The reasons and purpose
Dreams and visions are, among other ways of communication, a very important method that God uses to communicate with people.
Job 33:14-20
14 For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not.
15 In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumbering upon the bed;
16 Then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction,
17 That he may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from man.
18 He keepeth back his soul from the pit, and his life from perishing by the sword.
19 He is chastened also with pain upon his bed, and the multitude of his bones with strong pain:
20 So that his life abhorreth bread, and his soul dainty meat.
He does not only communicate with Christians but also with unbelievers through dreams and visions. Although dreams and visions differ from each other it is fundamentally the same. The same principles and the same meanings are applicable to both dreams and visions. The only difference is that with the one the receiver of the message is asleep and with the other he or she is awake.
Very important though, we need to ask God to communicate with us. We need to seek his face for wisdom, knowledge, and truth.
Proverbs 2:3-6
Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding;
If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures;
Then shalt thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God.
For the LORD giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding.
God speaks to people through dreams and visions but as you could see in the Scripture above that it takes some effort from our side. We need to seek God for wisdom and knowledge and we need to pay attention to our dreams and visions. Dreams and visions are compared to treasures as it is the word of God. When we humbly submit ourselves to God and his leading, He will speak to us. He is alive and well and He loves to communicate with his children. The Biblical language of symbols is a universal language created by God.
Some dreams are not messages from God but in fact the result of a restoration process that God has built into every human being. God created this mechanism to help people emotionally deal with circumstances and occurrences in their lives. God’s aim with these dreams is to restore us emotionally. This process keeps us normal and able to deal with life and its challenges. Such dreams are products from the soul (mind) as affirmed in Scripture:
Ecclesiastes 5:3
For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool’s voice is known by multitude of words.
Psychologists like to refer to a term called the “subconscious mind” as if it is just an intellectual system that has certain qualities and which functions in a certain way. To most of them, it is just trillions of cells working together to make up this mystical system which they do not really understand. They are also aware of our conscience which plays an important role in the decisions we make. To most people, this is just a natural process that is part of the makeup of every human being.
It is actually a bit more than that. On the one hand, your conscience, which was formed and influenced by means of moral education, training, and environmental influences, is making your soul aware of certain areas of concern (identified as being wrong and not acceptable) that need to be dealt with in your life. On the other hand, your spirit, which is always in harmony with the Holy Spirit, makes your soul aware of issues in your life that it has identified to be unacceptable. How does your spirit do that? Your spirit compares the condition of your soul with what it has learned from the Holy Spirit and the word of God. Whatever is in your soul that is not from God your spirit will bring under the attention of your soul. The awareness mechanism functions by means of dreams. Many people call these dreams “emotional restoration dreams”.
To put it as simply as possible: Your soul struggles with certain problematic issues to which it was exposed. These bad experiences and challenges put a lot of pressure and stress on the soul. We need to deal with these issues. Some of these issues are identified by our conscience and some by our spirit. While you are emotionally struggling with these issues, your spirit, which is always in perfect harmony with God, helps your soul to deal with these issues. It can do this because it knows how to deal with these issues. Your spirit is enlightened because of the continuous and constant fellowship with the Holy Spirit and with God. Remember, the Holy Spirit is in your spirit and not in your soul. Your spirit knows things that your soul is totally unaware of. Your spirit brings clarity because it has a very powerful God-given ability to assist your soul. We read about that in the Bible:
Proverbs 20:27
The spirit of man is the candle of the LORD, searching all the inward parts of the belly.
Why is it illuminating all the dark areas and corners of the inner man? Why is it a “lamp” in the innermost areas of the soul? What is it searching for? It looks for areas in our lives that are not in line with God, his word, and his will. It brings these areas of concern to the attention of the soul. It then assists the soul to deal with these issues. It is all about submission and alignment. It brings harmony. The spirit is led by the Holy Spirit in this regard. The spirit also helps and teaches the soul to be led by the Holy Spirit. This process improves our lives. This mechanism is a gift from God. We do not understand this mechanism or this process but we are aware of it by means of the dreams it produces.
Emotional restoration dreams are definitely not activated only when we experience serious trauma or when we are bothered extensively. Just being concerned about something can activate an emotional restoration dream.
When we go through the agony or discomfort of experiencing unwanted events in our dreams, our souls come to terms with the specific “threats” or unwanted events that caused the anxiety or emotional turmoil in the first place. This experience relieves the tension in our hearts and minds.
