What Does the Bible Say About Dreams? Learn to Interpret!

If we want to learn how to interpret dreams according to the Bible and find out what the bible says about dreams, it is important to understand that this is a completely biblical subject. 

It’s not about superstitions or what anyone can believe or assume. And I can talk about it because I studied and learned through my walk with God, since one of the ways God often speaks to me is through dreams, so I had to learn to interpret them.

This article can become a great guide to understanding when God speaks to you in dreams.

What does the Bible say about dreams?

In Genesis 20:3-7 we see how God gives Abimelech a dream warning him not to marry Sarah, Abraham’s wife.

A very popular case is that of Joseph where God gives him dreams where his family would bow down to him ( Genesis 37 ) and where he also allows him to interpret dreams and that this same gift was used by God to promote him from slave to second. most important man in Egypt.

We also see other cases like Daniel who had dreams and visions and was also able to interpret them. And in Deuteronomy 13:1-5 the “dreamers of dreams” or “visionaries” are recognizing those people who have dreams and who, like the prophets, can give words to other people through those dreams, but with the caveat that those words it must always be in line with what God has said in His Word.

And finally in Joel 2:28 where God is talking about the day of the Lord, we also see that God is saying that he will pour out his Spirit on everyone and that the old will have dreams and the young will have visions. 

As you can see, this is a recurring theme in the Bible that, while not emphasized in the New Testament, does not mean that it is a gift that has ceased to exist or that God no longer speaks through dreams.

If you’re reading this post, it’s probably because God is talking to you through dreams and you just don’t know how to interpret them and here you’ll learn some tools for that.

Warning: A dream that comes from God will NEVER contradict His Word. Keep this in mind because the enemy can also try to deceive us through dreams.

types of dreams

We must recognize that not all dreams come from a message from God, but neither do they all come from our imagination.

It is a mistake to believe that because a dream looks bad it is from the devil and because a dream looks beautiful it is from God. This is not always the case.

There are times when God is warning us of a time to come in our lives so we can prayerfully prepare for those times. Others, where God may be showing us the enemy’s plans so that we are alert and praying against those plans that the darkness wanted to draw for us. Other dreams are promises that God is giving us or is revealing events from the future or the spirit world.

At other times we may have spiritual attacks that obviously do not come from God and usually this happens when we allow the enemy access to our lives for some reason.

But we can also be thinking a lot about a certain situation or topic, and we dream about it because we create it ourselves by continually thinking about it.

Therefore, it is important to differentiate what kind of dreams we are having at the time of an interpretation.

How to know the meaning of a dream?

In this post I will share with you several tips that it is important that you take into account for each of the dreams you have, so that you can have a more complete and real interpretation of what God may be talking to you. So let’s start with the tips.

Write down the dream you had

As obvious as this suggestion may seem, it is actually one that can help you a lot because we cannot interpret all dreams quickly or in a few days so that we can forget. 

If you don’t write it down and something happens that can give you a clue, you may not even remember what the dream was like and miss what God wanted to reveal to you.

Every dream you receive from God is a direct Word from God for your life or for those around you, cherish it!

Jesus spoke in parables and continues to do

Sometimes we believe that all the dreams we receive from God have to be interpreted literally or it was just a crazy dream we had and that’s it. But not! Jesus, while on earth, spoke in parables and continues to do so in dreams.

I can’t tell you how many dreams I’ve had that seem crazy but have a profound revelation for my life from God. 

And you might ask yourself, what do I do if they’re in parables and I don’t understand anything? The answer is easy, we have to do like the disciples of Jesus. 

I don’t know if you noticed, but in the Bible every time Jesus told a parable, the disciples came to him and asked, “Teacher, what does this mean?” And we must do the same, approach him and ask, what does the dream he gave us mean?

My best advice for you:

We must be aware of the symbology of our dreams compared to the Bible, because in most of our dreams or all of them in reality, we will see some symbology that resembles that of the Bible and that will give us a great clue to be able to interpret them. 

I will give you several examples for you to understand, but remember that everything will depend on the context of the dream and other things that we will talk about later:

• Dreaming of clean water : In the Bible we see the Holy Spirit represented as water. We see this in John 4:14 “but whoever drinks the water that I will give him will never thirst; but the water that I will give him will be in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” That is, depending on the context of the dream, this could mean fullness of the Spirit, an encounter with Him, or even how we are spiritually. 

Notice that in Ezekiel 47 it talks about a river and how it was just a little bit and then as the prophet went on it got bigger until it became a river where you had to swim to cross it. All of this is related to the Holy Spirit.

• Dreaming of dirty water or mud : This usually represents sin, either in our lives or in the lives of others. The Bible tells us in Isaiah 57:20, “But the wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot be stopped, and its waters throw up mire and mire.” One who is ungodly is one who has not been renewed by God, who does not reflect his character, and therefore cannot flow from him those clean waters which represent the Holy Spirit. And as the Word says, two waters cannot come from the same source.

If we had a dream with dirty water or mud, we must be very careful with what God is showing us, because maybe it is a sin that we are committing, something that the enemy will tempt you with, a situation that is coming that can make sin or other things depending on the context, but you definitely have to be careful.

• Dreaming of a house : If we dream of our house, it usually represents ourselves or if it is someone else’s house, it usually represents them. Matthew 7:24-27 tells us about the man who was wise and built his house on the rock that is Christ, while the foolish man built on the sand and his ruin was great. This usually tells us about our spiritual life, a house in ruins belongs to that person who refuses to seek Jesus and obey him.
• Dreaming of snakes : I think this is pretty easy for a believer, but we know that the snake represents satan in the Bible and that obviously a snake dream can represent some dark plane. It can be a spiritual attack and the like according to the context we have in the dream.

I hope that with these examples you have been able to see the relationship between some very common symbols in dreams with the Bible. You already have a great tool to be able to interpret dreams.