Seeing the Voice of God: What God Is Telling You through Dreams and Visions (3 page)

As you read the words of this book, I pray the prayer of Elisha over you from 2 Kings 6:16–17 (
NIV
):

“Don’t be afraid,” the prophet answered. “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”

And Elisha prayed, “Open his eyes, L
ORD
, so that he may see.” Then the L
ORD
opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.

Life gets tough, but when God opens your eyes to the spirit realm it changes everything. Your courage in fearful situations increases, your ability to make wise choices increases, your tolerance of hard-to-get-along-with people increases and your ability to trust God and discern the spirits that oppose Him increases. And as these eye-opening experiences heighten with your reading of this book—including having more dreams and visions—I
urge you to begin keeping a Lookbook, which is a journal of all your seeing encounters, both sleeping and waking.

Finally, if this book is in your hands, it is not by chance. I have been praying for you and probably even did so this very morning. Yes, it is full of Scripture, because in the end, God’s words will do more for you than my words. He is the Author of authors, so in my book, His book has final authority.

How did people in the Bible interpret their dreams without a Bible to guide them? In the end, it all came down to relationship. They knew and were known by the living God, with whom they had a relationship. They learned to hear and see His voice with the Holy Spirit’s help. And most important, they applied faith to what they heard and saw and let it interrupt their lives. You will have to do the same when reading this book.

It is so very simple. God loves you. He is intimately concerned with the details of your life. If you will let Him, He wants to help you navigate through life and dodge the detours. When dodging a detour is impossible (due to the will of another person whose disobedience to God is affecting you adversely), He wants to help you navigate through the emotions of that situation and get back on course.

But it all begins with a relationship with Him. If you have wholeheartedly come to the Father through His Son, Jesus, you should expect to communicate with Him daily. And nightly. You should be hearing Him with your ears during the day and with your eyes at night. If you are not, then I truly believe that this book will provide both the diagnosis and the cure for your spiritual deafness and blindness, because within its pages are enough Scriptures and testimonies to convince even the greatest skeptics that God is never silent and that He is, in fact, unceasingly trying to communicate with us.

“Common Senses”

You came into my heart that day, I knew it in my head

But now mere knowledge will not do, I need Your touch instead

I want to see Your voice at night and hear it in the day

I want my feet to not retreat, but briskly to obey

I want to feel Your gentle touch; I want You to feel mine

I want Your personality to cause my face to shine

I want to see Your smiling face each time my faith’s been great

And taste and see how good You are whenever it’s been late

Where once I gave my heart to you and felt it come alive

Today I dedicate to You my senses, Lord, all five.

© Laura Harris Smith, July 23, 2012

PRAYER

Let’s pray out loud together:

God, thank You for wanting to communicate with me. I want a deeper relationship with You, and I invite You into my heart for a 24/7 experience that allows me to hear Your voice by day and see it by night. Jesus, You say in John 10:27 that Your sheep know Your voice and follow You, so today I call myself Your sheep and call You my Shepherd. I vow to follow You whether waking or asleep. Lord, thank You for my four eyes and four ears, and for how You have equipped me to comprehend Your will for my life with all of the five senses You have given me. O God, open the eyes of my heart! Open the ears of my heart! Use both streams flowing from Your throne to hone my senses. Forgive me for where I have not perceived that You were speaking—especially in dreams and visions. I vow no longer to dismiss, despise or
dread the prophetic gift. Ground me in Your Word, Lord. I vow to also use my eyes to study it more. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

IMPARTATION

Right now, I release and impart to you the ability to perceive when God is communicating to you and the desire to seek Him quickly. (Now open your hands, shut your eyes and receive it.)

Five Types of Prophetic Dreams for the Present

N
ow that hopefully I have convinced you that God is never silent and that you can hear Him with your eyes, let’s discuss the various types of dreams He will give you. If you already have a journal full of dreams, now you will know how to classify them so you can determine what to do with them. If prophecy “announces” something, then a prophetic dream is merely one where God is announcing something to the dreamer.

Over the years, I have found biblical support for ten distinct categories of prophetic dreams, but I have found that some of these nocturnal announcements are for immediate application, while others need to be marinated in prayer and patience. In this chapter we will discuss five types of the former, and then in chapter 3 we will look at five types of the latter. At the end of each of these chapters, we will pray together for such dreams
to come more often. It is also important to explore the physical obstacles that could prevent them from coming at all, and we will do that in chapters 4 and 5. For each prophetic dream type I will give a biblical example, but I will also give some personal dream examples along the way, helping us take this from mystical to practical.

Are you ready? Let’s take a look at the five categories of prophetic dreams that are for immediate application.

1. Waking Dreams

If waking dreams were punctuation, they would be an underscore because they are very significant and stress importance.

I absolutely love waking dreams. There is no escaping their imprint on your day. While the categories that follow are “types,” waking dreams are more about timing. They occur just as you awaken for your day. These are not dreams that wake you up in the middle of the night, after which you return to sleep. These dreams happen after the night’s rest. They are your first impression of the new day, which is why I usually say they require action.

