Dreams: Children & The Night Season

  by Recie Saunders

IThe face of our world has changed dramatically in the last fifty years.  Many believe that we are living in one of the darkest times in history.  America is no longer a Christian nation and we, as Christians seem to have lost our collective voice.  We feel helpless, benched in the game of life able only to watch as the world spins out of control.  Our children struggle with issues far worse than anything we could have imagined in our own youth and our culturally “hip” media blasts them with the message that every destructive behavior imaginable, drugs, alcohol, pornography, witchcraft, you name it, is perfectly okay.  Nothing is sacred.  No one is spared.  Our kids are at risk almost from the moment they emerge from the womb.  A pessimist might even say that this is a generation doomed before it begins.  And yet…
And yet in spite of all of that we live in a time of incredible opportunity.  It is precisely the intense opposition of the enemy against this generation that gives me hope and brings me to this conclusion: the greater the attack, the greater the anointing.  Judging by the advancing forces of darkness directed at our young people, the light intended to shine through them must be incredibly brilliant.  It is a difficult time, to be sure, and yet a critical time.  We as parents have a choice.  We can sit by and fret or we can seize the moment and fulfill one of our primary purposes:  become the spiritual people God is calling us to be to teach our children to do the same. 

We are not helpless.  Our Father always has a plan.  If we are willing He will use us to prepare our kids and give them wings to fly, wings that will carry them into their appointed destiny as one of the greatest generations ever born.  Yes, we have a job to do.
In my travels throughout the United States and around the world, first as an instructor with John Paul Jackson’s Streams Ministries and now as a member of Itinerant Ministry Team, I have spoken to thousands of parents and children about dreams.  Children are dreaming spiritual dreams; they are having visions and supernatural experiences that neither they nor their parents understand.  This gifted generation is designed for the supernatural, created for kingdom activity and kingdom purposes.  So what’s stopping them?

It is my belief that we, meaning the church as a whole, have not sought to understand the very God encounters that are a part of our heritage.  We are often uneducated, unaware and unprepared to relate to a super-spiritual generation.  When it comes to our children’s experiences, many questions arise and we as parents have no answers and often no place to turn.  “Why do my children have nightmares and how do I help them?”  “What is real and what is just my child’s imagination?”  “Are dreams really from God?”  “What is the difference between dreams, visions and encounters?”  “Did my child really see Jesus/an angel/a demon?”  These are but a few of the questions I hear over and over.

It is my hope that this article will enlighten parents and serve as a guide to understanding dreams and other common spiritual experiences, so that they in turn can encourage and facilitate these experiences in their children.  If you would like to learn more about children’s dreams, I offer a teaching, recorded live in conference on this subject.  It is available for purchase: http://www.itinerantministryteam.com/shop/index.php

A part of any discussion on supernatural experiences should include the topic of “source.”  There is no spiritually neutral source and there are only two sources of spiritual experience, one light and the other dark.  Encounters and dreams that come from God and from his heavenly realm (sometimes referred to as the “third heaven”) are of course light while those from the realm of the enemy (“the second heaven”) are dark.  Dreams may be neither but may also be from the soul.  We’ll talk more about this later. 

What are the differences between dreams and visions?   Dreams occur during sleep and are symbolic in nature.  Visions are more literal and can occur while asleep or awake.  In a vision one sees into the spirit realm or has a perception of supernatural things.  Other supernatural experiences include, but are not limited to, visitations by angels or other heavenly beings, theophany (a physical or auditory manifestation of God) and the discernment of spirits or being able to see and distinguish beings in both the heavenly and the demonic realm.    
Let’s focus first on dreams and visions.  Job 33: 14-17 says, “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 whether we remember it or not, we do dream.  God speaks to us in dreams and seals his work.  

In Numbers 12:6 we read, "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.  God speaks both in dreams and visions.  What about children?  Does God speak directly to them?

When talking about dreams and children the story of Joseph comes immediately to mind.  In Genesis Chapter 37 God speaks to Joseph, the youngest of twelve brothers, in a vivid dream about his destiny.  Joseph is shown that his brothers will one day bow down before him and that he will save their lives, all of which comes to pass exactly as Joseph sees in his dream.  Fast-forward a few years and we see Joseph walking into his destiny as he delivers the God-given interpretation for the Egyptian pharaoh’s dream.  God directed the course of Joseph’s life because Joseph listened to and relied on him.  

