Just imagine that a messenger would speak a truth about your life and soul every single night, that this message was tailor made to fit your individual needs and particular life-story and connected you to a wisdom far beyond yourself, and it did not cost you a thing. Well, the good news is that God has given you such a messenger, your dreams.

Many ancient cultures considered dreams as guidance from the spiritual world. This belief gave people a conscious connection to their souls. Today, in our culture many people are greatly impoverished in this respect.

The Bible says a lot about dreams. There are sixteen chapters in the Old Testament and five in the New where dreams are mentioned. The Bible teaches that God and his angels often revealed themselves to people in their sleep or gave them important messages through dreams. This aspect of the spiritual life does still happen today but is rare, most dreams are about ourselves and only rarely about precognition(Foresight). Dreams actually serve a far greater role in our lives because they are speaking to us at a very deep level.

Every major figure of the early Christian Church considered dreams very important. Many of them wrote psychological treatises on dreams. Tertullian went as far to say that, 'Beyond a doubt the greater part of mankind (sic) derive their knowledge of God from their dreams.' St. Augustine also said a lot about dreams.

God has created us so amazingly well. Do you realise just how amazing you are as a person? If not, take it from me you are. We have a spirit, mind and body. The mind has both a conscious and unconscious aspect. Dreams originate from the unconscious mind. You have a casting director within you who devises intricate and very clever and often unexpected narratives. The director plans the dream, selects the actors and directs the stories we call dreams. We then often remember them when we are conscious and awake.

Dreams are very important both physically and mentally. Physically they help the brain to rebalance itself during sleep. Mentally, they process and file all of the different experiences, thoughts and so on of that day so we can wake up ready to receive and process more information the next day. Dreams process our short term memories of the day into long term ones.

Dreams can contain a message from God, but mostly they are messages from ourselves to ourselves. Our thoughts and our feelings are turned into visual images. Unacknowledged thoughts and feelings find expression. Thoughts, wishes and desires, especially those we consciously suppress when awake, need to be discharged from our human psyche. Dreams are the way they do this as they smuggle themselves through the censorship we use when awake.

It is a sad fact and a rebuke to modern Christianity that dreams have become the forgotten language of God to us. This is why many contemporary bookshops contain shelf loads of books written by new-agers but none by Christians. I often glance through these books, and often what I read about dreams and interpretation is just downright cranky and irresponsible and way off the mark. The art of interpreting dreams is a gift from God that needs to be developed. I believe God gave me this gift, but I won't tell the story here how that happened. But, then I had to research and study to begin to learn and understand the theology, psychology and biology of dreams in order to be able to use this gift. I have interpreted dreams for many people and the feedback and success rate has confirmed the accuracy of the method I use. Here is an example.

[This dream, the interpretation and the feedback are used with the permission of the person who submitted the dream to me.I had never met this person and new nothing about them, just their dream.]

I dreamt I was driving a car and was being chased by two lorries. One pulled in front and made me stop and the other pulled up behind leaving me trapped. I got out of the car and ran to a nearby river. There was bridge over the river with all sorts of animals crossing it. I wanted to avoid the animals so I jumped into the river and noticed other people were doing this as well. Huge crocodiles started catching and eating the people but I managed to get back out of the river. I was then chased by a group of men but once more managed to get away this time across the bridge but was chased by a giant lion. The only way to escape the lion was to jump back into the river but when I did this I became terrified the crocodiles would get me.

The message is that you feel you are trapped by your circumstances and this is causing you frustration in life. You want to change areas of your life but fear the consequences. You have been put off by seeing others make changes that you consider were mistakes. You want change now, not in the long term, but are afraid to change the areas of your life so will continue to feel trapped and frustrated. You have various problems you want to get away from but can't seem to find a way out of them. Ring any bells?

Revd Carter how did you know that? That was incredible. It is exactly how I feel but I was embarrassed to admit it to myself let alone tell anyone else about it. I was in a bit of denial about what was going on inside of me. The interpretation made me realise it is time to be honest with myself. I do feel trapped, I am frustrated, I have been afraid to do anything about it. I realise it is time to confront these fears and make the changes or I will never be happy. Thank you so, so much. It was just incredible how you could know all of that just through my telling you my dream, amazing!

Well, as you can imagine dreams are a huge topic and much more can and will be said on it, but not here. We are producing a set of audio CD's teaching about the subject of dreams and going into these issues at much greater depth. If you would like more information on these CD's contct us. Have a good day, good nights sleep, and sweet dreams.