How to Know if Your Dream Is From God, the Enemy or Your Own Soul by JOHN E. THOMAS for Charisma News
How do you know if your dream is from God?
I’ve been studying dreams and teaching people how to interpret them for nearly 20 years, and that is the question I am asked most often: “How do I know if a dream is from God?”
I’ll do my best to answer that question in this post and the next. The full teaching on this topic would take an entire book, so we’ll just be scratching the surface here. Let’s start off by looking at the possible sources of dreams.
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3 Different Sources of Dreams
Tertullian (AD 160–225) taught that dreams come from three sources. Some dreams are demonically inspired. Some come from our souls with the soul actually causing the dream to be dreamed, and some are dreams from God. He linked this understanding to the promise of Acts 2—that dreams, visions and prophetic encounters would be the norm for the church.
Whether you know Jesus personally or not, your dreams will emanate from one of those three sources: the enemy, your soul or God. How can you tell which source the dream is coming from?
Dreams From the Enemy
Dreams from the enemy are often nightmares. The enemy desires to produce fear in us so we will not walk in faith. He frequently aims this kind of attack at young children, and when this occurs, the answer is not to tell them to ignore their dreams because they “aren’t real”—but to teach them their authority in Christ. Help your children trust in God instead of running in fear.
Sometimes dreams from the enemy are actually demonic visitations. For instance, sleep paralysis is a common phenomenon people talk about both in and outside the church. It most often occurs when a demonic entity visits someone as they sleep. Dreams from the enemy tend to linger even after we awake, along with the intense sense of fear or evil presence we felt during the dream.
