Seeing the Voice of God: What God Is Telling You through Dreams and Visions (7 page)

D.
De-stress for 5 minutes before climbing into
bed.
You can use a warm face wash, an Epsom salt bath (which is pure magnesium sulfate and aids sleep), essential oils on your pillow or any favorite relaxation routine to train your body that sleep is near. Be good to yourself and create your own bedtime traditions. Sleep time is a sacred time.

E.
Enter.
Time to transition into your bed clothes, bedroom and bed itself. Lie down, close your eyes and enter into peace. Ask God to enter your heart if you never have; then ask Him to enter your dreams and speak to you tonight.

F.
Forgive.
You have cleansed the atmosphere in your room, and now it is time to cleanse the atmosphere of your heart. “Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry, for anger gives a foothold to the devil” (Ephesians 4:26–27
NLT
). It is time to forgive whoever ruined your day or night, especially if it is the person lying next to you. What you go to bed with, you wake up with, so choose love. Then ask God’s forgiveness for yourself for whatever He brings to mind, and receive it. Finally, forgive yourself and determine to start fresh again tomorrow.

G.
Go to sleep.
Find your “sweet spot” sleeping position. If you cannot fall asleep, try slowing down your breathing. This mirrors what happens anyway during N1 and N2; you are basically tricking your brain into thinking you are there
and causing your brain waves to slow down and widen (I have done this for years). If you still cannot fall asleep, try keeping a gratitude journal that you write in at this time each night, listing just three things you are thankful for that day. Or try reading, but use an actual book and not your Kindle, iPad or other tablet because the direct lights will cue your pineal gland to quit making melatonin and will wake you up. You would not want to have to start the whole winding-down process again. Also, pray Psalm 127:2 over yourself: “For so He gives His beloved sleep.”

Experts will tell you that the best way to get a good night’s sleep is not to set an alarm clock, but most working people must set an alarm. Considering what we learned earlier about circadian rhythms and light’s power to shut down melatonin production (thus waking you up), the key to living with an alarm clock is to turn on bright lights as quickly as possible each morning. Even Mr. Rooster knows that light is an alarm clock’s best friend. And if you sense some sleep debt coming on, get an extra hour of sleep as soon as possible. But go to bed an hour earlier at night since somehow a morning “sleeping in” does not cut it. In fact, sometimes it leaves you feeling even more sluggish. Have you ever experienced “sleep-in hangover”?

Remember, too, that daily exercise—even just twenty minutes a few times a week—is a great cure for insomnia. Just do not exercise before bedtime.

After all of my ABCs for ZZZs, if you still have trouble falling asleep night after night, or if you are constantly tired during the day, consider seeing a sleep doctor. There is nothing wrong with asking for the help of a good physician, just as long as you filter his or her wisdom through the higher wisdom of the Great Physician.

The Battle of the Bed

I want to end this chapter with a night owl’s confession by giving you my own near-deadly sleep deprivation testimony, not just
because it will save someone’s life, but because it will reiterate my previous teaching about the power of warning dreams.

I was consistently drained each morning not because of a sleep disorder, but because of a “sleep defiance.” I had a lifelong habit of getting four or five hours of sleep each night. Because I had endless energy and the metabolism of a grasshopper, I could get a second wind at midnight, put in two or three more hours of writing, and then be back up at 7:30–8:00 a.m. for another homeschool day with my six children. Night after night I did this for years, wearing my ability to operate so efficiently like a badge. Ignorance and sheer will kept me from seeing all the sleep debt warning signs in my body. I was robbing Peter to pay Paul and slowly killing myself. Creative types must be very careful not to let their genius be the death of them.

My sleep defiance finally caught up with me and I wore my adrenal system out, meaning I had no adrenaline left for the bursts of energy necessary for motherhood and grandmotherhood (not to mention ministry, business and teaching). I also had no cortisol left to get me through each day’s stresses and calm me down. Because of my strong constitution, I never really felt exhausted, but my insides felt it. At five foot two and 107 pounds in my early forties, my sugar levels and cholesterol suddenly shot up, and my metabolism and adrenals started shutting down—as did my thyroid, all my hormones and my entire reproductive system. My lack of sleep began to affect just about every organ system in my body, but we caught it on the brink of being too late. A sleep debt that had taken thirty years to accumulate had only taken three years to make my once-healthy body fall into a deep sleep, one organ at a time. If I would not sleep externally, the organs in my body decided they would sleep anyway, internally. Adrenal exhaustion has four stages, the fourth of which is adrenal failure—when your organs shut down. I was in stage 3.

I learned that with serious focus I could turn my condition around, so we got to work, but not before the warning dreams started coming. Some of them even came
before
the grave diagnosis or the slightest hint of it. They came to me, to friends and to family, and they all had the same message: death. Caskets, funerals, my family in mourning—you name it. We did not even tell our younger children about the frightening dreams. They are hearing about them for the first time right here, along with you. So when the diagnosis did come, I was all ears. I was told that if I did not turn this around, I would die.

A precious friend, mentor and classy Nashville businesswoman, Trish, had gotten me on the waiting list with her five-star Christian nutritionist for a general visit months before all this. This master nutritionist always had a multimonth waiting list, but by God’s grace, I got my diagnosis ten days before my visit, changing the nature of the appointment entirely. During those ten days before the visit, Trish baby-stepped me through the vitamin regimen that had helped her years earlier, when she had been diagnosed with stage 3 adrenal burnout. By this point, I could not even stand up without almost passing out, so Trish was my lifeline during that week of angst between the diagnosis and the nutritionist appointment.

I had to rebuild my system with the extensive and expensive supervision of many different medical professionals, including doctors, but in the end, it was the nutritionist who saved my life and changed it forever. I already ate all my vegetables, went to the YMCA daily and watched bad fats. But without sleep, my body was not in the mood to give me any brownie points for it. I held up my nutritionist’s wisdom to my lifestyle as a measuring stick and realized I had not been wholeheartedly taking care of God’s temple, my body. “I was given a reed like a measuring rod and was told, ‘Go and measure the temple of God’” (Revelation 11:1
NIV
). I repented. I started again.

I had missed all the warning signs and hints from heaven. God had been trying as far back as my early thirties to get me
to sleep more. Some good friends had even given us a $1,200 mattress, and I still did not take God’s hint. I had not heard myself, either, as I stood there each night on Shop At Home TV
telling millions and millions
of people they needed to invest in their rest
. Sad to say, but it took years of health struggles and then some scary warning dreams about death to get my attention. The seriousness of my condition stopped me in my tracks and made me change my lifestyle. It also made me get busy praying to live. The enemy wanted me dead; God did not. The warning dreams were not showing me my future, but my assignment. They were wake-up calls. Wake-up calls to get more sleep!

About a week after my life-changing visit to the nutritionist’s office, I suddenly remembered something Dr. Jonathan Evans had said to me as I was feverishly typing during my interview with him the summer before: “The biggest metabolic changes that occur from sleep deprivation are hormonal. You get sick when you don’t sleep.” I had sat there listening to one of the best and most passionate sleep doctors anywhere (his medical sleep books were as highlighted and ragged as my Bible), yet I had missed this attempt at divine intervention. I had every major hormonal system in my body going awry and I knew it sitting there, but even with his words, I did not make the connection. Surely sleep doctors were just for people with apnea. I was exempt. I was covered by God’s grace. I was a minister, so God had my back. That warped thinking was part of my undoing. What a slap in God’s face.

The diagnosis, the warning dreams, my friend Trish, the nutritionist and Dr. Evans were the five fingers on God’s hand that finally shook some sense into me. And how clever of God to make me have to study sleep for my work since He knew work was what was keeping me from sleep.

In a way, this book helped save my life. I hope it does the same for you, so please do not wait until things go so far before you change your sleeping habits. At the risk of offending you, I hope God will make you miserable until you treat your body
better. Do not ask God for healing to come through the front door when your bad health choices are ushering it right out the back. Let this be the year you get healthy. In the past you have heard “diet and exercise,” but now it is “diet, exercise and sleep.”

Now that you understand the science of sleep and will be sleeping smarter, let’s look in the next chapter at the predominant reasons why you may have poor dream recall. Of course, God can speak to you in a dream anyway in the supernatural realm, but also remember that you can hinder that process by not taking care of your body in the natural realm. God created you to dream, but He also created you to sleep. He wants your sleep to be sweet. He even made it one of the Ten Commandments for you to take one whole day a week to rest, and He set the example by resting on the seventh day after the creation of the world. Be a Sabbath keeper and live.

As it turns out, sleep is not the titanic time waster I mistook it for. In fact, I think sleep doctors could put all the other doctors out of business with the ailments they cure when they help a person find sleep. Think about it—from the moment your head hits the pillow each night, your body begins setting the stage for the next day of your life, and it is trying to deliver you there healthy. The regimen sleep follows is nothing short of miraculous, and to interrupt it—or cheat it—will result in poor health, and more relevant to our topic, an altered dream journey.

Now I lay me down to sleep

I pray the Lord I don’t count sheep

And if I dream before I wake

I pray it sticks for heaven’s sake.

Amen.

© Laura Harris Smith, February 4, 2013

PRAYER

Let’s pray out loud together:

God, where do I start? I am sorry for abusing my body, for not taking care of it and for every vow and resolution I’ve ever broken to better care for it, Your temple. I pray that You will forgive me and give me a strategy and schedule for optimum health. God, make my sleep sweet. Pay my sleep debt and rejuvenate my body. Not just nightly, but once a week as I participate in Your Sabbath rest. I receive Your healing. I receive Your peace. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

IMPARTATION

Right now, I release and impart to you the ability to go to sleep, stay asleep, sleep deeply and dream. (Now open your hands, shut your eyes and receive it.)

A
ustrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud said that we only remember the dreams we want to remember. Many African tribes believe that real life is lived in dreams and that our waking hours are the illusion. Bolivian philosopher Oscar Ichazo depicted dream reality as like the night stars and said they are always there, but that the brightness of the sun and the consciousness of the day blot them out. Many American scientists believe that the only purpose for dreams is to process the events of one’s day and consolidate memories. What do you believe? Have you ever really given much thought to this phenomenon of dreams?

Freud, Jewish by birth and atheist by choice, had some deep insight on dreams, but his dreams were monochrome at best because he chose to exclude the Giver of them. That is like believing in milk but denying the cow. You could analyze the milk, its nutrients and its benefits with utmost scientific accuracy, but without knowing the source and your connection to it, and without nourishing that source, the quality of the
milk would not only suffer, but your cup would eventually run dry.

Freud’s
The Interpretation of Dreams
, published in 1900, took eight years to sell out of its first six hundred copies, and evidently he was only paid $209. But as the public intrigue with dreams increased, seven more successful editions followed.
1
Since he was an atheist until the day of his death, you may wonder why I am interested in Freud’s thoughts on dreams, but the truth is that he and I both had a preoccupation with the topic of dreams and wrote books about it. He was so close! All the answers were right in front of him, but he still missed it—not the dreams, but the dream Giver. He thought of belief in God as a collective neurosis (mental disorder). He called it “longing for a father.” So close again, since God
is
our Father, but still so far because Freud did not know Him and made no bones about not seeing the need.

We know that Freud dreamed because much of his work involved self-analysis of his own dreams. I fully believe God tried to reach him in the night hours. At night, you are God’s. Your body and mind are resting, but as I said at the start, your spirit is awake all night. Your spirit is the part of you that hears God. Therefore, by day, you may think in your mind you are an atheist, a Buddhist, an agnostic or whatever, but by night, as your spirit stays awake with your body and mind asleep, you are God’s child and He is still drawing you. Take heart in that fact if you have loved ones who are adamantly anti-God or who have become entangled with false doctrine that compromises their once-pure faith.

On how quickly dreams slip from your grasp and get left behind, Freud and I agree. He said this:

That a dream fades away in the morning is proverbial. It is, indeed, possible to recall it. For we know the dream, of course, only by recalling it after waking; but we very often believe that we remember it incompletely, that during the night there was more of it than we remember. On the other hand, it often happens that dreams manifest an extraordinary power of maintaining themselves in the memory. I have had occasion to analyse, with my patients, dreams which occurred to them twenty-five years or more previously, and I can remember a dream of my own which is divided from the present day by at least thirty-seven years, and yet has lost nothing of its freshness in my memory.
2

Forget Me Not

If you wake up immediately after a dream, you have an 80 percent chance of remembering it, according to a 1953 study done by University of Chicago researcher Dr. Nathaniel Kleitman, Ph.D., and two of his students, William C. Dement and Eugene Aserinsky. Suspicious that darting eye movements were associated with dreaming, they did a test and awoke subjects during various sleep stages, to discover that 80 percent of them reported having dreams and only 7 percent did not. I am not sure what the other 13 percent reported—perhaps they were unsure—but for certain on that night, REM sleep was discovered and linked to dreaming. Dr. William Dement, now known in the medical community as the father of modern sleep medicine, said of that night in his book
Some
Must
Watch
While
Some
Must
Sleep
,

The vivid recall that could be elicited in the middle of the night when a subject was awakened while his eyes were moving rapidly was nothing short of miraculous. It [seemed to open] . . . an exciting new world to the subjects whose only previous dream memories had been the vague morning-after recall. Now, instead of perhaps some fleeting glimpse into the dream world each night, the subjects could be tuned into the middle of as many as ten or twelve dreams every night.
3

Dr. Dement is also quoted as saying, “The simplest definition of REM sleep is a highly active brain in a paralyzed body.” That is why in my gears analogy in chapter 4, although it would have seemed more logical to label the sleep stages as moving from fourth gear downward to first since the subject is winding down toward sleep, that would have meant interpreting the fifth stage as “park,” and the brain is in anything but “park” during REM sleep! In fact, REM dream brain waves look more similar to waking brain waves than any of the other brain waves of sleep—beta, alpha or delta.

Interestingly enough, the same Dr. Evans whom I interviewed for chapter 4 says that if he phones someone in the middle of the night and awakens them, he can tell which stage of sleep they are in. If they are in REM dream sleep and get awakened, they can immediately engage in conversation, but if they are in deep sleep, they will hardly be able to talk and may not even remember the call the next day. He adds, “It’s because the mind is ON during REM sleep and OFF during deep sleep.”

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) in Bethesda, Maryland, states it like this:

This sleep-related form of amnesia is the reason people often forget telephone calls or conversations they’ve had in the middle of the night. It also explains why we often do not remember our alarms ringing in the morning if we go right back to sleep after turning them off.
4

In the sixty years since that 1953 University of Chicago study, it has been tested, proven and printed hundreds of times over that there are four to six of these 90-minute to 120-minute cycles each night, with each cycle containing four to six dreams. Thus, you could be having up to 36 dreams each night. You have the potential of dreaming over 13,000 dreams per year. That means that by age 75, with proper sleep, you could have dreamed almost one million dreams.

Then why aren’t you remembering your dreams, or even most of them? Would you like to? I ask because I am amazed at how
many people have resigned themselves to a dreamless life. You do not have to.

The number-one line I hear when I begin discussing dreams with people is, “Oh, I never dream.” The experience seems gated to them, and they have accepted it as part of who they are. But it is not who they are, nor who you are. You do dream every night. If babies dream and the blind dream and animals dream (check out our FAQ page at the end of the book), then why would God snub you? Not only is it scientifically impossible for you to opt out of the REM dream sleep cycle, but it is not within God’s nature to exclude you from what is potentially His greatest opportunity to get you still and speak to you.

No one can say he or she does not dream. Every one of us dreams. Every night. Multiple times a night. In fact, you may be dreaming as many as three dozen dreams each night. So all of you who say “I never dream” can stop saying it. The real issue to address now is not the dreaming, but the trouble remembering those dreams.

Get serious about taking back your dreams.

Sick and Tired

We spend about 8 hours daily, 56 hours weekly, 240 hours monthly and 2,920 hours annually doing it. That is right . . .
sleeping
. Live 45 years and you will have slept 15 of them. Live 75 years and you will have slept for a quarter of a century!

In 1960, a survey by the American Cancer Society asked 1 million Americans how much sleep they got per night. The median answer was 8 hours. Today that number has fallen to 6.7 hours. That is a decrease of more than 15 percent in less than a lifetime.
5

According to
Web
MD and its various physician sources, the amount of sleep we need varies from person to person and
depends on various lifestyle factors. Babies usually need 16–18 hours of sleep per day (and it is mainly all REM sleep), while teens need about 9. Most adults should get between 7–8 hours of sleep each night.
6

As we age, we still need the same amount of sleep, but our sleep tends to get lighter and shorter. N-REM stages 3 and 4 (N3, deep sleep) sometimes shorten or stop completely in the aged. So we have to ask ourselves, is diminishing health just a part of old age, or does it develop as a result of diminishing deep sleep? One thing is for sure: Even a young adult’s health will diminish more quickly if a sleep disorder is present that prohibits restorative sleep.

Sleepless in America

According to the NINDS, at least 40 million Americans suffer from sleep disorders and another 20 million encounter them periodically. The sleep medicine business is a $16 billion a year industry involving more than 70 identified sleep disorders. Most of those can be treated, returning the sleepless to a good night’s sleep.
7
Let’s look at two of the most common sleep disorders.

Insomnia

Simply put, insomnia is the inability to sleep, or consistent sleeplessness. We are not talking
Sleepless in Seattle
or the occasional inability to fall asleep, but chronic sleeplessness. There is also sleep-maintenance insomnia, which is the inability to stay asleep after falling asleep. Insomniacs rarely awake feeling refreshed, and the nightly tossing and turning leaves its imprint on their entire day.

Dr. Evans says that in his experience, women suffer from insomnia more than men. He offers promising opinions about treatment and says that whereas a primary care doctor would prescribe a sleeping aid and perhaps refer you to a psychologist, in his line
of work he tries to determine the tangible, physical reasons you are not sleeping and correct them so that you are not dependent on medications. One of the results of taking sleep aids can be iatrogenic (physician induced) insomnia, which is when a patient develops a tolerance to a sleep aid and requires larger and larger doses, or is advised to stop taking sleep aids and then develops severe insomnia as a withdrawal symptom. This causes the patient to return to sleep aids in a vicious cycle that is hard to beat.
8

Dr. Evans says that REM sleep should account for approximately 25 percent of your total sleep time each night. A downside to sleeping pills is that they depress brain functions and interfere with sleep cycles. In fact, they make REM sleep less likely, period.
9

In my line of work, ministry, I have another approach to helping those who have tried everything medical but still toss and turn each night. Oftentimes, there is nothing physically wrong with them, because their insomnia is actually an invitation. An invitation to deal with their anxieties, fears and guilt. An invitation to pray and draw close to their Creator while He has their full attention, to be still and know that He is God. An invitation to pray for someone else, after which sleep often comes.

One time, I met a little girl named Maci whose story moved me to tears. At an Epilepsy Forum at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, her mother, Katie, stood and told hospital doctors how Maci—who struggled with seizures and was on a variety of medicines—could not sleep. Maci’s life had been one of frequent doctor visits with infrequent solid answers, and it was taking its toll on her. Her insomnia was affecting the entire household, not to mention intensifying Maci’s seizure activity since sleep deprivation is a major seizure trigger. The smartest minds in the room had no concrete answers for her. I knew I needed to tell Katie what had helped me, but I could not interrupt the speakers. I took out my pen:

I can tell you what helped me. . . . I pray the last part of Psalm 127:2 over myself and somehow, supernaturally, I honestly
sleep. . . . May God bless your daughter and the mommy who gets up with her. Don’t give up if it doesn’t work at first. Keep believing. . . .

Psalm 127:2 says, “So He gives His beloved sleep.”

I had never had insomnia. As I mentioned previously, I did not have a sleep disorder, but rather a sleep defiance. Still, getting to sleep that way had worked for me in years past, and I felt the need to share it. I put my email address down just in case Katie needed prayer, but I did not think I would ever hear from her again.

Then one day, an email came. Katie had prayed Psalm 127:2 with Maci each night before bed, and Maci had begun to sleep. More and more, the tide turned. Maci’s health stabilized as a result, as did the household. It so impacted their lives that Katie—an artist—painted a large mural in Maci’s room with this Scripture on it, and she attached a picture for me to see. I sat at my desk, stared at it and just cried. What no doctor of medicine or psychologist could do for little Maci, God’s Word did when applied with faith. The faith of a child.

Apnea

Approximately 18 million Americans have sleep apnea, a sleep disorder in many forms that results in the cessation of breathing, especially at night and all throughout the night. Some of apnea’s defining characteristics are loud snoring, obesity, morning headaches, waking up with a sore or dry throat, waking during the night with a choking or gasping sensation, restless sleep and more.

The week I began writing this chapter, a good friend, Lisa, had made the decision to get tested for sleep apnea. Having heard that sleep apnea can be a real dream stealer (because sufferers often do not reach REM dream sleep), I wondered if Lisa would allow me to study the results of her sleep study test. An accurate dreamer, Lisa had brought some dreams to me over the years that
contained information she could not have known except through divine means. I knew the information was counsel from God, and we applied it, with positive outcomes each time. Knowing that frequent waking episodes of apnea could be preventing Lisa from finding much REM dream sleep, I was curious to see if Lisa’s dreams would increase if the apnea was resolved.