Dreams...What's the Point?

During my childhood/early teen years I had a lot of nightmares. No matter what I did, I couldn't get them to stop. I would get so frustrated because they were so vivid. Some weeks I wouldn't sleep a lot. I remember a couple times waking up and thinking what I had dreamed about had actually happened. There are some I still remember as though they happened last night, that still terrify me. I would ask the Lord over and over "Why am I having these dreams? What is the point?", but I wouldn't get an answer. Eventually I started asking to not dream at all. It was difficult to go to sleep sometimes, knowing the nightmares would come. I didn't understand at that point that God had given me authority over them, so I did the only thing I knew how and asked Him to take the dreaming - good and bad - away because it was too much. So He did. I didn't dream about anything for a long time, many years. But I still carried around the question: "what is the purpose of dreaming if it frequently turns into a nightmare?".

During college, somewhere around 20, I wanted to start dreaming again. I figured I was older and should be able to handle what comes at me a lot better, so I asked God if I could dream again. Just as He took them away, He let them come back. Slowly, but they came back. For a little while there were no nightmares, and then they came back full force; especially when I was sleeping in certain places. They became vivid more often, with greater emotion inflicted. This time around, though, I would talk with people about what to do. I started praying before going to bed. If I had a nightmare during the night, I would pray every time it would wake me up. And I kept asking the Lord, "What is the purpose of dreaming?".

Gradually the nightmares lessened. I still dreamed, but less often. When I did dream, it would become ingrained in my mind, more real. Eventually I started writing them down, whether nightmare or not. I went to a dream seminar to learn about interpreting dreams and to try and understand better the purpose of them. But it wasn't until today that I really heard and accepted the answer to my question.

Dreams are the Lord's way of speaking to us. Nightmares come from Satan trying to rob us of communication with Him. (I have noticed that friends of mine who receive many dreams from the Lord, often started out having many nightmares.) Of course not all dreams are from the Lord. Some occur because of what we think about during the day, or stressful situations in life. However, they always show us things about ourselves or others. We can't control things when we are dreaming. We can't stop ourselves, while sleeping, from dreaming. Don't ever discard a dream or nightmare. Write them down. Pray about them. Because there is always something being said through them, you just need to find it.

A New Year

There are so many people I have spoken with about the year 2013 over the past several weeks. Most of those people have expressed that 2013 was a very difficult year. It was a year of painful growth, a year of many sorrows, a year of just plain awfulness. I can absolutely say that 2013 was probably one of the most difficult years of my life as of yet. There were a lot of lows, more than I would like to remember. Thankfully there were also some really fantastic, outright glorious moments as well.  What is it about this past year that created such difficulty for so many people? What is the Lord planning for this year? Tell you what, it can only be great things.

I am so thankful 2013 is over. There was a change in the air as 2014 rolled in this morning. A hope for new and better things from the Lord. A difference in atmosphere as my friends and I brought in the new year with prayer and an extensive (2.5 hour) dance party. There was relief. Relief at knowing we will never have to live through last year again. Relief in feeling a difference. No matter how tired we all were, we could stop celebrating a new beginning. So...

Happy New Year! And may God bring abundance to you this year. :)