Dreams II

Last week we started a discussion on dreams. Thank you to all of those who participated in the survey. We had 137 participants before we closed the survey. We hope to share the results with you in the coming weeks. Before we begin, we need to share a quick disclaimer or two. The survey is not statistically representative of anything but the actual respondents. In other words, we would be mistaken if we take the percentages presented herein and extrapolate them to a larger group of people. We would be equally amiss if it was suggested that the survey proved a right answer or a wrong answer to any of the questions. The only thing the survey “proves” is what 137 people think collectively.

Our first question was “Do you feel that God still communicates with men via dreams today?” Thirty-two percent of our respondents said “yes” and another forty-five percent said “I don’t know.” This makes our fifth question (If you believe God communicates with us today via dreams, how would you distinguish between a dream from God versus an ordinary dream?) that much more important. If seventy-seven percent of our respondents believe that God does or possibly does communicate through dreams, how would we know when He did?

We have everything we need in the Bible in order to walk properly before God. (2 Tim. 3:16,17) Therefore, IF God does speak to us through dreams, those dreams are supplementary to that experience, never contradictory to the Bible and ultimately must be validated through Scripture.

Many peopled shared dream experiences with me in which the dream actually prodded them to act Biblically. They knew what the right thing to do was, but were not doing it until they had a dream. For example, one brother confided in me that he had a dream where God talked to him very vividly. He had not told anyone about the dream for fear of being ridiculed, chided or worse. In this dream, God told him very plainly to forgive another brother for whom he held a longstanding grudge. This brother said that because of the dream, he had finally forgiven this brother. It was not as if he didn’t know he should forgive, but his dream experience finally moved him to do what he had been reading in the Bible all along.

--http://www.wcfoundation.org/