Dreams and Visions // How Can I Hear God Speak to Me?, Part 9

The Bible – Old Testament and New – talks about God speaking to His people through dreams and visions. Well, for some of us – particularly those with a rational western mindset – that’s a bit freaky. Does God really speak to people that way? Well – what does His Word really say on the subject and what does it mean for you and me, here and now?

We’ve been chatting these last couple of weeks about the different ways in which God speaks with each one of us. The principal way, the absolutely authority on God’s truth is the Word of God, His Bible, His chosen way of communicating the truth, most important of which is the truth of His Son, Jesus Christ also called, "The Word of God".

The Bible is God speaking. Jesus is God speaking. But as we’ve seen God uses many other ways to communicate with us as well. Yes, we have to discern those it's incumbent upon us to make sure that any person or any experience that purports to be God speaking is in fact God speaking. And the most reliable test of that is whether what the person is saying or what we think the experience is telling us, is in fact consistent with God’s truth, His Word, the Bible.

Now if you’ve been with me these last couple of weeks you will have heard me say the same thing over and over again. And you might be thinking, “Why is Berni labouring this point?” Well, today there’s a specific reason, because today we’re going to be talking about dreams and visions. Are they real? Does God still speak through them or use them today? Or are they phoney? I think these are reasonable questions to ask when we’re enquiring as to how it is that God speaks with each one of us.

Now perhaps your thinking, “Dreams and visions? For goodness sake, where is this joker going with this? Is he for real?” My response to you is simply this: my heart, my passion is to dive into God’s Word the Bible, to read it, to understand it, and to live it. I’m a simple kind of guy and that’s how I approach life. And one of the things that happen is that God often does things in ways that I, with my rational western mindset, perhaps wouldn’t have chosen to do if I had been God.

Fortunately for you I’m not God. That’s the up side. But perhaps the downside is that we have to go with some of the things that God is doing God’s way even if we don’t quite like them, even if they don’t quite make sense to us. So what does God’s Word say about dreams and visions?

Let me share with you a passage from chapter 2 of the Book of Acts. God’s Spirit has just been poured out on the Christians and they’re all talking in different languages and they’re behaving like they are drunk, literally. You can read it for yourself, the fifth book in the New Testament, the Book of Acts Chapter 2. Not surprising, the other Jews in Jerusalem at the time are pretty critical at this odd sort of behaviour. They are accusing these Christians of being drunk, so Peter the Apostle gets up to explain.

Acts Chapter 2 beginning at verse 12:

All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.” But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

See, what’s going on here is the unexpected is happening. They’re falling over as though they’re drunk, they’re speaking in different tongues. And to silent the sceptics Peter the Apostle gets up and says, “You think this is amazing? This is nothing. Wait till you see what’s coming next.” And then He goes on to quote the Old Testament prophet Joel.

Remember this is Jerusalem in the first century. Everyone listening knows the Scripture he’s quoting. And in it God promises that the Holy Spirit will cause people to have dreams and visions and prophecies. All ways that God is going to speak with us. It’s in the Bible. Peter’s saying, “Don’t shoot the messenger.” And if I could personally echo that same sentiment here and now, if you feel uncomfortable with talking about prophecies and dreams and visions, my friend, it’s in the Bible. Please don’t shoot the messenger.

Do you know that many, many Muslims who ultimately put their faith in Jesus Christ report that they saw Jesus coming to them in a dream? In fact this is a really, really common occurrence. Has God ever spoken to me that way? No, He hasn’t. I hear God in different ways and that’s fine. We’re all different. God knows that and He speaks to us in different ways. But have I been impact by this? Absolutely.

When my wife visited our church, before she was my wife, before I even knew her. She came on the Sunday morning, the service where I was preaching. And she came back again on the Sunday evening. Now our pastor, Phil, was preaching that night. You may have heard me speak about Phil before. He’s a great guy, practical, very down to earth kind of guy. He gets up and is about to preach and he looks at Jacqui. Didn’t know her name, none of us knew who she was. And he said, “God’s given me a vision for your life.” And he went ahead and described this picture, this vision, in a huge amount of detail. Pretty gutsy thing to do, I thought.

Well Jacqui’s pretty quiet and shy so she didn’t react at all. Months later we discovered that this was an incredibly difficult time in her life and she’d been wanting God to speak to her and that the vision that Pastor Phil described to her that night was a huge, huge turning point in her life’s journey. In fact, had Phil not communicated that to her she probably wouldn’t be my wife today.

In many parts of the world people have no problem at all with this idea that God speaks through dreams and visions and prophecies. But somehow we Westerners with our rational, materialistic mindset struggle with this idea.

Let me come back to where I started. We should test everything like this against God’s Word. Sometimes people will come to us with stuff that isn’t from God, but often it is from God. And if God tells us in His Word, the Bible, that all along it’s been His plan to speak to us in this way through dreams and visions, well, I don’t know about you, but I think we should listen. Just because I’m not comfortable with what God’s doing doesn’t mean that God’s not doing something that isn’t wonderful.

Yes, this is open to abuse. In Colossians chapter 12 verse 18 Paul talks about this. About people who dwell on visions being puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking. Of course it’s open to abuse. That’s why we test everything against God’s Word. And that’s why when people say they see things through dreams and visions, I come to God’s Word and what I discover here in the Book of Acts Chapter 2 is that it was always God’s plan that as He poured His Spirit out on all His people, He would speak to us through the dreams and visions He gave to some.

Friend, God does things in ways that you or I wouldn’t have done, and I hunger to hear Him speak. I delight in hearing Him speak when, how, that’s His choice. Our job is simply to listen.