Have you noticed nowadays that people everywhere are saying that they are spiritual but not religious? A recent Gallup poll found that over 84 percent of Americans are longing for spiritual connection. If you question these spiritual seekers, you will find that the majority of them want a touch from God, but they have not been able to identify with traditional Christian churches.

Acts 2:17-18 says that in the last days God will pour out His Spirit in a greater measure, and prophecy, dreams and visions will become more prevalent. With the sudden increase of interest in spirituality one can not help noticing that these verses are now being fulfilled. As God pours out His Spirit on people, they often become aware of their emptiness and they are motivated to search for deeper spiritual meaning in life.

One of the ways God is drawing people today is through dreams. Although not all dreams are from God, quite often God will give a person a dream that will cause them to search for the meaning. Unfortunately, many Christians have stopped valuing dreams and their relevancy to daily life. As a result, people who have dreams from God are often forced to get them interpreted through the New Age or psychoanalytic methods that cannot accurately interpret a dream from the Holy Spirit.

In Genesis 40:6-8 Joseph encounters two men who appear to be depressed. They tell him (verse 8), “We both had dreams, but there is no one to interpret them.” People who have destiny dreams from God can often feel empty and adrift until they find the meaning of the night visions that seem to haunt them. Joseph recognized that interpretations to dreams come from God and that God’s people can give true interpretations to their dreams.

An exciting revelation for the Church today is that no one can interpret a dream from God except a Spirit-filled Christian. The Apostle Paul makes this clear in 1 Corinthians 2:14. “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

So if God is giving people dreams and the only ones who can accurately interpret those dreams are Spirit-filled Christians, it appears that the Church is sitting on an evangelistic gold mine. Prophecy and biblically based dream interpretation may currently be the most culturally relevant means of sharing God’s love to those people outside the church. Since this is what people are valuing, all we need to do is to trust that God will tell us what to say as we talk with people about their dreams and give them words of encouragement and destiny.

DOUG ADDISON is the founder of InLight Connection in Santa Maria, California and is the author of the book Prophecy, Dreams, and Evangelism. He travels worldwide helping people transform their lives and discover their purpose. Doug is a stand-up comedian and his training seminars include hearing God, understanding dreams and visions, and experiencing the supernatural. Doug also trains and leads dream teams and prophetic/power evangelism outreaches.
www.dougaddison.com

Maybe you have heard me say, “The best dream you can ever have is a dream you know you had but can’t remember the details of!”

Job 33:14–17 NKJV “For God may speak in one way, or in another, yet man does not perceive it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls upon men, while slumbering on their beds, then He opens the ears of men, and seals their instruction. In order to turn man from his deed, and conceal pride from man.”

God will often give us revelation and direction for our life through a dream and seal it away from our memory. Later you may walk into a situation and have a feeling you have been there before. Some people call this déjà vu. I believe that it was God giving us direction in a dream that we cannot remember and when we are living it out later we get that strange feeling that we have experienced this before.

God speaks to us all the time, sometimes through dreams. Though not all dreams are from God, we can receive instructions and guidance through dreams that is essential for our purpose and our destiny. Had He spoken to us more clearly or directly then we would have a higher responsibility for fulfilling what He wants us to do. By sealing it in a dream it can bypass our natural mind and even keep us from being prideful and from doing things in our own strength instead of His.

Another example of how God can use a dream is when you actually remember the dream but He seals away the meaning of it. We can have a dream from God that seems very significant but we do not understand the interpretation or how it applies to our life. This happened in the life of Joseph in the Old Testament. In Genesis 37, Joseph receives two powerful dreams about his destiny. The dreams indicate that his brothers and their parents will all bow down and serve Joseph. Even his father, Jacob, did not understand the meaning of this dream. The result was that Joseph was sold by his brothers and ends up a slave in Egypt. Later, in Genesis 41, God turned Joseph’s mishaps into a huge blessing that helped save the entire world from a famine.

Maybe you have wondered, how did my life end up the way it is? Oftentimes, like Joseph, we end up far from where we started and it may seem that the promises and dreams that God gave us will not come to pass. Just this year, I am seeing dreams and prophetic words in my life beginning to unfold that were given to me over twenty years ago. Had God revealed all the details ahead of time I probably would have tried to make things happen before His timing. God is faithful and we can trust Him as a loving father. Hold on to your dreams and also be open to the element of God surprising you with good things from Heaven.

DOUG ADDISON is the founder of InLight Connection in Santa Maria, California and is the author of the book Prophecy, Dreams, and Evangelism. He travels worldwide helping people transform their lives and discover their purpose. Doug is a stand-up comedian and his training seminars include hearing God, understanding dreams and visions, and experiencing the supernatural. Doug also trains and leads dream teams and prophetic/power evangelism outreaches.
www.dougaddison.com