Dreams bring up a myriad of emotions, take us to strange or wonderful places, and help us process our life.

Some dreams feel so real, you wake up not knowing if what you just experienced actually took place!

How do we know which dreams are from God and which dreams aren’t?

Which dreams are our subconscious processing our day or working out something we are worried about?

Each dream comes from one of three sources: God, ourselves, or Satan.

We know from the bible that God loves to speak to His people through their dreams. He often speaks in a way that requires some understanding or interpretation. Other times He appears Himself to give a Divine message.

Satan loves to copy God. He is unoriginal. If our enemy only gives counterfeits of God’s design, how do we discern a God-dream from a counterfeit?

To discern properly, we must understand who God is and what His attributes are. God is good. He is merciful and full of wisdom. He is not the author of confusion. He doesn’t bring fear. He is just. He is gracious. He doesn’t accuse. He is kind and gentle. He loves you.

His character will always remain the same, no matter how He speaks to us.

God often speaks in parables which makes it less obvious to us humans what He is talking about. We see in scripture that Jesus often spoke in parables throughout his ministry. Painting a picture helps us remember a story well.

Our dreams are no different. God uses items, situations, people, colors, places, and more as symbols in our dreams to communicate with us. Sometimes these parables seem strange. Strange, but never terrifying.

God is creative in how He conveys His message, but He will never contradict scripture or violate His nature when He speaks to you through your dreams. It is important to know the Word so that you can discern when the enemy is twisting God’s truth.

God’s heart is full of love for you and He wants to connect with you through the dreams he gives you.

I find dreams from God to be very vivid. They are usually in color, and one storyline or idea is cohesive with the rest, like a movie. Usually, I wake up remembering part or all of the dream rather profoundly, as if I lived it.

I try to take a few minutes to lay in bed and remember all that I can. I pay attention to the emotions I am feeling immediately upon waking. I ask God to help me interpret what He is saying to me. Then, I try to write it all down. Often the dream, or elements of it, will stick with me the rest of the day.

Most of my dreams are from God or are me processing life. Once in a while I have an emotionally disturbing dream or a disjointed type of dream where the storyline is so broken up, it’s as if it were parts of different films pasted together awkwardly.

Recently I had one such dream that was filled with fear; the storyline was fragmented and stressful. The faces of the characters kept changing even though they were supposed to be the same people in the dream. I could not make sense of what was happening. When I woke up, I felt alone and complacent.

Some dreams are accusing. The accuser (Satan) will come at you in dreams if he can. You feel afraid and tormented by these dreams.

When we know how our enemy operates, it helps us discern when he is attacking through a dream. He comes to your dreams using fear, shame, self-loathing, accusing, tormenting, death, murder, pain, hopelessness, complacency, lies, betrayal, confusion, and abuse.

Often when you wake, you still feel the sting of fear and confusion and it gives a good indication that what you dreamt was not from the Lord.

How do we handle it when we wake up disturbed by a dream?

Pray.

As Christians, we have the authority from Jesus to command the author of fear to leave us alone. Take that authority and pray! Wait for the peace, and when you feel it come, ask God what His truth is for you.

Pray before you go to bed and ask God to send his angels to protect you and your dreams. Ask God to speak to you through your dreams. Be expectant.

Remember that God loves you and longs to connect with you.

I encourage you to pray into your dreams as they come and experience a deeper communion with the Father.

Although we know that the enemy will try to attack through dreams, we don’t have to be afraid. We have the tools to fight back and receive victory!

I pray that each of you reading this will go after God through dreams and experience the richness of His presence in a new way!