Seeing the Voice of God: What God Is Telling You through Dreams and Visions (4 page)

I also remember many encouraging dreams that came during some trying years of my life when I was plagued by constant, unexpected and very violent convulsions. Once, I dreamed that I was in a hospital bed and David came to visit me. He never told me who he was, but somehow, I just knew. Sometimes as the dreamer, you will “know things in your knower,” as I have often jokingly explained to others who are growing in dream interpretation and discernment. But aside from that “knowing,” David was also just as Scripture described him: “Now he was ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome” (1 Samuel 16:12
ESV
). Ruddy as in red hair, and yes, he was so very handsome. I had never thought of him as anything but King David, yet in the dream he was not a king. He was just David paying me a hospital visit. He came to my bed and leaned over with a wide, winsome smile. Squinting his eyes, he said, “I am so proud of you.”

Coming from such a famous warrior and worshiper, that meant a lot. It encouraged me to get up and keep warring and worshiping and trusting. My journey toward freedom from those convulsions was a long road. Before they ended, I often recounted that “hospital visit from David” dream for encouragement. I will know those brown eyes in heaven one day, for sure.

Another time when I had been badly bruised after a seizure, I awoke after a dream about Dwight Eisenhower. I saw him in his army attire, his jacket loaded with colorful medals.
Why on earth would I dream about
Dwight Eisenhower?
I wondered. I would have rather seen Jesus or the archangel Michael, not bald Ike. But as I researched him the next day, I discovered that Eisenhower was the most decorated war general of all time. Other countries even awarded him medals.

After this dream, I knew that God was saying He did not see bruises when He looked at me, but medals. Suddenly, my
bruises were colorful badges of honor, and I did not feel so sorry for myself. God said that the enemy had not wanted my health that night, but my life, and that I had won. That perspective shift turned me from the victim to the victor. It made me stop complaining. It made me get up and fight like a highly decorated war general. It encouraged me, meaning I was filled with courage.

I cannot tell you how often prophetic dreams have saved my life. I surely would have lain down and died many times over without seeing God’s voice just at the right moment each time. His love for me sometimes makes me weak in the knees.

4. Audible Dreams (“Dark Speeches”)

If audible dreams were punctuation, they would be “quotation marks.”

The Bible refers to “dark speeches” in Numbers 12:8 (
KJV
): “With him [Moses] will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches.” Through this we see that God speaks face-to-face in broad daylight, but also concealed in the dark, like in a dream at night. “Dark speeches” is the Hebrew word
chiydah
and means “riddle, parable, dark obscure utterance, enigma to be guessed.” That would definitely describe dreams, since they are often obscure parables, but when your heart hears God’s voice clearly in a dream, it might as well be an audible experience to your ears.

Just look at the word again: “H-EAR-T.” It has been said that the heart has a mind of its own, but never neglect that it has ears of its own as well.

We see several of these mysterious “dark obscure utterances” in Scripture. In 1 Samuel 3, the boy Samuel has been taken to the Temple by his mother, Hannah, and left to serve with the
high priest, Eli. Verse 1 is one of the saddest verses in the Bible: “And the word of the L
ORD
was precious in those days; there was no open vision” (
KJV
). A spiritual blindness was over the nation. Likewise, verse 2 tells us Eli’s eyes had begun to grow dim in the natural—a physical manifestation of a larger spiritual vision problem.

God called Samuel three times audibly in the night, until Eli explained to him that it was the Lord. This shows that sometimes you hear a voice in a dream but are not aware that the voice is God’s. Pay attention to voices you hear in your dreams. Seek counsel, as Samuel did, from a godly leader you can trust to help you interpret.

I have awakened to the sound of my name before. It was a precious call to immediately come pray. I call that “listening prayer.” No agenda. No grocery list of things I need. Just waiting on the Lord. It is good for a soul, no matter who you are. Whenever you hear your name called in a dream, do what Samuel did. Physically get up out of bed. Quiet yourself alone somewhere in a “here I am, Lord” posture, as Samuel did, and pray. Then listen.

