Dreams

DREAMS

INTRODUCTION

Dreams have fascinated, mystified and frightened mankind since the dawn of time. Today, we seem to have developed a propensity for ignoring dreams; but ancient man found dreams to be a natural source for myths, fables and legends. There were even those who believed that, for special individuals, dreams were a form of communication from spiritual beings. Dreams, should a Christian be willing to look deeper into them or should they just be ignored?

First Illustration:

The following is a record of the dream an individual had some time ago.

I was standing in a great valley that was devoid of all living things. Large mountain ranges filled the distance before and behind me, and they stretched to the right and the left as far as the eye could see. It was a dark and dreary land with a most unpleasant feeling about it.

As I stood there, a movement far off to my right caught my attention. Soon I could see giant men walking through the valley. Each giant had a sack slung across his chest and as they walked through the valley they were broadcasting seed. I stood very still and watched them pass by me. It was awesome! They must have been 200 feet tall or more and when they broadcast the seed it looked like dark clouds floating to earth.

They were hardly out of sight when the valley began to sprout in green, and as I watched in wonder I saw grass, trees, and bushes spring up from the valley floor. Then beautiful clear blue waters began to flow in the, once dry, streambed that ran the length of the valley.

I had not moved a single step from where I was when I first found myself in the valley. I stood there marveling at how the green plants and the blue waters had totally transformed the image of the valley. Once again, I noticed movement far off to my right. This time a single giant, larger than the others, came through the valley broadcasting seed. I watched him pass and stood in anticipation of what would spring up, but nothing did.

DREAMS

When we talk about dreams we are talking about a mysterious human activity. Dreaming may be something we all do; yet, dreaming is also something we have no control over. We cannot dream what we want to dream when we want to or in the fashion we want to. We cannot control dreaming and having no control over dreaming is something we humans are not very comfortable with. Most of us can control our thought processes but when we are dreaming control is turned over to something else; but what is in control of our dreaming? From scripture, we know that we are made up of four basic parts: the physical body, the mind, the soul and the spirit. We know this because, in his letter to the Thessalonians, Paul writes: I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (5:23). We also know that Mark wrote: And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength (12:30). We humans are body, mind, soul and spirit; we humans dream.

I think that most people would agree with our mind being the number one candidate for having control over our dreaming, or at least that our mind is where dreaming takes place. Most of us have also experienced times when bodily fatigue, aches and pain seem to have influence our dreaming, but our body was not in control of the dreaming process. We all have probably experienced times when some event in our lives has resulted in our dreaming about that event. The event influenced our dreaming but it was not in control of the dreaming process. Least we forget our soul and spirit we need to consider their influence or control over the dreaming process. We have a soul and a spirit but I have no earthly idea if our soul or spirit can control the dreaming process. My Christian training leads me to believe that the soul and spirit may influence dreaming but to what degree I do not know. Dreaming is a mysterious activity of the human mind.

We know that the mind is certainly involved in dreaming but do dreams originate only in the mind or is there something else? Our conscious mind, the part we knowingly use every day, only takes up a very small portion of our brain’s activity. There are some who say as little as just 10% of our brain capacity. Anyway, it is a fact that dreaming is not a conscious brain behavior, which means that it must originate somewhere outside the realm of conscious brain activity … but where?