IIn my travel teaching Dream course for John Paul Jackson and Streams Ministries. Parents would come up after class asking if I could tell them what there Childs dream meant. And I discovered that many parents are not sure what to do with their Childs dreams. Parents where asking questions like, what about nightmares? are Dreams just their imagination?, are Dreams really from God. So I have put together a teaching on a parenting guide for parents in dealing with there children’s Dreams. http://www.itinerantministryteam.com/shop/index.php
Everyone Dreams Job 33: 14-17 “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, So it said that while we are sleeping, God is sealing our instruction. And we have to understand that he is not just doing this with adults, he is also doing this with our children. Take for example young Joseph in Genesis Chapter 37. He speaks to Joseph in a dream about his destiny, and Joseph is a young boy. so if he spoke to Joseph in a dream and sealed his destiny, don’t you think he would be giving dreams of destiny to our children?.
Numbers 12:6 He said, "Hear now My words: If there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, shall make Myself known to him in a vision. I shall speak with him in a dream. Here the Lord is saying that he makes himself know to us in a dream or in a vision. Take for example the young child Solomon in 1 Kings 3: 5 …the Lord appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”. Solomon was given impartation in a dream!
So if you look in scripture you will see that Dreams, Visions and strange events are ways that God is visiting children (and adults). Acts 2: 16 But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; 17 And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: 18 And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy: After speaking of Joel’s prophecy Peter goes on to say in verse 38 receive the Holy Spirit verse 39 For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.
Dreams or I like to say the Nights Season are a very important ways that God communicates to us. And I think it is the language of the spirit that the church has lost that we need rediscover and help our children rediscover. A friend of mine told me of an encounter she had one night as she was sleeping. The person or being came into her room and when she saw it she started asking it questions, like “where are we in the book of revelations” and the person said “ I am not a liberty to say” this went on for a while her asking it question with the response being “I am not at liberty to say” so she asked why are you here? And the person said “Are you training your children in the gift they have? Because if you don’t the world will”. See the enemy is after our children’s gift. That’s why there is a flood of media coming after them, like Pokémon, Harry Potter, and others.
It’s not the church’s responsibility to train our children. It’s the parent’s responsibility to train our children, and the problem is that we haven’t been trained adequately in this whole area of dreams and the things of the Spirit. We’ve been trained in the Word, which is good, right? We’ve been trained about salvation and baptism. So we want to get our children saved; we want to get them baptized, and we want to them understand the knowledge of God, but this is a whole area that the church hasn’t taught on, which is the area of dreams and visions. And I’m telling you that as I go through this, you’ll see that—and you’ll probably have examples of your children having some incredible encounters.
A little 4-year-old boy and a mother—everywhere I travel and teach on this, parents will come up to me and go, “My son had this dream,” or, “My daughter had this dream. What do I do about it? What is it? Was it a dream or what?” Well, they’re having encounters with God. This mother was telling me about her 4-year-old little boy. He was 4 years old. He was asleep, and he woke up, and he said, “Mom! I had this dream last night.” So she goes, “Okay, tell me.” He says, “In this dream, I’m like in this room, and I see God. And I walk up, and God goes, ‘Hi, Michael.’ And I go, ‘Hi, God.’ And I go down and I go look at my mansion, and I wake up.”
Now, he’s 4 years old. Was that a dream? No. He had an encounter with God that he’ll never forget since the age of 4. And it lines up with Scripture. He was looking at his mansion. You think that would change his life, see, but what happens is, is that we don’t understand that. We don’t have no grid for that experience that that little 4 year old had, and so we shut that down. And we say, “Ah, that was just your imagination.” “Oh, that was just a dream.” So we end up shutting down our children from having encounters with God and experiences with God. So it’s our responsibility, because Scripture says it’s our responsibility to train our children.
Our children are having experiences and dream that most Christian parents have not grid for. Like seeing angels, having Dreams of seeing Jesus. These are all biblical experience that you can see in scripture. Mathew chapter 1 Mary the mother of Jesus has a visitation from the Angel Gabriel. Joseph was told in a dream by and angel to take Mary as his wife in though she was pregnant.
What are some hindrances to your Childs Dream life or Night Season? When parents say “it is just your imagination” or “I am sorry Jonny has a great imagination” What you are actually doing when you say that is shutting down there dream life and they start to believe you. And consequently they stop dreaming. We have to understand that just because we don’t see the angel or have the Dream does not disqualify them from seeing or having the dream. Sometime we as adults have calluses and lack of faith on our eyes, and our children’s eyes are still innocent and pure, therefore they have the ability to see. I remember a little boy who saw angels in the church service all the time and would tell his parents and they would say “my son sure has a great imagination” after a little while the child stop seeing them.
So How can we keep from shutting down our children’s Dream and Night Season life? First we need to value our children and give them a voice to communicate their Dreams and encounter with Angels or God, even if we don’t understand. If you look I bet you could find an example in scripture. What I do with my children is I keep a journal for them, when they wake up in the morning the first thing they do is come to my wife or I and say. “I had a dream last night” and we ask them to go get there journal. Right there we are valuing there dream. I interp dreams and sometime I have no clue what it means. And I tell them is I am not sure but we will write it down and continue to ask God for the interpretation. In Genesis 41 Joseph said to Pharaoh when interpreting his dream that the interpretation belongs to God.
Here are some ways to help them remember their dreams and glean some meaning.