In a dream in June 2002, I heard a voice say, “The next fourteen months are going to drastically change your life.” What an odd and specific time frame, and boy, did it come to pass. I mention this in the “dreams for now” category because the word that came immediately affected the left-foot-right-foot of my life. I could not refuse the grace for change as it came because God had announced it was coming. I wrote the following poem thirteen months later, in July 2003, just one month shy of the time line the Lord audibly gave me in my dream. By the time I wrote the poem, things indeed were drastically different in my life, relationships, ministry and even my family. Some of it came with an intense tearing away, and that was hard. And in
August 2003, which was exactly the fourteenth month, the final blow came. But because God had prepared me in an audible dream, I faced it with joy and without devastation. Hardly any tears at all. And on the heels of it came unthinkable laughter and rebirth.

“Drastic”

Changes are coming; it’s going to be drastic

God, Himself, said it, in a dream quite fantastic

So why are my insides, then, doing gymnastics?

I guess I just know Him by now

He speaks and your heart gets all enthusiastic

You view it one way, purely ecclesiastic

Before long it’s doctrine that’s interscholastic

As you teach it and preach it and wait

Your prayer life goes deep and becomes quite monastic

You laminate words and protect them in plastic

Your insides explode with a hope that’s bombastic!

. . . and I guess all that’s really okay

But time stretches on and the word gets elastic

Your hope gets deferred and your spirit, sarcastic

You bury the word in a deep, doubtful casket

And question yourself, it, and Him

Then just as your spirit is blowing a gasket

As friends looking in start to say you’ve gone spastic

God realigns all with His sage chiropractics

And the word you laid down stands back up

As if that alone isn’t totally drastic

Your world starts to change by proportions galactic

And then, in an end that’s augustly climactic

That word you first heard all comes true.

And then some.

© Laura Harris Smith, July 3–4, 2003

5. Pizza Dreams

If pizza dreams were punctuation, they would simply be a space . . . because they seem as if they are from
outer
space
!

I already mentioned in chapter 1 how Ezekiel could have dismissed the illogical, disorderly symbols he saw as pizza dreams. But what is a pizza dream? It is a general phrase people use as a label for a nonsensical dream. But I also observe that some people use it as an excuse to shrug off a perfectly good prophetic dream. With a little prayer and a little probing, their dream would make perfect sense and even provide some instruction.

So why did I list pizza dreams as a type of prophetic dream? One, to challenge people to redefine what they attribute to pizza, and two, because I have another explanation for why the mind dreams crazy things (dreams that are genuinely crazy and not helpful).

You see, Ecclesiastes 5:3 (
NLT
) says, “Too much activity gives you restless dreams.” Other translations replace “too much activity” with “many cares,” “too much worry” or “abundance of business.” So a restless, crazy dream that we call a pizza dream might actually be God’s predesigned way of telling us we are worrying too much, have too many cares or are too busy with business. They are announcements that we are stressed out. Remember, we learned in chapter 1 that
nabi
, one of the basic words in prophetic definitions, means “to announce.” In that light, I think even our pizza dreams are announcing something.

Eating too much before bedtime and having erratic sleep schedules can also cause nonsensical dreams. In the end, a crazy pizza dream might be a signpost from God telling you to slow down, rest more, eat healthier and take better care of the temple He is trying to occupy. A pizza dream can save you future strife in life, proving that this type of dream can be highly prophetic and useful after all.

With that in mind, yes, I am one of those people who think all dreams—no matter how bizarre—are somehow from God.
Dreaming itself is from Him, so I never dismiss a dream without praying first.

Seek the Giver, Not the Gift

As I close this chapter by praying for you and your dreams, I want to remind you that we are to seek the Giver of gifts and not the gifts themselves. I say
gifts
metaphorically, too, since we have established that dreams are not a gift of the Spirit, but a form of communication with God. Communication with Him is your birthright as His child.

Also, I do not see it recorded once in Scripture that someone asked God for a dream. However, I do see it recorded that Jesus said, “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer” (Matthew 21:22
NIV
). I also see that Paul said, “Ye have not, because ye ask not” (James 4:2
ASV
). We are going to ask with confidence, believing God will see that our pure intent in praying for these things is merely to know Him more. He will not despise that motive. He will answer.

