What are Dreams?

   When you lie down at night to sleep, perhaps even moments after your head hits the pillow, your body shuts down into a deep, and sometimes light, unconscious state that allows you to rejuvenate after a tiring day of work, or play, or whatever you do during the morning cycle. You stay this way for hours, and wake up, refreshed and ready to take on another day. Your life couldn't even function without sleep, in fact, without enough of it, you could go insane. But do you realize that your body doesn't shut down completely during it's time of healing inactivity? Besides your heart, your brain never stops working, but sleep is what puts your brain through a filing detox that stores and processes all it had to do, see, identify, and calculate during the day. During this complicated and mind boggling cycle, a lot of the information rushing through your gray matter can penetrate your conscience and take on the appearance of jumbled pictures, and, sometimes, coherent scenes that form a strange and unique story...

   Are dreams just nonsense images we sometimes get during the zero hours, or are they something more? In the Bible, God used dreams to communicate to the Old Testament prophets, like Daniel, to alert them to what was coming. Usually, due to the disobedience and sinful practices of His people, they were usually forewarnings of coming judgment, all of which came to pass exactly as they were told in the dream. Years ago, I started really taking notice of the sort of dreams I received every other night. They intrigued me, and I remembered hearing somewhere in more detail about people who received prophetic dreams from God. I got even more interested when mom told me that all dreams, especially if they were vivid and tended to stick with you for days, maybe even months afterwards, were nine times out of ten God trying to tell me something. Out of fun, I started writing the ones I remembered down in a journal I had received earlier for my thirteenth birthday, but, when they started growing more and more vivid and detailed, I started feeling a sense of awe. Then came the day when I the thought occurred to me: "If God was able to tell the prophets stuff back in ancient Israel, then why can't He do it here in the 21st century?" That's when I started writing down every dream I remembered that stuck with me, and the growing rate of their frequent showing accumulated into four journals so far, and, if He continues to lavish this amazing experience on me, the number will probably grow.
     
  Over the past few years, and especially during hard times, God has been telling me what I've needed to know when I needed to know it during the night while I sleep under His tender loving care, each dream unique in its way. Now, after receiving so many that I've lost count, some of which have scared me and, yes, drove me to tears and despair, I was frustrated because of this one thought: God isn't giving me dreams just to have them. He's trying to tell me something. Why he would want to talk to me of all people I have no idea, but one thing I've learned while pursuing all the different elements in every dream is that He can use anything, and I mean anything, to get his point across. You will see what I mean when you read these yourself. 

     The only problem when it comes to trying to interpret these pictures is that God uses symbolism: colorful images and events that tell the story symbolically. Sometimes He will tells us straight out what He wants us to do in a different form of dreams called 'visions', but they are somewhat rare. At least, I've never received one. A lot of dreams, yes, but no visions as of yet. So when you read these and have no idea if they mean anything, it probably means you just aren't used to interpreting symbols. Like Joseph and his dream about the sun, moon, and eleven stars bowing down before him; looking at that, without having ever heard the outcome of his story, or the interpretation, would you have been able to tell that God was telling him that Joseph's mother, father and brothers would bow before him one day? ...Probably not, unless He has given you the gift of interpreting dreams. I'm not all that good at it myself, but God has reveled several meanings to certain dreams to me, of which I am eternally grateful. What I've also learned is that God knows just how to speak to me by using symbols that I will understand; even certain characters from a book I might just have gotten into show up every now and then! God is unlimited, and he can use anything for His glory. 

     And this blog is dedicated to His glory too! I don't deserve the privilege of having my Creator and God so much as look at me. Why then would he want to bless me by telling me secrets only He knows about? That's the glory and the mystery of what a relationship with God through Jesus Christ can do. With man this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible. Also, if you have been blessed to receive the gift of dream interpretation, please, please feel free to write your opinion of what it could mean in the comments below. I will appreciate any help I can get. Also, I have copied down every entry straight from the journal it came form, so don't be surprised if I speak practically all the time in the present tense. May the Lord touch you as you read these dreams as much as He has touched me by giving them. Thank you for reading, and God bless!