Seeing the Voice of God: What God Is Telling You through Dreams and Visions (2 page)

If God wants to speak with you during the day, then of course He wants to speak with you at night.

Does God sleep at night? No. Psalm 121:3 (
NIV
) says, “He who watches over you will not slumber.” And the first chapter of Genesis records God saying, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness” (verse 26
NIV
). Notice the wording:
our
image and
our
likeness. He is already referring to the Trinity in the first chapter of the Bible. We see that just as God is made up of three parts, then we, being made in His image, are, too. We have a body and a mind, and they both slow down at night and rest. But we also have a spirit, and it never sleeps. It is the part of us that is like the One who, as we established, “will not slumber.” Our spirit is awake all night, longing to convene with God.

I like to think of it like a fulfillment of Song of Solomon 5:2 (
KJV
), “I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, ‘Open to me.’” I often pray that verse over myself when I go to bed: “Lord, You are my Beloved. I am going to sleep, but my heart is awake, listening for Your voice.” I expect God to speak and minister to my spirit each and every night in some creative way. Why would He just tuck you in at bedtime and move on to ministering to people who are awake in other time zones? Deuteronomy 31:8 (
NIV
) says, “He will never leave you nor forsake you.” Doesn’t that pretty much mean “never”? Not even when you sleep? On the fourth day of creation, why didn’t He just skip over the invention of nighttime and never make a moon? Or stars?

I tell you, nighttime is God’s idea. It belongs to Him, and He is busy during it. The problem may be that many of us are dismissing our dreams, in which case the dreams will begin to cease coming. But look at the first part of the Job 33 passage again: “For God may speak in one way, or in another, yet man
does not perceive it” (verse 14). We see here that God does speak through dreams and visions, but many people do not perceive it.

Perceive
is a verb that means “discern, appreciate, consider, realize, recognize, become aware of, see, distinguish, grasp, understand, take in, make out, find, comprehend, apprehend, sense, figure out; regard, view.”
3
Let it never be said of you that God speaks but that you do not discern, appreciate, consider or realize it! What a shame that would be for the Creator of the universe to have something to say to you and say it, only to have you disregard it as a “pizza dream.” With that mindset, the entire mysterious book of Ezekiel and all of its illogical, disorderly symbols could easily have been attributed to too much pizza. The Lord often chooses to speak obscurely, with seemingly unintelligible symbols, so that we must seek Him for interpretation. (We will discuss that further in chapter 7.)

Two Streams

Bestselling author James Goll makes a brilliant comparison between the Nile River and the prophetic flow of God on earth in his book
The
Seer
:
The
Prophetic
Power
of
Visions
,
Dreams
,
and
Open
Heavens
. Although the mighty Nile is the longest river in the world at about 4,100 miles long, it begins its life as two separate rivers: the White Nile, which flows from Tanzania, and the Blue Nile, which springs from Ethiopia. Goll likens this to how God’s prophetic ministry overall on earth is fueled by two streams: the stream of the prophet and the stream of the seer.

What is the difference? In a multifaceted answer, Goll writes, “All true seers are prophets but not all prophets are seers.”
4
He adds, “When it comes to prophetic revelation, a prophet is primarily an inspired hearer and then speaker while a seer is primarily visual. In other words, the prophet is the
communicative
dimension and the seer is the
receptive
dimension.”
5

Hence, one stream involves the ears, and the other the eyes. I include Goll’s river parallel here because it undergirds my sole ambition for this book,
Seeing the Voice of God
. His analogy applies to the offices and ministries of prophet and seer churchwide, however, whereas my points are more applicable to your individual life. You have the ability to both see and hear spiritually. Those are two streams flowing back and forth between your spirit man and God. But in seasons when we feel God is silent, or we are in geographical regions where hearing God’s voice is difficult due to territorial strongholds of evil that seek to hinder His full reign, we can still
see
the voice of God through dreams and visions. We all sleep. We all dream. Science proves this, and we will explore medically in chapters 4 and 5 how to improve our dream recall so that we can better steward what God might be trying to communicate to us.

When your ears fail you, the eyes have it. When one stream temporarily dries up, the other still flows—and oftentimes floods. This is my personal testimony. When I found myself in the greatest hearing war of my life by day, my eyes opened at night through dreams, so much so that I began to “see” not only for myself but for other people, and then ministry was birthed.

While God was healing the dry spell in my other stream, my seeing stream began to gush. Even the physically hearing impaired will tell you that their eyesight becomes sharper to compensate for their deafness. Not that they have better vision than hearing people per se, but they learn to use and rely on their other senses better to compensate.

Likewise, a hearing drought is the perfect time to ask God to open your eyes. Many times, those dreams and visions that come forth lead right back to open ears. Remember Job 33:15–16: “In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls upon men, while slumbering on their beds, then He opens the ears of men.”

The Sixth Sense?

The
New
Oxford
American
Dictionary
defines
sixth
sense
as “a power of perception like but not one of the five senses: a keen intuitive power.”
6
I guess I disagree that we even need a sixth sense. Are not the five senses that God gave us amazing enough? Can we not use them for constant communication with Him if we are seeking Him? In chapter 10, we will explore how God sharpens these senses further with the gifts of His Holy Spirit as we mature in Him. But even now, as that maturity is in the process of developing, your natural five senses are longing to experience Him. What are you waiting for?

Here are some examples of God Himself using these remarkable five senses in His relationship with humankind (the italics are mine):

Sight: “
God saw
all that He had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31
NASB
).

Sound: “
God heard
their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob” (Exodus 2:24
NIV
).

Smell: “
The Lord smelled
the soothing aroma” (Genesis 8:21
NASB
).

Taste: “When
Jesus had tasted
it [the vinegar], he said, ‘It is finished!’” (John 19:30
NLT
).