PRAYER

Let’s pray out loud together:

God, I want a relationship with You that includes daily communication. I desire more prophetic dreams where You “announce” the future things I need to know today. Holy Spirit, I long for You to speak to me in the nighttime through decision dreams, encouraging dreams, audible dreams with dark speeches and even waking dreams. And show me if what I think is a pizza dream is actually a mysterious invitation to draw near to You for interpretation, as Ezekiel did. Either that, or to teach me to slow down, sleep in and not pig out so much before bedtime, which interferes with my dream life. I pray the prayer of Elisha over my life from 2 Kings 6—open my eyes so that I might see into the spirit realm. Tuck me in
each night. I proclaim that the prayer on my lips, based on Song of Solomon 5:2, will be, “I am asleep, but my heart is awake listening for the voice of my Beloved.” In Jesus’ name, Amen.

IMPARTATION

I release and impart to you the ability to dream “now dreams,” to receive the seer anointing and to discern God’s intentions. Sweet dreams! (Now open your hands, shut your eyes and receive it.)

Five Types of Prophetic Dreams for the Future

J
ust as we determined that prophetic dreams can announce things for you to apply to your life now, there are also those prophetic dreams that you must journal and file away for later. They are prayer homework. Five types of dreams are considered prophetic dreams for the future. Let’s take a closer look at each of them and how we can best respond to them.

1. Warning Dreams

If warning dreams were a punctuation mark, they would be an exclamation point!

Warning dreams are exactly what they sound like: dreams that warn of coming danger caused by a person, the evil one
or a wrong decision we are about to make. As we read at the start, Job 33:16–18 says about dreams: “Then He opens the ears of men, and seals their instruction. In order to turn man from his deed, and conceal pride from man, He keeps back his soul from the Pit, and his life from perishing by the sword.” We see here that God can save us from bad deeds, pride or the pit of hell itself. Sometimes we need saving from an enemy, and sometimes we need saving from ourselves.

But warning dreams are not necessarily “fate,” meaning they are not definitely going to come to pass. The world would have us believe that life is one big happenstance full of unavoidable fortunes, and that a stirring dream heralds either coming good or bad luck. Nothing could be further from the truth. God will often show you things in dreams so you will partner with Him and change them. They are given so you can pray and change the plot of the story, or at least avoid the trap set for your feet. Sort of like those movies with alternate endings where you can use your DVD remote to decide the outcome, heeding a solid warning dream can prevent bedlam from breaking out. Plenty of times, I have released to someone a warning dream that did not come true in the end. Did that make it false, or did that mean my commitment to pray helped prevent the imminent danger the enemy had planned for them?

Likewise, when someone delivers a warning dream to me, I have a choice. Either I can accept it as “fate” and adopt an “Oh, it’ll be okay, just wait and see” attitude—a prevalent line of thinking even among Christians, and a misuse of the sovereignty of God. A
Que será, será
or “whatever will be, will be” attitude strips us of the responsibility of partnering with God in prayer, especially when He is wooing us through a dream to partner with Him. Or I can get busy praying and realize that God is trying to seal my instruction and save my life from perishing by
the sword. I could not survive without God’s warning dreams. I would not be alive today without them.

Matthew 2 records two of the most important warning dreams of all time. Without them, the salvation of the world would not have occurred when it did. The first warning dream was to the wise men. Commissioned by Herod to find the Christ child, they did not realize that Herod wanted them to report back to him so he could find Jesus and kill Him. Verse 12 says, “And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.” Then immediately in verse 13, God’s protection continued: “When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. ‘Get up,’ he said, ‘take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.’”

Can you imagine it? Your spouse awakens you in the middle of the night and tells you to pack your bags because you are leaving the country immediately. Would you do it, all based on a dream? Or would you tell him or her to roll over and go back to sleep? Later, in verses 19–20, God tells Joseph in another dream that it is safe to return home again, and they do. All of these dreams involved international travel and faith. Not grandiose faith, just simple, childlike faith. And the childlike faith of those involved still profoundly affects your life today.

I have lost count of all the warning dreams God has sent me throughout the years. I am grateful to Him for so many things in my life, like salvation, healing, His love and my family, but in the Top 10 is my gratitude for how He warns me of impending danger and keeps me from
so much harm and heartache
through warning dreams. I am also thankful for how He gives me warning dreams for my friends and family, even though nobody likes to get that warning phone call that is a call to war in the middle of peacetime. But the “war” is merely prayer, so in the end, a warning dream is an invitation to seek God, just as is any other dream.

