Dreaming with God

What are you dreaming about?

How in touch are you with your dreams?

Can you remember your last nighttime dream?

In Ephesians 1, Paul writes about God’s dream for the earth:

I want us to capture three key truths from this text:

1. God has a dream to unite heaven and earth.

2. We have an inheritance — or a part to play — in that dream. God wants to dream through us!

3. The Holy Spirit is given as a downpayment of our inheritance, meaning he’s meant to help us find our place in that dream.

NT Wright describes the Bible as a five-act play where we have the script for the first four acts, but we’ve been placed in the fifth act without a script and are meant to improvise based on what we know from what’s gone before us.

This means that we know the major parts of the story — God created the world, it’s been marked by sin and corruption, God chose the people of Israel as the first fruits of his redemptive plan, Jesus came as the Messiah to and through that covenant people to invite everyone else to be a part of the redemptive plan, now we’re filled by the Spirit and invited into to participate in his restorative work, and he’s coming back at the end of time to:

• finish what he started

• make all the wrong things right

• restore everything that was broken

• bring healing and justice

• redeem all things

• rule and reign with us for all eternity

• unite heaven and earth

This is so exciting - we have a part to play in this great storyline! We get to partner with God to unite heaven and earth!

I believe that one of the primary ways that we get to discern what our part is to play is through dreaming.

I love what Lou Engle says:

To me, this is a short-hand way to communicate what Paul writes in Ephesians 1. God has a dream to unite heaven and earth, we have a role to play in this unification, and the Spirit is given to us to help us both discern what this is and to empower us to do it.

For many who grew up in the evangelical tradition, we have been taught to be a little bit skeptical of our dreams and desires because we are inherently “sinful” and therefore we couldn’t possibly want the same thing that God wants.

I want to say that’s silly! Here’s what I want to suggest: perhaps dreams that are on the inside of us could be little deposits of God’s heart, and maybe even a part of the way we’re made in God’s image (if God has dreams, we’re made in his image and so do we!).

I even want to suggest that if we are afraid to dream, this is the work of the evil one and not God. In my pastoral work over the years, I’ve noticed that it seems to be one of the primary assignments of the enemy to get people to stop hoping and dreaming about the future.

The Catholic Ignatian tradition, pioneered by an apostolic leader from the 1600s — St Ignatius — is famous for helping people pay attention to the movements of God on the inside. To me, this communicates a high theology of the indwelling Holy Spirit (just with pre-Azusa Street language) — that by listening to what’s on the inside of us, we can discern where the Spirit is inviting us to go.

And, the leadership of the Holy Spirit isn’t random — according to Ephesians 1 the leadership of the Spirit is meant to lead us into our unique assignment in God’s great heaven-to-earth restoration plan — the “good works that God has prepared beforehand so that we may walk in them” (2:9).

Rather than being skeptical or afraid of our dreams and desires, we must listen. Perhaps they could be trying to communicate to us the role that we have to play in the unification of heaven and earth.

I’m not advocating for a wholesale acceptance of every dream, desire, and whim — Ignatius would tell us they must be discerned in the context of a listening community. But, what I want us to hear, is that our dreams do need to be named, listened to, wrestled with, talked about, and stewarded, not simply discarded or put on a shelf.

I have long contended that our nighttime dreams are more connected to our daytime dreams than we might realize.

I have previously argued that most dreams in the Bible have to do with our vocation and kingdom assignments — they are either visions of our future assignment (Genesis 37), invitations to follow God into new territory in our kingdom assignments (Acts 16:9-10), deposits of gifts and graces meant to help us in our assignment (1 Kings 3), or warning dreams to expose how evil is trying to sabotage our assignments (Matthew 2:13-15).

I firmly believe that God gives us the gift of dreams in the night to help illuminate, clarify, or even throw extra fire on our daytime dreams.

Recently, someone gave me a prophetic word containing small details of a dream that I had years ago that they could never have known about, and this has catapulted me into a new season of reflection and discernment on what my particular part to play is in this redemptive story.

This is how the prophetic gift plays into this as well — it’s meant to illuminate or throw gas on the fire of our living out of our kingdom assignment.

If you had to look at your life, what are you holding?

Dreams about the future?

Prophetic promises that have been spoken over you but unfulfilled?

Prophetic dreams?

Or, are you skeptical of dreams of the day or night? Disillusioned? Afraid to dream, even?

How has the enemy conspired to keep you from dreaming? To steal your hope?

How might God want to redeem this today?

If I can ever support you in your journey of coming alive and living in love with Jesus, please don’t hesitate to hit “reply” on this email and let me know.

-Ryan

P.S. It is one of the greatest joys of my life to help people come alive and live in love with Jesus, especially by waking up to the continual conversation we get to enjoy with God. Our team is working on creating some beautiful prayer resources this year, starting with a daily prayer journal designed to help you grow in your ability to hear God’s voice. Please consider becoming a founding partner with us to receive every resource we create in 2025 completely free!