Dream Interpretation Process: Interpret BEFORE You Apply the Dream

Are you a revelatory-gifted person?  If you dream a lot or have delved deeper into your intuitive or prophetic abilities (seeing, sensing, hearing, knowing information beyond the natural and tangible world), you realize that there is an art and growth process in learning what to do with what you ‘see’.

Generally speaking, the processing goes like this, in this order:  

• Revelation—the information that you receive from God (or other sources) that gives insight into a person or a situation.  It can come in the form of a vision or picture in your mind, a dream, something you hear with your ears, something you ‘know’ in your heart, a well-timed verse or song, a series of events that seem unusual—the list goes on.  

• Interpretation—deciphering what the revelation information means.  If symbols are involved, what do they signify?  How do they all fit together?  What is the message? 

• Application—taking the information and its interpretation and knowing what to do with it.  Who is it for?  You?  Someone else? What does it mean for them?  Where in their life could this make a difference?  Do you tell them?  If so, how do you give the message? What is the right timing?

You receive the revelation as a gift. Interpreting and applying both require time, study, discipline, prayer, and skill. And love and kindness!  Folks all too often take the metaphoric knowledge and run with it, skipping the effort of interpreting first—or to seeking wisdom in the application.  

Example:  You dream that your friend Anna is driving up a steep hill that is icy and slips into the next lane and gets hit head-on by an oncoming car and gets killed.  In haste and fear, you call Anna before she heads out to work, to inform her that she might get killed in a car wreck today. And she is afraid to go to work because of your dream and the way you handled it.   

But if you take time out to ponder and discern the symbols, you might instead realize that Anna (or even someone else she may represent) is on a ‘slippery slope’ at work or in one of her other activities, and needs your prayers so that she doesn’t lose control, venture off her assigned turf, and get ‘taken out’ by someone’s territorial temper.   

And, if you are to speak to her about it at all, you can find a way to warn her with encouragement instead of a tone of fear or threat. If you don’t understand the dream or the purpose of it, you risk blurting out nonsense that only confuses instead of bringing clarity.   

It is natural to want to skip the interpretation process and apply dreams literally--this is why it is more difficult to interpret our own dreams (or for folks close to us)—we know more life-circumstance-stuff and we immediately go to figuring out what revelation means, based on what is happening with us, instead of what Spirit is showing us.  

But taking time to interpret first, before applying is a MUST. Hearing Spirit about what the revelation means and why it is given is the plumb line of the process--the key ingredient to using our prophetic gift effectively. Thus, the Giver of the revelation becomes the focal point of our understanding, instead of allowing our circumstances to skew the meaning of the revelation. What is God's heart about the matter? 

So, if I dreamed that my 50-year-old friend gets pregnant and has a baby, should I hurry up and call her to tell her to start registering for baby clothes….??