Solomon is another great example of a child dreamer.  In 1 Kings 3: 5 says, “…the Lord appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”  In this account, God spoke to the young king Solomon in a dream and because of his selfless request he was imparted wisdom, riches and honor.  We should all hear God that well!

Likewise, God spoke to the boy Samuel in the night season.  Here the Lord calls Samuel’s name audibly three times and when Samuel finally answers he recieves prophecy regarding judgment coming upon the house of his mentor, Eli.  1 Samuel 3:15:  “So Samuel lay down until morning.  Then he opened the doors of the house of the Lord.  But Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli.”  Samuel goes on to become a prophet of God and “…the Lord was with him and let none of his word fail,” 1 Samuel 3:19.  

The Old Testament contains numerous accounts of God speaking to people of all ages through dreams and visions and while some might claim that God no longer wants or needs to communicate with us in these ways, in Acts 2:16 we read:  “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 “…and you shall recieve the gift of 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.”  Are we not living in the last days?  Jesus’ death, resurrection and the appearance of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost ushered in the last days as you can see by reading all of Acts 2.

Acts is filled with accounts of spiritual encounters.  Cornelius and Peter both have visions in Acts 10.  Verses 1-8 describe how in the ninth hour of the day he “clearly saw in a vision an angel of God…” and verses 10-16 tell of Peter falling into a trance, recieving a vision and hearing the voice of God not once, but three times!  And don’t forget that the entire book of Revelation was a vision John recieved while “in the Spirit” on the island of Patmos!
We can see throughout scripture then, that dreams and visions are two of the fundamental languages of God, intended for all generations of believers.  God is spirit and therefore he communicates to our spirits in His ways.  It is the ability to hear and understand the language of the spirit that the church has lost and needs to rediscover - and help our children to discover.  I believe this is what God truly desires, as demonstrated in the following account.
One night while a friend of mine was sleeping a heavenly being came into her room.  When she saw it she took the opportunity to ask a question that had been on her heart for some time.  “Where are we in the book of Revelations?” she asked.  The being replied, “ I am not a liberty to say.” This went on for a while with my friend asking the same question and the response unwaveringly, “I am not at liberty to say.”  Finally she asked, “Why are you here?” The being then asked her a question:  “Are you training your children in the gifts they have?  Because if you don’t the world will.”

Our children are destined to move in power, God’s power.  The problem is, the enemy knows this too.  He is not going to just look the other way and hope that they never become God’s end-time warriors.  His purpose is always destruction.  And so we have to ask ourselves, what are we doing to stop him?  How can we fight against the flood of media he employs against them?  Occult based books, movies, television (Pokémon and Harry Potter to name just two) and video games are insidious.  How do we combat the effects of counterfeit, alternative spiritual experience that the enemy uses to attract, captivate and control?  

We begin by learning and then teaching.  We learn to hear and understand the many ways God speaks to us and we train our children to do the same.  We have given them the milk.  We have taught them about Jesus, salvation and baptism; we have taken them to Sunday school, taught them to pray and to be kind to one another.  And rightly so.  But now it is time for the meat.  Our children must hear their God in order to become who he is calling them to be.  They must know that their heavenly Father desires to communicate with them and they must learn to understand his many languages.  Even very young children are recieving dreams and visions from the throne, seeing angels and having God encounters.  They need our wisdom and guidance in order to step into their calling.

At one conference a mother and her four-year-old boy came up to me and told me this dream:  The boy got up one morning and said, “Mom! I had this dream last night.” “Okay, tell me,” she says.  He blurts out, “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 and look at my mansion, and I wake up.”  Was that a dream or an encounter?  It wasn’t metaphorical, so it wasn’t a dream, and it wasn’t an overactive imagination as some might think.  He saw his mansion, which is a sound scriptural concept.  He saw into heaven and had an unforgettable, life-changing encounter with God.  And did you see how natural that was for him?

This scenario presents a perfect opportunity for parents to encourage and train their child in the ways of the Kingdom.  Unfortunately if we have no grid for encounter with God we can be guilty of stifling our children’s gifts.  We may pass their experiences off as meaningless dreams or imaginings and we end up shutting down their ability to encounter and experience their Creator. 

