Cornerstone Christian Counselling Centre

by Steve Bydeley, C.E.T., C.P.C.

Inner Healing Through Dreams

Sleep represents a time in our day when everything except vital bodily functions seem to be shut down and resting. The busyness of our lives and complexities of relationship are placed on hold for a time, a wonderful time, wherein we are released from the events of past, present, and future.

From the Bible's earliest writings (the book of Job is considered the oldest book of the Bible) God has used this quiet time to enter into our existence with a sequence of images, symbols, sounds, and emotions with meaning, clarity, and purpose, or put more simply, He spoke through a dream. These dreams were recognized as coming from God and therefore were considered important.

Indeed God speaks once, or twice, yet no one notices it. In a dream, a vision of the night, When sound sleep falls on men, While they slumber in their beds, Then He opens the ears of men, And seals their instruction, That He may turn man aside from his conduct, And keep man from pride; He keeps back his soul from the pit, And his life from passing over into Sheol. (Job 33:14-18)

God still speaks through dreams, but in today's culture we do not notice it ­ even though we really should. We have robbed ourselves of a valuable source of relationship and personal growth. These verses tell us that through dreams God seeks to "turn man aside from his conduct." He uses dreams to make adjustments to our conduct - if we will take notice of it.

There are character traits and heart issues that negatively affect our interaction with others. We may not be consciously aware or their presence and activity in our lives even though others may be. Comments like "that's just the way she is - don't take it personally" or "he seems harsh until you get to know him" and the like all describing the negative traits seen in another. Traits they would not acknowledge as their own.

A lady, we will call Val, shared this dream with me recently:

My sister was sitting on my left in an elevated position with a pompous look, and her chest puffed out. I told her some of the things I saw in her that I didn't like.

In the next scene my Mom was sitting on my right side as my sister came in to talk to me about the things I had said about her. She was upset. I told her that she always had to talk, that she had to dominate in a crowd, and she always had to be right. As she began to interupted me with objections I point to her interuptions as supporting my point. Mom then turned to her and nodded in agreement with my comments.

We then discussed the details of the dream to understand the symbolism and then its overall meaning. I first pointed out that message dreams from God do not condemn (Rom 8:1), they inform. The first important item we recognized was that the dream was for and about Val and not about the people in the dream. The next step was to determine who or what the people in the dream represented to Val. We concluded her mother was representative of the Holy Spirit - an authority figure in the dream.

Through prayer, the role of the sister came to be recognized as the condition of Val's heart or a character trait in her that God wanted to address. Val was initially shocked at the possibility that she might be too talkative, domineering, and always needing to be right. Her first response was denial, but within a few minutes of listening prayer the Holy Spirit confirmed these traits with all the kindness and gentleness of a mother.

After leaving the denial stage and a number of minutes in remorse Val was ready to ask for and receive God's forgiveness for her behaviour. We followed with prayer counselling to find and eliminate the root causes that produced these traits in her.

God used a dream to turn her aside from her conduct so that those negative traits would no longer cast a shadow over social and professional contacts. God loved Val too much to leave her as she was.

Jesus, the Wonderful Counsellor of Isaiah 9:6, was well able to answer her needs and affect healing in her life - through the agency of dreams.

Steve Bydeley is a counsellor at Cornerstone Christian Counselling Centre, co-author of Dream Dreams, and, as a principal in Lapstone Ministries, teaches on the interpretation of dreams and visions.

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Cornerstone Christian Counselling Centre
258 King St. N.,
519-883-3922
Fax 519-883-3924
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
mail: Box 38029 at 256 King St. N. Waterloo Ont. N2J 4T9

For further information contact us at www.cornerstonechristian.ca or info@cornerstonechristian.ca