The purpose of waking dreams is to show you something that stays with you and is not forgotten when you wake up. We all know it is possible to dream in the night and not remember it, but it is next to impossible to forget a waking dream. I often find that when God awakens me with a dream in the morning, I am to take action soberly. Sometimes to pray patiently, and sometimes to apply it to my life immediately (or to someone else if it is for another person). The bottom line is that you cannot shake the feeling that a waking dream is an immediate assignment.

Genesis 41:1–7 describes Pharaoh’s two compelling and abstract dreams that saved a nation and preserved God’s chosen people through Joseph, the obedient dreamer and dream interpreter. Verses 7–8 describe a waking dream perfectly: “Then
Pharaoh woke up; it had been a dream. In the morning his mind was troubled. . . .” The first dream was not a waking dream, and no emotion was recorded. The second dream, however, left Pharaoh troubled. Dreams you have just before you wake up leave you feeling definite emotion. They will either trouble you into action or encourage you into peace. Pharaoh was troubled, but not for long, because Joseph’s interpretation brought peace. Seven bad economic years were on their way, but seven plentiful ones would precede them so the nation could store up and prepare. Pharaoh’s first dream, followed by the second, a waking dream, drove home the point, and fourteen years later the nation was back on track.

Although I have waking dreams weekly or even more often, God is bringing to mind two in particular. One time I had delayed returning a friend’s call because I was frustrated with her. The longer I put off the call, the harder it was to make, not to mention that she was sitting over there worried sick about our relationship. Finally, one morning I awoke to a dream that I walked out of my bedroom and she was sitting right outside my door, waiting patiently. No escaping her now! I knew God was saying to call her first thing.

I am so glad I acted on that dream, because during our call my friend described a vision God had given her that I really needed to hear. In it she saw me in new glasses, and I was ministering on television to a large audience. (And I had indeed bought new glasses since seeing her.) What minister would not be happy about that vision? That is one example about how a waking dream can be both a sign and an assignment, and I am so thankful I obeyed.

Another example was when I was executive producer and senior editor of our church’s weekly television show. Each Tuesday, our drop-off deadline at the station loomed over my head like a gauntlet. If I went to bed at all on Monday nights, it was late. This particular Monday night, I had finished editing just
before midnight (which was early), pressed “export” and gone to bed, knowing that the typical multihour process would be completed as I slept and that I would awaken to the finished high-res mega file.

I rolled into bed exhausted and looking forward to a full night’s sleep, only to be awakened the next morning by a dream a full hour before the alarm clock was set to go off. In the dream, my longtime friend Susan was standing at my bedroom door. “Laura, wake up. Wake up, Laura. Wake up right now,” she said softly.

When I opened my eyes, I knew immediately that something had not gone as planned and that God was awakening me so that we would not miss our deadline. Sure enough, I went to my computer and saw that the application the project was being created in had frozen during export. I got busy and finished within fifteen minutes of our deadline, and the television studio was fifteen minutes away. We made it under the wire, and I laughed at how God had let me sleep until the last possible moment, proving that He cares about my rest. Why did He choose this particular friend for the dream? She is perhaps the most punctual person I know on the planet. Punctual and precise and calm. Her unemotional face and relaxed tone set the mood for the morning, and through a waking dream, gave the emergency a happy ending.

2. Decision Dreams

If decision dreams were punctuation, they would be a question mark. Why?

Because a decision dream is where you are asked a question or given options, and you watch yourself provide an answer or make a choice. To me, this is the greatest proof we have that we are made up of three parts. Your mind is turned off at night as your body rests, and neither can help you make a decision in your dream, but your spirit can. Your spirit does. Watch
carefully the choices you see yourself make in your dreams, for they are very telling when it comes to what is going on in your spirit, good and bad.

Biblically, we see this in the famous story of Solomon in 1 Kings 3. We credit Solomon with being the wisest man in the world, all because when given one wish, he asked for wisdom and made the right decision. But did you know he was asleep when he made it? It was a dream: “At Gibeon the L
ORD
appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, ‘Ask! What shall I give you?’” (verse 5). Solomon’s spirit chose correctly, and he asked for wisdom to lead God’s people. I have no doubt that since that same spirit remained in him while he was awake, he would have given the same answer any time of day.

Perhaps the most compelling decision dream I have ever had was when I, too, was faced with a sobering question and saw myself answer it. I was standing in a dark room, almost an underground, cavelike space, and the prophet Elisha walked around the corner toward me. I somehow knew that the cloak he was wearing was the one Elijah had thrown down when he left this world in that now-famous chariot of fire. It was his sign to Elisha that he was leaving a double portion of his spirit to him. As Elisha approached me, I stood very still, until finally, we were standing face-to-face about two feet apart. He looked about half a foot taller than my height of five foot two. Then he asked me a point-blank question: “Will you take a vow to pray for America?”

