Prophetic Dreams: How God Speaks in Your Sleep!

My understanding from Scripture is that there are only three major characters in the Old Testament who were not rebuked: Joseph, Samuel, and Daniel.

Moses killed a man, thinking it was God’s will (Ex. 2:12). He got angry and did things against God’s will, and because of that, the Lord wouldn’t let him go into the Promised Land (Num. 20:12; Deut. 34:4). Elijah called down fire from heaven (1 Kgs. 18:36–38) and did great things, but he got so caught up in pride that he ran from Jezebel and asked God to kill him (1 Kgs. 19:2–4); so God took the ministry away from him and gave it to Elisha (2 Kgs. 2:11–13). David was a man after God’s own heart (1 Sam. 13:14), but he committed adultery with Bathsheba (2 Sam. 11:1–5) and murdered Uriah to cover it up (2 Sam. 11:15, 24, 26).

In the New Testament, Paul had some major problems too. Among other things, he (as Saul) consented to the stoning death of Stephen—the first Christian martyr (Acts 7:58–60 and 8:1). Peter, of course, was always saying or doing something wrong. Sometimes, it seemed like the only time Peter opened his mouth was to change feet!

The Bible does not whitewash these characters at all. It presents them with all their warts and shows their failures along with their successes. And there are things that we can learn from them.

You can see throughout Scripture that God used and blessed imperfect people. It shows the grace of God at work, and there are great lessons to learn. Now, I’m not saying that Joseph was perfect. Nobody’s perfect. But Joseph is one of only three people in the Old Testament I can think of who did not have anything negative revealed about them.

Some people are going to disagree with that and say, “Well, Joseph was a spoiled brat, and he promoted himself above his brethren. It was his arrogance that got him in trouble and caused all those bad things to happen.” Some people also believe that when Joseph’s brothers came into Egypt, he treated them badly because he was getting even with them (Gen. 42:6–9). But all of that is inconsistent with what the Word of God teaches.

The Bible says in Proverbs 16:18 that “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” It also says in 1 Peter 5:5 that “God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.” If Joseph would’ve been the proud, spoiled, and arrogant child a lot of people have accused him of being, I guarantee you, he never would have seen the blessings and promotions we read about in Scripture.

Now, I think the reason some people have come up with those things is because they judge Joseph by what they would have done if they’d been in a similar situation. They just impose their own personality on him. But the Bible doesn’t teach this. As a matter of fact, the Bible teaches that Joseph humbled himself. The scriptural account shows him as a faithful person from the time he was a young person into adulthood.

Learn from Examples

I believe you can take the things God’s Word says about Joseph and apply them to your own life. But there are a lot of people who don’t think that way when they study the Bible. They read the account of Joseph’s life and say, “I’m struggling to make ends meet. I’m trying to get relationships to work. What does something that happened to somebody thousands of years ago have to do with me?”

Well, the apostle Paul wrote that everything recorded in the Old Testament is there for our benefit so that we would learn what to do and what not to do (1 Cor. 10:11). And I believe we can learn a lot from the life of Joseph. His example should show us what it means to be humble in the sight of the Lord and be faithful even though our circumstances may not look like what we think they should.

I got born again when I was eight years old. I’ve never said a word of profanity. I’ve never taken a drink of liquor. I’ve never smoked a cigarette. I have lived a holy life. I’m not saying any of this to pat myself on the back because none of it earns me anything with God. Romans 3:23 says, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” I don’t want to be the best sinner that ever went to hell. I had to get saved just like anybody else.

But I am saying that the reason I haven’t gone into adultery, drug addiction, or any of those other things is because I have studied the Word of God from the time that I was a child. It taught me to avoid these things. This is one of the benefits of studying these people’s lives and, as a result, my life has been super blessed.

I remember reading about David when I was younger and how he was a man after God’s own heart (1 Sam. 13:14). David went out and fought Goliath (1 Sam 17:3–54) and did all sorts of great things, but then he took his eyes off the Lord. He got into sin with Bathsheba (2 Sam. 11:1–5) and killed her husband Uriah (2 Sam. 11:15–26). Because of that, David’s daughter Tamar was raped by his son Amnon (2 Sam. 13:1–19). Amnon was killed by another son, Absalom (2 Sam. 13:22–29). Absalom was killed by David’s commander (2 Sam. 18:9–15). And Adonijah, another son, was killed after he tried to assume David’s throne (1 Kgs. 2:12–25).