The good news is that our lack of understanding does not stop God from reaching out to our children.  As long as their spiritual eyes remain open, they will continue to see angels, meet Jesus in dreams and have amazing visions. 

Supernatural encounters should be natural to us rather than cause for fear or doubt.  Again, our grid or lack of one can get in the way.  In the first chapter of Mathew, Mary the mother of Jesus has a visitation from the Angel Gabriel who tells her she will bear God’s own son...and she really doesn’t seem shocked by the visit.  Later in the chapter Joseph is told by an angel in a dream to take Mary as his wife even though she’s pregnant.  His angelic visitation didn’t seem to surprise or frighten him either, and since he does as he’s told we can conclude that he was more than a little confident of the message as well as the messenger.  It would appear that in that day and culture, angelic visitation was within the scope of common experience and understanding.  Perhaps this is precisely what God intends for us as well, and  perhaps, with His help we can recover what has been lost down through the generations.

So the ball is back in our court.  As parents we must encourage our children, train them in their spiritual gifts and be open and receptive to their supernatural experiences.  Rather than minimize a child’s dream or encounter, validate it.  Ask questions of them and let them ask questions of you.  Give your children a voice to communicate their experiences even when a dream or encounter seems dark or negative.  Rather than dismiss them, we can give our kids Kingdom tools that will empower them.   

Remember that your response can either open up or close down your children’s spiritual eyes and ears.  We often forget the strength of our words and that children believe what they hear.  When we label a child’s encounter as imaginary they will believe what we say and eventually stop having the very encounters God wants for them.  We may not see and hear what our children do but that doesn’t make their experience less real.  Let’s pray that our own eyes lose their calluses and we become as innocent full of faith as they are!  So often as creatures of a society which places such high value on education and skepticism, we take our children’s spiritual sight and squash it without even realizing what we did.  

I remember a little boy who saw angels in church services all the time and when he would tell his parents they would say, “My son sure has a great imagination.”  After a little while the child stopped seeing angels. 

As parents, we need to discover ways to support our children in their dream lives and God encounters.  One thing I find helpful is to find an example in scripture that matches the child’s experience and then discuss it with them.  Journaling is another great way to talk about dreams and spiritual experiences and to demonstrate that we value them.  I keep a journal for sons and my wife and I record their dreams for them.  Surprisingly, even though I’ve interpreted thousands of dreams, I sometimes have no clue what their dreams mean!  Still, we write the dream down and continue to ask God for the interpretation.  As Joseph says in Genesis 41, “the interpretation belongs to God.”

Here are a few ways we can help our children remember dreams and glean some meaning from them:

• Create a dream journal:  write down their dreams for them or if they’re older, have them do it.  This will help them recall more of each dream.

• 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 and keep it simple.
• Review their dreams every 6 months.

I mentioned earlier that dreams could be dark, light or from our souls.  I want to explain these a bit further. 

Dreams from God:  Dreams from God are in full color.  A lot of times kids won’t remember color, but you as a spiritually trained parent will know that the dream still may be from God.  So if your child says, “I saw God,” or tells you that they saw Jesus or an angel, listen!  These things have spiritual weight and can indicate a true God-dream.  When dealing with your child’s dreams then, color is not the only indication; you must also consider the content of the dream.  Ask questions and don’t forget to rely on the Holy Spirit to help you! 

Soul Dreams:  Dreams that come from our own souls are generally muted in color. Jeremiah 29:8 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.”   Dreams of the soul are born out of our fears and desires and are not from God.  And while they may only be a reflection of the soul’s reaction to life’s circumstances, these dreams can still open doors to communication with our children.  We can use these dreams to point our children to our Father as the answer to their fears and troubles. 

Dreams from the enemy:  Dark or black-and-white dreams are usually from the enemy.  Some dark dreams are spiritual warfare dreams and warn us of a plan of the enemy so that we can intercede against it, but children more typically have dreams sent by the enemy to frighten them away from spiritual experience.  Nightmares and night terrors often begin at an early age, causing children to shut down and no longer remember their dreams or be open to any kind of supernatural experience.  I hear many testimonies from people who have come to realize that they stopped dreaming as children because of nightmares.  It is our job as parents to insure that the enemy does not win this battle over our children’s spiritual lives. 
How then can we help protect our kids from the harassment of the enemy during the night season?  First of all we need to ask ourselves how the enemy gains access to them.  A review of the video games our children play, the movies and television programs they watch and the books they read will give us a good start.  Some of them are blatantly occult derived and some are much more subtle.  Play, watch or read with them and if you aren’t sure.  It might be a good time to seek the Father for wisdom and discernment.  

