Can God Speak Through Dreams?

All throughout the Bible, God speaks through dreams in the night. 

In the book of Genesis, the patriarch Jacob has a dream where he sees an open heaven. God communicates his identity with Jacob and re-establishes the covenant promises he made to Jacob’s grandfather Abraham. God uses the dream to reveal something about himself, his promises to Jacob, and Jacob’s destiny within those promises (Genesis 28:10-22).

Later in Genesis, Joseph (Jacob’s son) has a dream about his future. Using symbols, God communicates to Joseph his future role as a significant leader in Pharaoh's house and the event of his older brothers bowing down to serve him. It’s a dream that points to Joseph’s destiny through the language of symbol and metaphor (Genesis 37). 

In the book of 1 Kings, the Lord appears to Solomon in a dream and converses with Solomon. He offers Solomon whatever he wishes, Solomon asks for wisdom, and God grants him the supernatural gift of wisdom. The dream in this case is a place of communion with God, points to Solomon’s destiny, and serves as a medium through which God imparts a spiritual gift (1 Kings 3:5-14).  

Joseph, Mary’s husband and Jesus’s earthly father, is led by dreams on three separate occasions in the early days of Jesus’s life – first, to warn him to keep his marriage promise to Mary despite her unexpected and scandalous virgin pregnancy (Matthew 1:20), second, the warn him to escape with his family to Egypt to avoid Herod’s firstborn killing spree (Matthew 2:13), and third, leading him back to Israel with news that Herod has died and the danger has passed (Matthew 2:19-20). 

In the book of Acts, the Apostle Paul is led by a vision in the night to divert his missionary journey towards Macedonia (16:9).

When the Holy Spirit is poured out in Acts 2, Peter quotes Joel 2:28 and prophesies that one of the signposts that the messianic age has begun is that all will prophesy and that old men, in particular, will “dream dreams” (Acts 2:17). By the time of the prophets in the Old Testament, it seems to be expected that God speaks to prophets through dreams (Numbers 12:6, Jeremiah 29:8), so when Peter proclaims (via Joel) that the prophetic grace is now extended to all the people of God – this naturally includes the gift of God speaking through dreams. 

(It also must be noted that God also speaks to all kinds of people through dreams, not just prophets or even people who would profess to follow God, in the story of Scripture – see, for example, Genesis 20:3, Genesis 31:24, Genesis 40:5, Genesis 41:1, Judges 7:13, Daniel 2, Matthew 2:12, Matthew 2:22, and Matthew 27:19. We see this today in wild stories of Muslims encountering Jesus in their dreams. If you have time for a podcast about a crazy story about this, I highly recommend this one from a podcast called Jesus Speaks Farsi, produced by Elam Ministries.). 

It is clear throughout the biblical narrative that God speaks through dreams. It’s hard to pin down one particular reason that God speaks through dreams, but it seems that God can use dreams to reveal something about himself, reveal something about someone’s calling or destiny in the context of God’s greater story, to warn, or lead and guide. The story of Solomon’s dream is compelling as well – perhaps God can even use dreams to communicate with us directly in a way not possible while we are awake (like in the pocast example I shared!), or even impart spiritual gifts!

In our therapeutic age, we are possibly overinformed by the voice Sigmund Freud and the subsequent therapeutic psychology stream, who tell that dreams are primarily pathways to understand the unconscious mind, and are only useful in a therapeutic space to explore the self.  

Yet, In the Bible, dreams primarily serve as a communication channel that God frequently uses to speak, especially in significant transitional moments in someone’s life. Are you perhaps in a transition season today, and desiring for God to speak? 

Personally, I prefer to refuse binary thinking that says that our dreams are only useful for self-therapy or only the way God speaks. My own experience seems to coincide with Jill Weber of 24-7 Prayer’s balanced approach: “Our dreams can be doorways to revelation or doorways to the deep parts of our own hearts. Either way, it’s good to pay attention to them” (Even the Sparrow, p. 68). 

How about you? Have you ever had a dream that felt significant, that left an emotional impression, or seemed to be shimmering with an invitation from God?

