“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,
Your young men shall see visions.
Joel 2:28 (NIV)
Introduction to Dreams
The Bible is full of examples of God speaking to men and women in dreams and visions. Some are literal and some are symbolic requiring interpretation. For many their lives depended on their interpretation. And God promised in the last days that he will pour out his spirit on the world and men and women will see visions.
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,
Your young men shall see visions.
On 05 July 1998 I had a dream in which the Lord communicated to me, the person who can interpret dreams accurately is king.
What is the difference between visions and dreams ?
Dream are performed while you are sleeping. They are usually related to everyday life and not very memorable though they can be significant in their interpretation.
Vision can occur while you are sleeping or awake and are usually very vivid with a specific meaning.
An old Hebrew proverb says that an uninterpreted dream is like an unread letter. God will use dreams to communicate his purpose and his will for your destiny and for your life.
How to interpret Dreams
From the internet I have drawn inspiration from several Christian experts in dream interpretation to help me create this guide to dream interpretation. These experts include John Paul Jackson, Kevin Ewing, John Thomas Michael French, Amy Coello and Monica Fort also known as Dreamgirl.
The most popular form of dream interpretation is taught by John Paul Jackson. He encourages the dreamer to give a title to the dream. In the title the dreamer shows the most important area of the dream, making it easier to interpret. A technique called, Diagramming will simplify the dream into important areas. A bubble chart is created, focusing on who is the focus of the dream, what are the sub-focus areas of the dream and the details. It is basically a map of the dream. From this diagram the Interpreter can interpret the dream.
Here is an example
Dream of the dreamer
I dreamt I was at my old church for a worship conference that would last several days. After the conference, an old friend of mine from school met me at my car and told me that I needed to pay a car parking fee, two tickets, $86 each. I got irritated and stated it was unfair that there was a fee when there were no signs anywhere stating that. My friend backed off, obviously because I reacted the way I did. I apologised to him and offered to gladly pay one ticket, it seemed fair. He agreed and I opened my wallet to count out the money. My wallet was full of money including some $30 bills.
Interpretation by John Paul Jackson
One of the things I do when I'm teaching people to interpret dreams, I teach them diagramming. Diagramming helps you to cipher all the stuff of the dream and put it in a very simple form. The idea is to reduce the dream to its simplest form and then do the interpretation.
You want to find the focus. In this particular dream the dreamer and his friend are both the focus because God is dealing with both of them. You cannot remove either one of them and the dream still makes sense. Then we have things called sub focuses. You have tickets that are sub focuses, you have the parking issue that’s a sub focus, you have paying that a sub focus. Then underneath the sub focuses you have the important details. Under tickets you have $86 parking fee that each person has to pay and you have under pay, the $30 bills that his wallet suddenly was full of.
Now you put all that together and ask yourself, what is this dream saying? Its saying this, there is a price that you pay for parking and parking means that you are not going anywhere. You have been sitting somewhere for way too long. To get out of that parking it is going to cost you. Its going to cost you $86. $86 dollars is not important in itself. Here is what it breaks down to. Eight is a new beginning, so in other words your parking, which is not a new beginning, will cost you if you want a new beginning. You will have to get over issues that are common to mankind as indicated by number six.
What is God saying here? I'm going to deal with issues that are common to man, that you are having difficulty with and its going to cost you some money to do that or something that is costly to you. Money is just representative of a cost. Under the $30 bills detail we have something that is really unusual. In dreams you pay attention to something that is unusual. What is unusual about a $30 bill is that they don’t exist. It is saying that God is going to create an innovative way of helping you pay the cost. Notice that the wallet was full of $30 bills. In other words, three is the number of Godhead, the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. God is going to do a miraculous thing that doesn’t even exist yet, if you are going to be willing to have a new beginning (8) and deal with the issues common to man (6) and get out of your parking. God is going to do a great thing in your life.