And please don’t misunderstand what I just said.  I’m not telling you to lock your kids in a closet and banish all games and entertainment from the house.  I love playing video games and watching movies with my kids.  What I am saying is that we need to pay attention to those things that can open doors of access into our children’s lives.  Are they watching horror movies and playing dark or magic-related games?  If so, it’s time to clean house.  If you don’t find anything there, then you have to ask yourself, “What is being allowed into the house another way, even through me?”  Access may come through something we do, objects we bring into the home or through generational associations, sins and curses.  I suggest that we leave no stone unturned in our search for the source of access. 

Another way we can help our children deal with nightmares involves teaching them to be proactive in lucid dreams.  “Lucid,” means to have clarity of thought and full use of one’s faculties.  Lucid dreaming is to be aware that you’re dreaming while you’re dreaming.  Many Christians either don’t know much about lucid dreams or consider them a “New Age” occult activity, but people outside of the church seem quite eager to talk about them and we routinely discuss them in our numerous street outreaches. 

In truth many people, Christians included, have lucid dreams.  Lucid dreams can help us wage war against the enemy.  Lucid dreamers describe their experiences as extremely “lifelike.” These dreams are so realistic in fact that a person can actually affect the direction or consequences of the dream.  If we start with the premise that dreams are often spiritual and that children’s nightmares are primarily demonic interference, then we can see the importance of learning to help our children take control and change the outcome of their nightmares.  As believers we must know the power of our God and trust that we as his heirs can act in his authority.  As children of the King we can teach our own children to exercise their rightful authority within their dreams so that they have nothing to fear.  

I have found that talking with my kids about lucid dreaming has helped them to overcome their nightmares.  About two years ago I sat down with my boys to have this very discussion.  Both Michael Ray and little Recie had been having nightmares and I knew what they needed to hear.  “You can do anything through the power of God in a dream,” I told them.  “When you’re having a nightmare you get scared and you wake up, right?  So you never finish the nightmare and sometimes it comes back.”   Then I explained how they could take control in their dreams.  “If you can do anything in a dream through the power of God and you can change the direction of your dream, all you have to do is pick up a stick and whack them on the head.  Or you can turn into Superman and fly away.”  That made them happy.  “Cool! You can do that?” they asked.  “Sure you can,” I said.  And they believed me.

As adults we lose out on so much of what God has for us because we haven’t experienced it before.  We close ourselves off from spiritual encounter.  Fortunately, our children are not bound by our experiences, or lack thereof.  They see with different eyes.  My boys believe me - they have no reason to doubt when I tell them something.  And they have no reason to doubt their authority in Christ. 

Sometime after our discussion, Michael Ray had a dream that four bears were chasing him.  I asked, “Well, what did you do?”  He said, “I picked up a stick and I whacked them on the head and they ran away!”  This time he didn’t wake up during the dream but continued sleeping and took control.  He understood his authority and his connection to God’s power.  We really need to grasp this truth so that we can impart it to our children. 

My kids have stopped having night terrors.  They know now that they can change the direction of dreams from the enemy and that they have nothing to fear.  They have also learned that they can cooperate with God and his purposes in a dream.

About a year ago when Recie was eight, he said that he had a dream of being in a dark, scary place where he was afraid.  Instead of waking up out of the dream he remembered what I had told him, that he could change the direction of his dreams.  “My dad said I could turn into superman and fly,” he recalled, and so he did.  He flew out of the dark place and landed on a rock.  Immediately Jesus came to Recie and said that he wanted to show him somethings…then he took him to heaven! 

My son may have never experienced heaven if we had not had that talk about lucid dreams and the power of God to change things.  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.  I believe it is critical that we teach our children who they are in Christ and who their Father is so that they begin to build strength for the spiritual battle ahead.  And I believe that we as Christian parents must become familiar with the workings of the spiritual realm and recapture what the enemy has stolen from us so that we can pass this treasure on to our kids.