And this is one of the most important things to remember: You will not always feel a connection to a warning dream (“Oh, that dream could never come to pass in my life!”) because it has
not
come to pass and often announces a coming attack in a blind spot. Otherwise, God could trust your usual wisdom or common sense to instruct you.

But regardless of how you feel at the time of a warning dream and regardless of when it is given to you, do not dismiss it, even if it means filing it away in a journal somewhere. Warning dreams are valuable in navigating through life. People often discount them, get pummeled and then shake their fists at God for not protecting them. God tried! Through warning dreams, it is as if God rolls out hell’s blueprints in front of you to divulge what the enemy is plotting. After you pray, such a dream winds up altering your steps.

My great friend Sue prays for me and our church regularly. As a result, God often gives her warning dreams for us so we will not be caught off guard by challenges. Often, she prays and sees the threat thwarted entirely. She often has tornado dreams to alert us to coming trouble. When she sees me, my family or my church in a dream with a tornado, I take a serious prayer posture and cancel planned activities to spend extra time in prayer. We also take dreams of snow and hail as warnings, since Job 38:22–23 says, “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail, which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle?” I notice that when it snows or hails, or when I have dreams of snow or hail, if I will spend some extra time in prayer, I will see a major breakthrough in an area of prayer that formerly seemed to have a “lull” in getting answered. It is as if prayers count double on snow days—I do not know how else to explain it.

Warning dreams are an invitation to pray, not to fear or relax. They are announcing a day to win, if we will partner with God. They are like receiving inside information on how to buy stock just before it doubles (legally, of course).

On one occasion, I had a waking dream with another warning symbol in it. It was a Sunday morning, and I saw myself standing in front of my church. Suddenly, I looked up and saw a huge wrecking ball sailing through the air, headed straight for the building (and for me). This was both a waking dream and a warning dream, so I took it very seriously. In the dream I had seen myself standing between the wrecking ball and the church, so I knew this represented how I must stand in the gap in prayer, stand between my people and peril, just as Moses did in Numbers 16:48 when he stood between the living and the dead and stopped the plague. I got up, got dressed and got to church early to meet with the pre-service prayer team.

I must have barged in there like a bull in a china closet. I even called in the elders I could find and the worship pastor. I told them what I saw, and we began to war in prayer for the safety of our church and our people. In that moment, I was thankful for the relationship I had built with my leaders and for how they trusted my prophetic eye. Sure enough, that week a dispute broke out between two key members that easily could have split the church. If either of them had left, it could have devastated interpersonal relationships in our congregation. Chris and I spent extra time in prayer that week and cleared our schedule for plenty of mediation meetings.

When it all hit, we were calm, unemotional and full of peace and authority, all because of one ten-second dream that we heeded. Thanks be to God, the two families reconciled with our guidance and did not leave. Love won. Forgiveness won. Discernment had fondued them all in prayer—saturated them in it—before we even knew who “they” were. The lesson learned is that warning dreams can keep you ahead of the ball, even when it is a wrecking ball. Pay attention to warning dreams and stay alert.

2. Directional Dreams

If directional dreams were a punctuation mark, they would be a period. They show you what to do, period.

They “seal your instruction,” as Job 33:16 promises dreams and visions can do. The Bible is full of directional dreams. In Genesis 46:2–3, God tells Jacob in a dream to go to Egypt. In Genesis 31:24, God instructs Laban in a dream to speak kindly to Jacob. In Matthew 1:20, God tells Joseph in a dream to take Mary as his wife. Directional dreams leave you thunderstruck when you awake at the detailed counsel you realize you have just received.

Directional dreams do not always involve warnings; some of them can be quite exciting. Once, Chris and I were leaving to go on a mission trip to Helsinki, Finland, and had not yet raised all of our funds. Then one night, I had a dream in which I saw a blank check made out to me, and I was able to see the name of the signer. I had never met the woman, and you cannot very well go up to a stranger and ask for money. Yet I had this directional dream showing us where to go. Since my daughter Jessica was friends with the wealthy widow’s daughter, I shared the dream with Jes, and she passed it along to her friend. We trusted that the dream would find its way to the woman if it was the Lord’s will.

