
Love is the greatest of dreams and the worst of nightmares -
William Shakespeare
"What's love got to do with it?" asked Tina Turner. She wasn't singing about dreams or nightmares, but try to wrap your thinking around this idea: Love has everything to do with every little and big thing that God does, and that includes dreams and nightmares.
LOVE: A STRANGE REASON TO HAVE A NIGHTMARE
Over the last twenty or so years, I've interpreted thousands of dreams for hundreds of people, and they all boil down to one fact: God loves you. Let's expand that thought slightly, and say that Jesus came to do a few things: heal the sick, raise the dead, mend broken hearts, destroy all the works the devil had done. He did it all, the Cross and more--for love--His love and the Father's love for us.
And He's still doing it. Every single thing He does, every word He speaks, action He takes, and dream He gives is because He loves us. Dreams are one of the methods He uses to communicate with us about what is happening in our hearts.
NONE OF THE DREAMS IN THE BIBLE ARE FROM THE DEVIL
People often ask me about their nightmares and have a hard time believing that nightmares could be from God. But in the thousands I've heard, I've yet to hear one from the enemy. They were all from the Lord! As a matter of fact, there isn't one dream in the Bible that was attributed to the devil, to our imagination, or to pizza.
In Dream Interpretation Toolkit, we cover this in much more detail, but here's the short version of how this works. In the biblical story of Job, you'll remember that he was having a hard, painful time in his life. His children had all died, he was losing all of his material goods, and was sick and tormented. He cried out to God, "When I just want to go to bed and sleep and not think about my terrible life, You (meaning God) terrify me with dreams!" (Job 7:14 paraphrased) You see, Job attributed his nightmares to God.
WHY WOULD THE LORD GIVE YOU NIGHTMARES?
Why would the Lord do this; why would He give you nightmares? The Lord wants you to know what you're dealing with so He opens your spiritual eyes, in your dreams, to let you see.
The purpose of dreams is to purify our hearts by showing us what we're dealing with that is troublesome either for us, or for the Lord, or often both. He wants us to face those difficult circumstances head-on and repent, forgive, or do whatever needs to be done to return our hearts to a pure condition, so the enemy won't have a hold on us in any way. The Lord wanted Job to come to Him and be healed of everything he was experiencing. He ultimately did, but in the meantime, he had nightmares.
MANY NIGHTMARES REVEAL A SPIRIT OF FEAR
When we have nightmares, we are often dealing with a spirit of fear of some kind, or about some thing, or we are tormented by circumstances and haven't dealt with them properly.
The next time you have a nightmare, spend some quiet time with the Lord and ask Him to help you understand what you are dealing with, and how to best handle it. Screaming and yelling at the enemy won't make the nightmares stop but changing your heart will.
Sweet dreams!