5 Simple Steps to Understand Your Dreams

Over the years, people often ask me how I’m able to understand dreams and interpret their meaning so quickly. Even though I’ve interpreted thousands of dreams, I didn’t know how to answer them at first. So, I began to study the Bible for how God speaks through dreams and visions because I wanted to be able to train others to understand dreams for themselves.

God’s symbolic language

For God does speak—now one way, now another—though no one perceives it. Job 33:14 NIV

According to Acts 2:17, God is pouring out His Spirit in prophecy, dreams and visions. And now that we have the Holy Spirit in us, we can understand the different ways that God speaks. Even though Jesus didn’t interpret people’s dreams, He began to teach them—and us—how to understand God’s metaphoric, symbolic language through His many parables.

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Jesus demonstrated how symbols can have different meanings from dream to dream. In one parable, a seed represented the Word of God, but in another, the seed represented faith. If you think of a dream like a story or night parable, then you can get to the meaning more quickly by discerning the context and a few more elements of the dream.

5-Step Method to Understand Dreams

Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable?” Mark 4:13 NIV

Understanding God’s language of parables or symbols is so important that Jesus told many parables (see Matthew, Mark and Luke) and even interpreted the meaning of quite a few. After studying these, the Lord showed me 5 simple steps to understand the meaning of our dreams.

1. Who or what is the dream about? Are you the main character? Are you participating or are you observing in any way?
2. What’s the context? Is it at your work? Your ministry? School or family?
3. What’s the tone? Is it positive or negative? Is it light or dark? Dark dreams usually aren’t reality, and they often reveal the plans of the enemy.
4. Are there any common themes? Watch for common themes like flying, falling, teeth coming loose or having a baby. Notice any repeated themes or symbols, or even recurring or similar dreams you may have over time.
5. Break the dream down to it’s simplest form. Pull out three or four main points, like in the plot of a story.

Here’s an example: In the dream, you are at work (context) on a stormy day (tone). You start to give a presentation when you notice that your teeth (common theme) are coming loose! Others in the room notice, and you feel embarrassed (more context). And then you wake up in a cold sweat.

Meaning: Things might be stirred up (storm) where you work or over something you’re working on. Don’t let this distract you from getting the wisdom (teeth) you need before you go public with your project or ideas.

Do you see how the 5 steps walk you through a story that you can understand?

Understanding our dreams is one of the many ways that hearing God’s voice through the Holy Spirit can open up the heavens over your life!

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Blessings,

Doug Addison

DougAddison.com

P.S. If you want to go deeper into understanding your dreams, you might want to take my online Dream Crash Course. Right now, you can get it for 50% off with coupon code* Dream50. (*Coupon applies to single pay option only.) Learn more about it HERE!

Doug Addison is the founder and president of InLight Connection. Doug is a prophetic speaker, author and coach. He is known for his Daily Prophetic Words, Spirit Connection webcast, podcast and blog. He and his wife Linda live in Los Angeles, California where they are impacting the arts, entertainment and media industries.