit), we will both understand and apply God’s Word in a way that we can reach a new place in life with the Lord and begin work on the next step in our faith journey.
I don’t know about you, but I find that dream a wise encouragement from the Lord. A simple dream that the Lord made memorable to an “old man who dreamed a prophetic dream,” apparently under the Holy Spirit’s inspiration.
So, don’t sell the Holy Spirit short. Let Him do His work and don’t refuse to believe what the Word says. When these things begin to happen, our walk with the Lord becomes so very exciting!
Things like this are supposed to happen because we’re in the Day of the Lord right now. We’re just awaiting the culmination and fulfillment of it, perhaps in the years to come, whether short-term or long-term. In the meantime, envision those visions, dream a little dream, and let the Lord speak to you and His people.
It’s something the community of believers desperately needs right now.
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Shining the Light of God’s Truth on the Road Ahead
Pastor Jay Christianson
The Truth Barista, Frothy Thoughts