12 February 2014

Visions Of The Night

Acts 2:17 (NIV)
"In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams."

What actually are dreams? According to Webster's Third New International Dictionary, dreams are 'a series of thoughts, images, or emotions occurring during sleep. . . . having ideas or images in the mind while asleep'.

Scripture goes a little further and calls them "visions of the night" (Job 33:15, also Isaiah 29:7-8).

The fundamental question for today has to be "where do these dreams come from?". Sigmund Freud believed that dreams were a window into our subconscious mind. Scientific minds will tell you that dreams are most abundant and best remembered during the R.E.M. stage of sleep. One theory has it that dreams are our brain's attempt to organise the previous day's thoughts and experiences. The truth is - the human brain is so complex, we may never truly know how it operates, waking or sleeping.

However, I've been reading up about methods of testing whether a particular dream is coming directly from God. A "Vision Of The Night". Is it possible? Well, if God is truly God, of course He can communicate in this way! It needs to be considered.

Now, I don't believe all dreams are inspired by God. Dreams are used by our subconscious to order our thoughts. For instance, after a good night's sleep, you find you can think clearer about a particular topic. However, I believe that our Heavenly Father can prompt us in the right direction from time to time... Of course, it's then up to us to decide whether to act on such a 'prompting' from a dream. Or to discard it as just your imagination. If this is truly from the Almighty then I would strongly suggest you should take note.

I understand that if this is from God then the dream should be:

- In line with scripture: God never does anything which is contrary to His word.
- Convincing: your emotions are strongly affected, you are certain that there is a message here that needs further study.
- Lasting: the memory of the dream keeps coming back to you. The images linger...

No comments: