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Job 32, 33:1-22
Last week we began looking at Job 33:14,15 which tell of God speaking to us when we are asleep and how we often don't perceive it.
We noticed several instances in the Bible when God spoke in visions and dreams to people, and how sometimes they could only understand them by God telling them what they meant (sometimes through godly men).
We commented that often the dreams were to prepare people for the future, to warn them or to guide them.
We wondered if we were 'missing out' on hearing God's voice in our dreams.
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To continue...
It also says here in Job 33:17, God 'openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction, that he may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from man. He keepeth back his soul from the pit, and his life from perishing by the sword.'
God shows his mercy to us by revealing things to us through dreams to prevent us being hurt by our own plans and thus saves us from physical and ultimately spiritual death.
So how does this apply to me and to you today?
Does it mean we should pay more attention to our dreams?
Perhaps you like me have had dreams which you vividly recall the next morning and they are confused and maybe funny. You notice that the dreams contain things that you might have experienced during the day or things you were talking about before bedtime.
You might have dreams which seem so real that it is almost as if you physically experienced them - does this mean that they will really happen?
Mine certainly haven't!
Perhaps they may even be Satan sowing seeds of trouble and doubt and sin into our mind.
Scientists tell us that our brain processes our lives while we are asleep, and nightmares, or repetitive dreams may be due to trauma, worry, illness or medication. Conversely, never being able to remember our dreams may be due to a Vitamin B6 deficiency.
Well, what else does the Bible tell us?
In Acts 2: 17-18 at the time of Pentecost we read of the fulfilling of a prophecy given to Joel (Joel 2:28) of God pouring out his Spirit 'upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams...'
That God will continue to speak to his people through visions and dreams is inferred here, and we read of this in the lives of Peter, Paul and Cornelius in the New Testament.
It comes to mind too of Christians in recent times such as Corrie Ten Boom who was given a dream of events that would happen but was only puzzled by it until she realised it was happening some years later; John Newton whose vivid dream we have previously recounted; and I recently heard of a minister who dreamt of the chapel he would later become Pastor of.
We imagine how confirming these must have been to them as they realised that God had known all that was coming to pass before it had done - a sense that God was with them.
Have you ever had dreams which then came to pass? Should we all expect to have these?
In wondering how this really applies to me and to you today, I almost scrapped this blog post, but on looking up in Matthew Henry his thoughts on these verses in Job were helpful:
Henry speaks of dreaming and slumbering as being a time when we are 'retired from the world and the business and conversation of it.
It is the time God takes for dealing personally with' us....'when by deep sleep... the bodily senses are all locked up, and the mind more free to receive the immediate communications of divine light...'
'...some dreams may come from conscience...when men are slumbering between sleeping and waking, reflecting on the day that has passed or thinking of the day that it to come... it is a proper time for their hearts to reproach them for what they have done ill and to admonish them for what they should do'.
To summarise then, God may speak to people in dreams and visions to prepare them, warn them, encourage them and guide them.
Many of our dreams 'come from fancy' as Henry puts it and perhaps we think God has never spoken to us in our dreams, but maybe these verses are telling us to pay more attention to them - to listen for the gentle, still voice of the Lord speaking through them or through our conscience as we sleepily mull over the day and think of the next.
God is Sovereign and he chooses how and what he will reveal to us, but may we be helped to listen for his voice - be helped to leave our phones away from our bedside, so that we are more likely to have quiet time reflecting and 'slumbering' away from all the activities and pressures of life.
How many of us reach for our phone as soon as we wake, or for how many of us is it the last thing we look at before falling asleep?
Could we put our phones 'to bed' in another room and use an alternate alarm clock if need be so that there may times of quietly dozing, thinking, reflecting - times when we can 'draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you' (James 4:8).
And perhaps we should notice more what we are dreaming about, and lay these before the Lord, asking for discernment - whether it is his voice.
It comes to mind, that even if we are not being given a clear vision and revelation from God about a matter are dreams of worry or repetitive nightmares his voice telling us we have a matter to bring to him? - a matter we need his help in - his counsel, perhaps his healing or comfort?
Maybe God is revealing to us that we have been hurt by somebody or are holding a grudge against a person - and these are matters that we need the Lord to help us to forgive - others or ourselves; or that we need to ask somebody to forgive us.
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So, having come to the end of this post I believe God does speak to me in dreams and very likely to you too. At the beginning I would have said he never has or does but now...let us pray that God will 'open our ears and seal our instruction' (Job 33:17).
I hope this might have helped somebody in some way - do share any thoughts you have.
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