Lo and behold, news of our mission trip made its way back to the woman in a casual, indirect way. She contacted us for a meeting, at the end of which she took out a pen and wrote us a check for the overseas trip for two—in full—just as I had seen in my dream.

In the same dream, I had also seen a huge map with two glowing countries: Finland and Holland. When I called the travel agent to book our flights, I was informed that the route chosen would require an overnight stay in Holland. As I recounted this
entire praise report to my Granny Rooks, she divulged that all of my grandfather’s people came from Holland, a fact I had never known. Through this directional dream, my instruction was sealed. We were able to travel to the conference in Helsinki, and then I was able to spend a day in Amsterdam, Holland, where my great-greats had hailed from. I spent the day praying and releasing generational blessings over the entire Rooks family and descendants. I felt the Lord had ordained for my feet to go there and bring those blessings back to America with me.

Then there is the directional dream that saved my life. I was hesitant about getting on a certain medication that would curb some horrible seizures, and I had a dream about sitting with a new neurologist and watching him hand me white pills, pink pills and blue pills. Shortly after the dream, I was sitting with a new neurologist and he described a new medication. He offered me samples, and you guessed it—they were white pills, pink pills and blue pills. I knew then I was in the right place at the right time and within God’s perfect will. Likewise, God gave me similar dream guidance when, a decade later, His promises for healing began springing forth in my body and it was time to wean down to lesser doses of that same medicine.

God is so good! He wants to be intricately involved in the minutia of your life story, if you will let Him.

3. Recurring Dreams

If recurring dreams were a punctuation mark, they would be the number sign #.

I have talked to people who say they have had the same dream so many times they have lost count. Perhaps it is a dream that started way back in childhood, or a dream with the same plot but slightly different symbols each time. Typically, the people who say this describe their dream with troubled faces. It comes accompanied either with fear, dread or embarrassment. Being in a public place naked. Falling off a tall building. Dying. Definitely
with a recurring dream, there is the chance that something is weighing heavily on the mind. But be comforted by the fact that recurring dreams also happened in Scripture.

We already discussed how Joseph was called to interpret Pharaoh’s two dreams. They were similar numerically, with their seven cows and seven ears of corn representing the next fourteen years of Egypt’s agricultural and economic future, and although they were not the same exact dream, they had the same exact interpretation. Joseph said, “The dreams of Pharaoh are one; God has shown Pharaoh what He is about to do.”

Yes, it is possible for a recurring dream with slightly different symbols to have one interpretation. Joseph’s next statement introduces the idea that through multiple dreams, God is stressing the point that something is ordained to transpire: “And the dream was repeated to Pharaoh twice because the thing is established by God, and God will shortly bring it to pass” (Genesis 41:32). I do not want to say that the events in a repetitive dream are 100 percent set in stone to occur, but from looking at Joseph’s statement, such dreams must be taken seriously and committed to prayer. Not with fear (because God has not given you a spirit of fear) and not with confusion (because God is not a God of confusion), but with priority.

I remember once when I was watching a friend of mine die of cancer. At the time I would not say those words, and I constantly told her she was on her “life bed.” I refused to entertain the thought of her death. Sheila had stage 4 cancer in seven organs, yet our entire community refused to give up hope. I was the prayer coordinator for her cause and was responsible for rallying thousands to pray. They took their cues from me, so if I demonstrated faith, they did, too. If I exhibited hopelessness or gave in to the gloominess of a certain day’s report, they would take an “it’s time for her to go home” posture, and we could not afford that. In fact, once someone did express that, and I reprimanded the person sharply.

I kept positive and kept the healing Word in front of everyone; then I would seek God at night to tell me what was going to happen. I have never taken a begging posture with God, because I am His daughter and I have His Word, but many a sleepless night during that season I begged. And then I would lie in bed and whisper, “Lord, what are You going to do? Will You show me? Give me a dream. Is she going to live? Are You going to heal her?” And then I would dream. Just like Pharaoh, I would have the same recurring dream, but with slightly different symbols or settings.