All of these terrible things happened because David let Satan into his life and family through sin. I remember as a very young man seeing the devastation that adultery had on David and his family. I lived vicariously through David by reading the Bible and learned not to open the door to Satan through sin. I didn’t have to learn it by going through the school of hard knocks—doing it all myself.

But some people are just like a goose. They just wake up in a new world every morning; they have no recollection of history. They don’t think about what has happened to other people, and they just go out and learn for themselves that being a drug addict is wrong, that being an alcoholic is wrong, or that being an adulterer is wrong.

They just indulge themselves. It’s only after they’ve suffered all kinds of pain and suffering do they come around and say, “I shouldn’t have done that!” Well, I can tell you there’s a better way. You can go to the Word of God and learn from the mistakes of others.

Maybe you’re wondering, God, how do I get from where I am to where You want me to be? In Genesis 41, Joseph went from the pit to the palace in less than twenty-four hours, but there was a thirteen-year incubation period before that transformation happened. And there are things we can learn through Joseph’s experience that would change your life and save you a lot of suffering. It may actually be the answer to your prayers if you are willing to receive it.

The Power of Dreams

The story of Joseph really begins with a pair of dreams. Understanding these dreams is going to be very important in understanding the story of Joseph.

And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it his brethren: and they hated him yet the more. And he said unto them, Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed: for, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf. And his brethren said to him, Shalt thou indeed reign over us? or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us? And they hated him yet the more for his dreams, and for his words. And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me (Genesis 37:5–9).

God speaks through dreams. It’s a biblical thing. There are fifteen instances of God speaking by dreams in the Old Testament. A number of these occurred in the story of Joseph: twice to Joseph himself (Gen. 37:5, 9), twice to Pharaoh (Gen. 41:1–8), and once each to Pharaoh’s chief butler and chief baker (Gen. 40:9, 16).

Some people don’t put any importance on dreams at all, but God speaks to me through dreams. I hear from Him in dreams all of the time. It would be unusual to go a week without God revealing something to me in dreams.

I’m what they call a lucid dreamer. When I dream, I sometimes can’t tell whether I’m asleep or whether I’m awake. That’s because my brain is working while I’m asleep just as much as it is when I’m awake. The only way I can tell that it’s a dream and not me just thinking is when I start experiencing things that are totally outside of reality, like running in sand and not being able to get anywhere.

I once had a dream where I was one of Jesus’ disciples. It was so vivid, I thought it was real. I saw Him raise the dead and give sight to the blind. It was awesome! I was just rejoicing with the other disciples over all the things we had seen and heard. Then Jesus whirled around, stuck his finger in my face, and asked, “But who do you say I am?”

Although I had seen Jesus do all these miraculous things in this dream, when I looked straight into the face of His humanity, it took all the faith I could muster to say, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16 NKJV). Because that dream was so realistic, I had a better understanding of what the disciples went through as they followed Jesus. I also understood why we are blessed to see Jesus through the Scriptures with the witness of the indwelling Holy Spirit.

Not every dream I have is from God, but He speaks to me often in dreams. I’ll have dreams where a person I haven’t seen in years comes to mind, and in the dream, I’ll pray for them. God shows me that they need ministry. When that happens, I get up and try to contact them.

Dreams can be words from God. He spoke to Daniel through dreams. God also spoke to King Nebuchadnezzar through dreams. Daniel 2:1 says,

And in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar dreamed dreams, wherewith his spirit was troubled, and his sleep brake from him.

When Nebuchadnezzar rose, he knew it was important. He couldn’t remember what the dream was, but he knew God was speaking to him through it.

A similar thing happened to Joseph, Mary’s betrothed husband, before Jesus was born. God spoke to him (Matt. 1:18–21) about the birth of Jesus and later about how they were supposed to flee into Egypt (Matt. 2:13).