- Write down their dreams; create a dream journal
- Have them draw their dreams
- Have them act out their dreams (this can be really hilarious for the whole family)
- Try to interpret their dreams, keep it simple
- Review their dreams every 6 months
So where do dreams come from? Are all dreams from God? No. These are the three types of dreams your children and you will have: The first one are dreams from God. And the way that you can tell the difference between the dreams that are from God and the dreams that are not from God is that the dreams from God are in full color. Or, if they don’t remember color—because a lot of times, the kids will say, “Well, I don’t remember no color,”—you can recognize the spiritual weight to it. When they say, “I saw God,” and you know, they don’t remember color, there’s weight to that dream. When they said, “God said, ‘Hi,’ to me.” Or, “I saw Jesus,” or, “I saw an angel.” I mean, if I saw an angel in a dream, you may not remember the colors because you’re overwhelmed by the incredible encounter that you’re having with an angel. So you can see that dreams that are from God are in full color.
Then you’ll have the second type of dream, which is a soul dream. And if you look at Jer. 29:8, it says, “For thus sayeth the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, do not let your prophets and your diviners in your midst deceive you, nor listen to your dreams which you’ve caused to be dreamed.” See, a soulish dream is one that is more muted in color. Or, what they’re doing is they’re dreaming out their fears or their desires. So that’s how you can tell. So either they’ll have a dream that’s of God that’s in full color, or they’ll have a dream that’s muted color, or you can tell just by the feel of the dream that it’s a fear that they have.
The next one is that it’s a dark dream or a black-and-white dream. They’re usually from the enemy. Or they’re spiritual warfare dreams. Typically children will have this sort of dreams at an early age because what happens is, the enemy wants to shut them down. As we’re teaching classes all over the United States, we’ll have people that’ll come to our classes that will say, “When I was a child, I used to have these incredible nightmares. I shut it down, and I no longer dream.” And so then they come to our class, and we start telling them it’s safe to dream again, and then they start dreaming again.
Nightmares and night terrors. What are they? How can you stop them from harassing your child? First of all we need to examine a few things that can possible give the enemy access to your child. You need to find out what is giving the enemy authority, what games is your child playing? Now I am not against Playstation in fact I love to play with my boys, there is just some games that can open the door. What movies are they watching, horror? So if they are clean, then you have to ask yourself the question of what are you allowing in the house. If you are clean then there might be generational issue that is giving the enemy access.
The other way to deal with Nightmares is called lucid dreaming. Not many Christians are familiar with the term lucid dreaming? Lucid means to have clarity of thought in full use of one’s faculties. Lucid dreaming is to have a measure of conscious activity in control in your dreams. Now, we go out on the streets. We do a lot of street outreach and stuff. We go out and we talk to people about lucid dreaming—they know what that means. You come into the church. You ask them what lucid dreaming means. They go, “What? Are you New Age?” That’s the first thing that they’ll say to you. They’ll ask you if you’re New Age. See, we just don’t understand that term. If you’re having a dream and you know you’re having a dream, you’re lucid dreaming. And so in lucid dreaming you become aware that you’re dreaming. The reality of the dream is so intense and lifelike that you come to realize that you can have an impact on the direction or the consequences of the dream.
What I’ve done with my little boys is that I’ve trained them that they can lucid dream. I sat them down about two year ago, because Michael Ray had a nightmare and little Recie was having nightmares—and I said, “You can do anything with the power of God in a dream. When you’re having a nightmare, what happens? You get scared, and you wake up, right? So you never get to finish out that nightmare because you’ve woken up, and you’re afraid. So that’s what happens to the children. They wake up, and they’re afraid. They’re scared. They come running down to the room, and they’re crying. So what I said was, You can do anything in a dream with the power of God. And you can change the direction. You can pick up a stick, whack them on the head. You can turn into Super-man, and fly away. They’re going, “Cool! You can do that?”
You see, the problem is that they believe me. The church you tell them they can lucid dream; they go, all of a sudden, they’re thinking in their mind, That’s New Age. That’s occult. See, but children, especially my little boys, they believe me. And so Michael Ray was having a dream that four bears were chasing him. And I said, “Well, what’d you do?” And he said, “I picked up a stick, and I whacked them on the head, and they ran away,” and he never woke up out of that dream. He stayed right in, sleeping. See, there’s power in dreams. I believe that, the reason I called it the night season, because it’s not just with dreams. It’s a whole other realm of connecting into the Spirit realm. So in the night season, there’s power in the dream life. And if we can train our kids to lucid dream, then they’ll stop having these night terrors. Because they believe they can change the direction of the enemy’s dreams, and that’s what my little boys have been doing—changing the directions of anything that’s trying to come after them and be fearful. Or, the other thing it will teach them to do is to start cooperating with God in a dream. That’s lucid dreaming. So there’s two types of dreaming that you can do.
About a year ago my son lil Recie was 8 years old, he said that he was having a dream that he was in a dark scary place and was afraid, so instead of waking up out of the dream which most kids do and adults. He remembers what I told him that he could change the dream. And in the dream he remembered and said “my dad said I could turn into superman and fly” so he said he flew out of the place and landed on a rock. Then Jesus came and said he wanted to show him some things and took him to heaven. What a great experience. I believe that he would have never experienced heaven if I did not teach him to lucid dream. I believe that God allows the enemy to resist us so that we can learn how to exercise our authority even at a young age.
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