We all know that almost always when we fear something that we know or perceive will happen can be very challenging. This causes a lot more stress and emotional turmoil in our lives. Sometimes these challenges are like very intimidating mountains in front of us. But, how many times have we found that after we have faced and dealt with such challenges, it was not as challenging or as devastating as we expected? We are almost always very relieved once such events or incidents were over.
This is exactly what an emotional restoration dream does. In the dream or the nightmare, we go through the whole thing as if it was real. The emotional restoration mechanism puts us through the whole experience and in the dream, it takes us over the mountain to the other side of the very thing that causes us to fear and stress so much. Because we have experienced the very thing that causes emotional turmoil in our lives, even though it was only in our dreams, it brings that same state of mind into our subconscious minds as if we did experience the ordeal or event in real life. This is why it relieves the emotional pressure. It puts us in a place where we can look back to the event or incident as if we have experienced it already, and we can say, it was challenging but it was not that bad.
It is very important to understand that although one dream is a message from God (divine communication/God talks to man) and the other a natural method to restore our emotional condition (restoration and communication/spirit or sub-conscience talks to soul), both can and must be interpreted. Interpretation of all dreams and visions will either reveal a message from God or it will tell us what we are struggling with in our personal lives.
Both interpretations need to be followed up by actions. God does not communicate unimportant information to us and emotional restoration dreams are designed to help us cope with life. It accurately exposes emotional and problematic issues in our lives. We actually need to act upon these issues and that is why we need to give attention to both types of dreams. Emotional restoration dreams are not just a way of restoring us emotionally but also, on purpose, telling us that we need to take action to sort out or address certain issues in our lives.
When we have the same emotional dream or a variation of the same dream, with the same symbols over and over again, then we know that this aspect that it reveals to us is a major problem. The fact that we have the dream or variations thereof over and over again is an indication that we are failing to deal with these issues in our souls.
We need to interpret these types of dreams so that we can identify problem areas in our faith walk with God. After we have identified these problems we need to submit these individual problems to the word of God and to the will of God. We should never ignore any dreams or visions. It is of the utmost importance that we deal with these messages according to God’s word and God’s will.
Identifying emotional restoration dreams
By far, most dreams are emotional restoration dreams. Only about 5% of dreams, or even less, are messages from God. So treating all dreams as emotional restoration dreams is a good place to start for any and all dream interpreters. Emotional restoration dreams can also be identified because of the “chaos” that we observe in such dreams. This type of dream usually has two or more different scenes flowing into each other. All these scenes flowing into each other is a very good “flag” that we need to look out for. Another characteristic of emotional restoration dreams is the fact that people in the dream do wrong things and they experience the consequences of their actions. Another characteristic of such dreams is the presence of bad symbols.
These indicators can be present in a dream that is a message from God so dream interpreters must be careful when they determine whether a dream is a message from God or an emotional restoration dream, however, all the chaos in all the different scenes and all the wrong actions present in an emotional dream makes it quite easy to identify such a dream.
I usually start interpreting a dream by reading through it a few times. A few hours later I will read through it again a few times and usually at some point I start to realize that the dream is a message from God or that it is an emotional restoration dream. Sometimes it is obvious that the person who had the dream is experiencing emotions or a bit of dissatisfaction in the dream. So experiencing emotions in a dream is another indication that a dream is an emotional restoration dream. There are no (bad) emotions in dreams that are messages from God. So dreams where fear and anxiety, hate, bitterness, and dissatisfaction are present, you can be assured that such dreams are emotional restoration dreams.
With such dreams, the dream interpreter needs to help the person who had the dream in the following way:
The first step is to tell the person not to worry because it was merely an emotional restoration dream. “It was just a nightmare”, is a good thing to say. We need to do this because the symbols in a nightmare or in emotional restoration dreams appear to be far more serious and scary than it really is. It almost always appears to be demonic or a demonic attack when in fact it was not.
Yes, of course, demonic influences almost always play a role but it is not as bad as it appears. It does not mean that the people are demonic-possed or under severe demonic attack. We all have demons on our shoulders at some stage every day trying to tempt us in some way. That is normal. No need to focus our attention on demons when we interpret such dreams.
The second step is to bring to the attention of people that they had the dream because there are issues in their lives that need to be addressed. Tell them what the issues are and how they need to address them. How do you know what the issues are? The symbols in the dream revealed the issues. It is usually quite easy to identify such issues.
I hope that this post will help you as a dream interpreter to deal with emotional restoration dreams in your own life and also when you interpret them for other people.
