One of the tendencies many of us have is to jump to conclusions, especially when it comes to dreams. Sometimes the dream is so obvious that the conclusion is warranted.

For example, I have a dream with a snake in it. Obviously, the snake must represent the devil and therefore is bad. That is jumping to conclusions. The snake could represent many things and it could be good or bad. After all, did not Jesus say that the Son of Man must be lifted up as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert? Well then, the snake must not be all bad. It is interesting that the medical symbol is a snake wrapped around a pole. Maybe a snake represents healing, depending on the context.

Sometimes I have a bad dream. I just handed in a paper in school and I dream that I failed the paper and got a back with an F, a big fat F. Does that mean this is going to happen? Do I need to intercede against it? Is it a soul dream illustrating the anxiety I did not know I carried about this assignment I just handed in? Is it the devil messing with me? It depends.

Everything depends on context. It depends on the context of the dream and it depends on the context of my life. Only when we take all of these elements together can we arrive at a satisfactory conclusion.

Then there is Holy Spirit. Just because something has always meant one thing in my dream does not mean necessarily that it means the same thing again in another dream. Sometimes Holy Spirit illuminates a particular element in our dream and impresses upon us a new meaning. It can mean whatever Holy Spirit wants us it to mean.

Are you confused? Let me give you an example. Not too long ago I had a dream about a house and a box in the house. Somehow the dream was about receiving strategies for prayer. I just knew that while I was having the dream.

I assumed that the house in the dream was the Church, not a particular church but the universal church. I didn’t know what the box was. As I started to pray, the Lord started giving me revelation. The box was in the basement and it was filled with treasures, gold, jewelry and other valuable treasures. The intercessors had the key to unlocking the box. All of a sudden I knew what the box was.

To be honest, I had no clue what the box represented before I started to pray. In the context of the dream, there was a part about being gold diggers. This was earlier in the dream.

Digging for gold is something that was apparent to me. When we prophesy over people, we look for the gold in people and call it out. We don’t need to dig for dirt. People already know their own dirt. When I thought about the treasures in the box of the basement of the church, it reminded me that just as people sometimes have hidden treasures or destinies, so do churches.

By Ralph Veenstra