Touch: “
God touched
the hearts of certain brave men who went along with him” (1 Samuel 10:26
NCV
).

Here are some examples of humankind using these five senses in relationship with God (again, the italics are mine):

Sight: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for
they will see
God” (Matthew 5:8
NIV
).

Sound: “
My
sheep hear
My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me” (John 10:27).

Smell: “But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests
through us the sweet aroma
of the knowledge of Him in every place” (2 Corinthians 2:14
NASB
).

Taste: “
Taste
and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8
NLT
).

Touch: “And all the
people were trying to touch
Him, for power was coming from Him and healing them all” (Luke 6:19
NASB
).

I do not think we need a “sixth sense” as the world defines it. I think the Holy Spirit can make our five senses naturally supernatural all day long and communicate with us enough to draw us to Himself. Of course, we not only want to communicate with Him, but
for
Him, and that is where our spiritual senses come into play, which we will discuss in chapter 10 (prophecy, words of knowledge, words of wisdom and others). But even when we are walking in the Spirit and fully employing those spiritual senses, God still can use the five natural senses He has given us, with which we experience Him.

One Angle

I have no idea where you are in your walk with God, or if you even believe in Him. I have no way of knowing if you eagerly bought this book or if an insightful friend gave it to you. When authors write, they first establish an audience in their heads that they then easily speak to—a specific population of people they have in mind. But in this case, even after writing a full chapter, I still cannot discern who that demographic is for this book. It is as if I cannot narrow it down. I see the faces of some of you who have spent a lifetime loving God, yet I see others who revere Him at a distance but need persuading that He really wants to say anything specific to them—or they are scared that He might. Then I see even others who are intrigued by the theme but put off by all the Scripture.

What we all have in common—and therefore, the angle from which I will write—is that we all want to know and be known. And whether this book is too churchy for you or not churchy enough is secondary to what we might accomplish together by the end of it.

I find myself in a risky position writing this book, because while I know that it is going to bring purpose and revelation to countless fledgling seers all over the world, I also run the risk of being crucified by all those whose eyes are shut. I am in danger of upsetting any Christians who do not believe that seers still exist, and in danger of upsetting the lost who do not believe that Christ exists. It is my prayer that both camps will listen and learn, because by the end of this book, I believe they both will see undeniably that not only is Christ still alive, and not only is He desiring to communicate with us, but that He is raising up a generation of sharp-eyed seers in a spiritually deaf world.

The prophet Joel foresaw this generation, prophesying,

“And it shall come to pass in the last days,” says God,

“That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh;

Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

Your young men shall see visions,

Your old men shall dream dreams.

And on My menservants and on My maidservants

I will pour out My Spirit in those days;

And they shall prophesy.”

Acts 2:17–18 (see also Joel 2:28–29)

The apostle Peter, familiar with Joel’s prophecy, reiterated it as he saw its budding fulfillment in Jerusalem almost two thousand years ago.

The pouring out has begun. The stewardship of it has not begun in full, although some in the prophetic community are doing a great job of teaching their hearts out in an attempt to see the outpouring governed well. If overmanaged by those who view dreams and visions as a messy threat to a tidy gospel, the outpouring is quenched. But if undermanaged by sloppy,
self-appointed prophets, dreams and visions are left up to the seer’s own interpretation and quickly become confusing, unedifying and even psychic in nature.

Let me state forthrightly that you do not need a dream or a vision to believe the Bible. If you feel you do, something is missing in your heart toward God, and it might just be His Son. If Jesus
is
in your heart as a result of a definitive invitation to Him, but you still feel the Word of God is not illuminated when you read it, then your issue is not with Christ but with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not just seal you on the day of your salvation and retire. He wants constant communication with you. That includes dreams and visions, yes, but should the content of one ever stray from what God’s Word teaches, it is not from Him.

You were made in the image and likeness of God—the all-powerful One and Creator of all things supernatural—so it is perfectly normal for you to desire powerful, supernatural encounters. Sadly, though, people equate communication with God as a supernatural encounter, when really it is just your birthright as His child. As we move forward, please lay aside all preconceived mysticism relating to dreams and visions. Also lay aside any critical thoughts suggesting that teaching such as you will find in these pages seeks to replace God’s Word with supernatural encounters. Encounters like dreams and visions do not compete with God’s Word; they complement it.

In this book you will find biblical teaching on how to hear God’s voice, and also on how to
see
God’s voice through dreams and visions—which comes in particularly handy when you feel your spiritual ears are failing you. You will read information from doctors about sleep and dream cycles, and also learn which vitamins and minerals are beneficial for improving your dream recall. You will learn what a prophetic dream is and what it is not, as well as how to classify it from one of ten biblical categories so that you know what to do with one when it comes. You will study dozens of dreams in Scripture and hear modern testimonies of vivid dreams that were fulfilled with utmost accuracy. You will
get to scan a dream dictionary that will help make sense of the symbols in your visions and dreams, since revelation without interpretation hinders application.

You will learn how the life of every believer in Jesus must include a hunger for the constant filling of the Holy Spirit in order to accomplish holiness, without which no one will see the Lord. (This applies to seeing in dreams and visions, too.) You will also discover how that environment of hunger opens the communication lines between you and heaven, resulting in “20/20 hearing” and even fostering angelic visitations. But remember, seek the Giver and not the gifts, for if you seek the gifts themselves, the enemy will make sure to hand-deliver to you every counterfeit he can conjure. You will hear in chapter 10 from a former psychic who will describe his experiences in that lifestyle. He will explain what the prophetic flow of revelation feels like in comparison to the psychic flow and describe how the successes he had in spell-casting brought him a revelation of the power in his words—a biblical truth that remains with him today as he serves God and seeks to be His voice to the lost and dying.