I’d love to offer some questions that you could ask as you hold dreams before the Lord:

• How many practical details of the dream can I remember? I try write down a dream in as much detail as I can possibly remember – as soon as I wake up or even in the middle of the night, if I can. I do the absolute best I can to hold back any interpretation – I can’t tell you how many times I’ve prematurely interpreted a dream when writing it down, and later wished I had a more detailed, surface-level description of the dream to give God space to reveal more layers of interpretation as time goes on. Sometimes I’ve found myself reading over dreams from years ago seeing details that all of the sudden mean something in retrospect that I hadn’t noticed before, and I perhaps I would have missed if I had written out analysis instead of details. My analysis of dreams frequently reflects the bias of my limited view at the time — sometimes I don’t appreciate the full meaning of a dream until two or three years after I’ve had it, even though I thought I understood it at the time! Writing a dream out without trying to interpret it immediately leaves space for this.

• What was the effect of the dream on my heart? Did it bring forward an unprocessed emotion, such as grief, pain, anger, or shame? Or did it bring forward a sense of awe, reverence towards, or worship of God? This can help us discern if the dream is primarily prophetic, a way that God is communicating to us, or primarily an invitation to understand something more about our own hearts. (Note: Sometimes a dream can do both! For example, warning dreams can bring about an emotion of fear that could be our heart’s response to the warning but not necessarily God’s heart. In this instance, we could consider processing both the message that God is trying to speak to us alongside listening to what the fear or other emotion is trying to tell us – perhaps that we don’t trust God as well as we thought and that we need to surrender to his good leadership afresh in the midst of this warning.)

• If the dream highlighted an emotion, is there something from my story that this dream is trying to get me to pay more attention to, that perhaps God wants to heal or refocus on? I’ve found this is especially true of dreams that don’t clearly contain messages from God, but perhaps surface strong emotions in us like fear, shame, or guilt. While any dreams that are outright demonic should be rejected, strong emotions in dreams can highlight areas of our hearts that the Holy Spirit may want to lovingly attend to. 

• If the dream seems to be primarily prophetic, are there any significant symbols in this dream? An early mistake I made in dream interpretation was that I always assumed that a person in my dream represented an actual person, and it took a couple of mistaken interpretations shared prematurely with individuals to realize that I usually need to ask the question “Who does this person represent or symbolize to me?” and assume that everything in a dream is a symbol rather than an actual person or thing. For instance, if I have a dream about a pastor, I now realize that God is usually speaking to me about the community that pastor represents or the way that pastor holds their calling, rather than the actual pastor. Find as many symbols as you can and try to discern what they mean to you! (If you find yourself dreaming a lot and struggling to understand symbols in your dreams, I recommend this book.)

• What is this dream revealing about the nature and character of God? What is this dream revealing about my sense of calling, vocation, or destiny? How is this dream impacting my sense of God’s guidance in my life? While there are varied purposes for dreams across the biblical canon, it’s worth noting that most recorded dreams fall within the spectrum of God’s guidance. Experientially, I’ve found most often that dreams are in some way, shape, or form pointing to my sense of vocational call or guiding me in a particular direction. If you had to boil down the message of the dream in one sentence, what would it be? 

• Is there anyone that I need to share this dream with (or not share this dream with)? One temptation for younger dreamers is that we like to share our dreams prematurely – much like Joseph in Genesis 37 who shares prematurely with his brothers and gets himself into a tricky situation. It’s vulnerable to share dreams, and we can often make the mistake of sharing something precious with someone who isn’t able to hold it with care and tenderness. After learning the hard way and sharing dreams with people who weren’t ready to hold them with me before the Lord, I now try to hold a dream in my heart and let the interpretation ferment, so to speak, before I share it. While his brothers mishandle the dream, Joseph’s father treasures the matter in his heart (Genesis 37:11). Who are the people God has put in my life who have the capacity to treasure the message of the dream and hold it before the Lord with me for an interpretation?

• Is there a response required of me from this dream? Have I received new vocational clarity that I can pray into, a promise I can steward, an area of my story I need to revisit with a trusted friend or a warning to pray into? Many times dreams are meant to be prayed before they’re meant to be lived!

• How can I remember this dream for future guidance? I’ve found that in seasons of transition, old dreams will come back with more clarity, or symbols that mean one thing in one season will take on deeper layers of meaning in the next. Do I have a way to cherish this communication from God in my heart and carry it through the seasons of my life? 

Pray this today:

Father, I pray for the release of the gift of prophetic dreams in my life. I think you for the gift and grace of your leadership through the medium of dreams in the night. I pray for peaceful sleep in my heart and my home, and that you would guide me, lead me, and be my shepherd. I am open to however you want to speak to me. Amen.

P.S. As always, I’d love to pray for you. Feel free to hit “reply” and share any prayer requests you may have!