Without hesitation I answered yes, and with that, he said to kneel in front of him. Taking his staff—the same miracle-working staff he had sent with Gehazi to raise the little boy from the dead—he placed it on my shoulder, almost as if he were knighting me. There were no words. Only the anointing. I never saw myself get up off my knees before I awoke, which
probably symbolized my vow to pray without ceasing. I was shocked on many levels. I also had many questions.
Why me?
Why Elisha?
Why not Jesus
?
Why the shoulders?

My investigation began in Scripture with Elisha. He was a prophet, and I had always identified with the lifestyles, instincts and reactions of the biblical prophets. Secondly, he had asked for a double portion, and in 1997—a couple of years before this dream—double portion had been prophesied over our family.
Twins
became the recurring prophetic word spoken over us by visiting ministers and even by total strangers, and I eventually stockpiled more than forty prophetic words about
double portion
and
twins
.

It became hilarious to our friends when these ministers would come to speak and we would get called out of a crowd for prayer, and at some point the words
double
or
twins
would come out. One time, Jill Austin, a Kansas City prophetess whom God used as a mouthpiece all over the world, said it in front of the whole congregation. Then she paused and added, “No. It’s a double double. Quadruplets!”

The promise for double portion was so strong in our spirits that it was doubling itself! We just knew we were going to have twins physically, and we already had five children. When I became pregnant the sixth time, we were shocked that I did not deliver twins. But then, ten years later, our oldest married daughter made us grandparents of—you guessed it—twins, Avery and Ezra. Those precious bundles of blue became a symbol for our whole family that the double-portion promise was for our legacy, too, not just for Mom and Dad. Our lives were and still are defined by double blessing, double productivity and double portion. We even see it already in various packages in the homes of each of our married children.

While I would have loved to be standing face-to-face with Jesus in my dream, I knew exactly what Elisha represented, and the fact that he was already wearing Elijah’s cloak symbolized that he had inherited the double-portion mantle and was able to impart it to me. As for the shoulders, they represent a sense of
responsibility or a burden to carry (see Psalm 81:6). Shoulders also can indicate rulership or authority, or symbolize government. Isaiah 9:6 prophesies that the government will be on the Messiah’s shoulders. I knew, therefore, that the call to pray for America in the dream included praying for our government officials, so I do to this day.

3. Encouraging Dreams

If encouraging dreams were punctuation, they would be a smiley face emoticon :-).

There is nothing like an encouraging dream to revive your heart and replenish your soul. This type of prophetic dream gives you an affirmation or perhaps a glimpse into a future blessing or victory. Look at Judges 7:13–15:

And when Gideon had come, there was a man telling a dream to his companion. He said, “I have had a dream: To my surprise, a loaf of barley bread tumbled into the camp of Midian; it came to a tent and struck it so that it fell and overturned, and the tent collapsed.”

Then his companion answered and said, “This is nothing else but the sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel! Into his hand God has delivered Midian and the whole camp.”

And so it was, when Gideon heard the telling of the dream and its interpretation, that he worshiped. He returned to the camp of Israel, and said, “Arise, for the L
ORD
has delivered the camp of Midian into your hand.”

Okay, be honest. If you had a dream about a tumbling barley loaf, would you interpret it to mean victory in battle? This proves that odd symbols can edify when interpreted well. If I saw a loaf of bread tumbling into my house, I would think that my provisions were about to increase or that I was about to receive a financial blessing (as in
dough
or
bread
). If you yourself dreamed about it, it might have a whole separate interpretation, such as a reference to cooking or maybe to Jesus
as the Bread of Life. But for Gideon, it meant victory, and it made him bow down and worship God even before the battle began. And he was not even the dreamer or the interpreter. Just the overhearer.

The story has three players, and all of them were encouraged. In addition, a whole nation was saved through the bravery and courage that came through a prophetic dream that encouraged them to “get up” and fight.

I cannot begin to count the hundreds of encouraging dreams I have had. I remember once during a dark time when I felt there was no fruit or answered prayer in my life, Chris and I pulled all the kids close one night and had a big slumber party. All eight of us in a big dog pile on the floor. The next morning, I had a waking dream in which I was looking down over this room we were in with an aerial view. The entire floor was covered with fruit. From baseboard to baseboard, piles and piles of fruit were everywhere. Instead of my kids and their sleeping bags, there was fruit salad.

It was God’s way of reminding me that those children were the best fruit I had ever had, and that I was already a fruitful woman even if I never had another prayer answered. And it was not just six pieces of fruit I saw as I hovered. I am telling you, it was hundreds of pieces of fruit of every variety, so I knew and still know this represented my grandchildren and great-grandchildren. It gave new meaning to “be fruitful and multiply.”

To this day, it is why I guard my children’s lives, callings, attitudes and personal standards of conduct and holiness with such fierceness. There are many other reasons, too, but this hovering image I cannot shake and never will. Even if my adult children are tempted to feel they no longer need my guardianship, and even though other moms are glad when their kids move out and
do not need it, I will always guard my children attentively. In God’s eyes—from His aerial view—they and their children after them are evidently on the floor of my house forever.