Dreams

Recently, my husband read a small book that he didn't exactly recommend, but when I asked him about it, he said, "Sure, you can read it." So with such high praise, how could I not?



The book, written by Morton T. Kelsey, is entitled Dreams: A Way to Listen to God. It was interesting and I'm glad I read it. Dreams are used in Scripture by God as a way to reveal the future, explain the present and to call us into a deeper awareness of Him and how He works in our lives.



Yet, somewhere along the way, our Christian culture (for the most part) said that God stopped revealing Himself or speaking to us this way. Kelsey makes a strong argument for why we should pay attention to our dreams, record them, meditate over them and ask the Holy Spirit to teach us from them.



Once in a Beth Moore Bible study, I heard her mention that in countries that are hostile to Christianity (i.e. predominantly Hindu or Islamic), people who come to a belief in Jesus despite no previous knowledge of Him will say that they first encountered Jesus in a dream. She said that time and again, "hidden" Christians are sharing that how they came to know Jesus was through a dream. Her comment was that this is proof the Holy Spirit still speaks through dreams and He'll always find a way to reach us even when all other ways are blocked.



I've always said that I don't remember my dreams. I've read enough over the years to know that we all dream...I just don't remember them. But Kelsey contends differently. He says we just need to make ourselves more aware of our dreams & then record them as soon as we wake up.



Funny enough, within the last week, I've had 3 very vivid dreams...nothing Earth-shattering or prophetic. But when I wrote them down and meditated on them, two of them did reveal some things about myself. My impatience, my fears and my doubts were plainly obvious even when the images were exaggerations or a bit imaginative.



And another thing I liked about this book was the idea of imagination and fantasy. I've always had a very vivid imagination and at times have struggled with fantasies. Fantasies that make life more glamorous, less challenging, less painful...and I've beaten myself up for years over this. Now Kelsey says we should encourage our imagination and fantasies but in the context of Scripture and our journey with Jesus.



When reading Scripture, use meditation (another lost art within our Christian culture!) and fantasize yourself in the story that you read. Imagine the thoughts, feelings, and lessons to learn from imagining yourself within the exact context of the story. Once again, this idea wasn't completely foreign to me...Holy Spirit had already been leading me to do something along these lines. When I'd read in my New American Standard Version that some of the asterisks in their text was because the Greeks often told stories in the present so the verbs didn't translate to our exact English, I started reading those verbs in the present tense. Reading the story of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and the ensuing arrest and Crucifixion in the present tense brings them alive and also brought on more emotion than I've usually experienced reading these verses.



Now, Kelsey is telling me that this imagination and propensity to fantasize that I've beaten myself up over can actually draw me closer to the Holy Spirit? Why didn't I realize this sooner? I've seen time again that the way God created me is nothing for which to be ashamed. It just takes His timing to reveal how He can best use it.



What should I expect from analyzing my dreams, meditating on their meaning while also learning to place myself within the context of Scripture? My prayer is that Scripture will come more alive as I learn to imagine myself actually there, hearing the words of Jesus for the first time or living through the story as if I'm a participant. Kelsey also encourages developing more to the story than we actually know. This isn't an attempt to add facts to the story or twist it in some way, but rather to allow the Holy Spirit to guide our thoughts and teach us through the scenarios that He leads us to.

I'm excited about implementing some of these practices into my life. I'm not doing it to try to become some new age mystic that can foresee the future, but rather to get in touch more with the Spirit. I know that some of these ideas are a far stretch from what most of us in the church have been taught. And I also know that since this is new to me, there's no way I can explain it as well as Kelsey does. So I'd encourage you to pick up a copy from the library or a used one from a book retailer, read through it and ask the Holy Spirit for discernment. You just might be surprised at what He wants to teach you.