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A Dream Interpretation Journey
<page 15>I had come to a place of stability in my soul and peace with my church family. This was great for my walk with the Lord, but it wasn’t enough to convince me to try to be prophetic. I still wasn’t sure how to judge when I, or anyone else, was hearing from God. Until I had more insight, it didn’t seem safe to proceed.
What was interesting was that I lived as if I was hearing from God. I believed He had spoken to me from the book of Proverbs. I believed the Bill Gothard dream had confirmed this. I believed that He had been prophetically leading me since I had given my life to Him as a teenager.
I didn’t, however, know how to defend this belief when people disagreed with what I thought God was speaking. Who could say for sure if I was following the Spirit? And who could say for sure if someone else was? I might say, “I think God is saying this,” and someone else might say, “I think He is saying that.” With the exception of those times when one of us was being unscriptural, I had no workable answers for how to decide between us.
So I remained agnostic on the subject. I hoped that God spoke to people, and I lived as if He did, but it was too mystical for me to have any confidence about it. It seemed unlikely that I would ever figure it out. I had been in a prophetic church for over twenty years. If I hadn’t found answers yet, what hope did I have of that changing in the future?
Then one day in 1998, I heard a man make a quick statement about Deuteronomy 18:15-22, and it was as if God turned on a light in my heart. A chain reaction began that quickly reorganized every scripture I knew about prophecy. Within a short time, I said to myself, “This is amazing – and a little scary. I think I know how to be prophetic now.”
It would be beyond the scope of this book to include the chapters it would take to explain what I learned (you can find them in a separate book: How to Judge Prophetic Messages).[11] Here I will simply comment on this event’s significance for the Art Katz dream: it marked the dream’s final fulfillment. I had been to the attic, I had learned its lessons, and Art had now joined me there. I was stable enough to spend quality time with him.
I will now return to the Art Katz dream and reinterpret it with the benefit of hindsight. I will use both the memory of what happened in my life and the wisdom I have gained over the past twenty-two years of interpreting dreams. First, I need to give a few principles I have picked up from experience that relate to tricky messages in dreams:
If you say that you want (or plan) to do something in a dream, and then you do something different, the thing you do may be another symbol for what you said you wanted (or planned) to do.
If a problem seems unsolvable in a dream, it may be symbolic for a problem that we find unsolvable in real life. This does not mean, however, that God will not solve it.
If someone you don’t trust in real life tells you something in a dream, there is a good possibility that what they tell you in the dream is wrong.
Here is the Art Katz dream again:
I was sitting in my room in college, and I saw Art Katz walk by and go up the stairs. I decided I wanted to spend some time getting to know him. In the dream, I thought about an earlier time I had seen Art. I had begged him to disciple me and let me get to know him, but he refused because he could see I was unstable. He also knew that he was not the person I thought he was.
Now I hoped I could get to know him, but first I needed to go to class. As I headed there, I realized I needed my bike, so I decided to go to the basement of my dorm to get it, but I ended up in the attic. When I got there, I noticed I had nothing on my feet.
Earlier, the attic had been full of junk; I had been unable to make my way through it. Now it was fairly empty. I studied its structure. It was broken into sections with wide doorways between them. I could see the slope of the roof.
I tried to make my way through the attic, but the supports became too low at the far end. I got down on my stomach, but it still seemed I would get stuck. Then a guy I knew in real life came in and told me I wasn’t supposed to be in the attic. The church denominations stored their stuff there, and they were afraid that their stuff would be stolen.
Let’s apply the first principle. “If you say you want (or plan) to do something in a dream but you do something different, the activity you do may be a different symbol for what you said you wanted (or planned) to do.” In this case, I said I wanted to spend time with Art Katz (who symbolized the prophetic), and I left to go to class instead. In the symbology of this dream, going to the class was the way in which I was going to get together with Art. God was prophetically leading me into a time of learning about subjects that didn’t appear prophetic, because that was where He was going to prepare me to experience the prophetic more fully.
The class turned out to be a place of testing. The act of studying theology and tradition while others warned about the dangers of intellectual pursuits caused me to question the prophetic. Yet this was God’s plan. I needed to question the prophetic so I could understand it more deeply. God was using difficulty to lead me to think through issues associated with it. He wanted me to be able to embrace it with greater depth.
As I headed to the class, the dream piled up one symbol after another to create a multisided picture of the seven year period it symbolized. I remembered I needed my bike, which according to the first principle (doing something different can be another symbol for the same thing), told me something about the class. In my dreams, bikes seem to be symbolic for a mode of travel that takes some work. The class was going to involve effort.
The bike was in the basement. Basements are often symbolic for foundations. The class was going to enable me to stand firm and not be shaken. Without it, I would lose my footing.
Though I said I was going to the basement, I ended up in the attic, which was symbolic for my mind. The class was going to focus on the way I thought about the world.
When I got to the attic, I noticed I didn’t have anything on my feet. This was symbolic for a lack of equipping, and since it had to do with my feet, I suspect it referred to not having the <page 17>freedom to move where I needed to go. The class would equip me to explore the prophetic (and all of life) in ways I couldn’t imagine when I started.
Earlier, the attic had been full of junk, and I couldn’t make my way through it. Now it was fairly open. I believe this was symbolic for the work God had already done in my mind. Over the past few years, He had cleared out many confusing thoughts that tripped me up. He could now speak to me in ways I hadn’t been ready to hear in the past.
I studied the structure of the attic. This was symbolic for me studying the structure of thought. I memorized scriptures to help me see God’s design for all of life. I studied theology to give me a big picture of scriptural truths. I studied philosophy from a Christian perspective to learn the faulty ways in which people see the world. I studied logic and psychology to understand common difficulties people have with their thinking.
Finally, the attic forced me down on my stomach, and it looked as if I could not reach the other side. My studies left me feeling as if they would never lead to me being prophetic. It looked as if I would get stuck in the attic and never end up meeting with Art Katz. If not for the experience I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, where a number of scriptures came together into an understanding of how I could be both wise and prophetic, I might never have been able to bring the two together.
This illustrates the second principle listed above: “If a problem seems unsolvable in a dream, it may be symbolic for a problem that we find unsolvable in real life. This does not mean, however, that God will not solve it.” I couldn’t figure out the balance between wisdom and the prophetic on my own. I needed help from the Lord.
If I didn’t understand this “unsolvable problem” principle, many of my dreams could lead to fear and discouragement; they often show me in one sort of bind or another. I need to remember that these images only give part of the picture – the part where my abilities are not up to the task at hand. The rest of the picture is that as I humble myself and cling to Jesus, He is greater than my weakness. My life can be more than it could ever be without Him.
Several of the dreams I have yet to share in this book contain images of this sort.
What about the message at the end of the dream that said I shouldn’t be in the attic? What was the significance of the church denominations storing their stuff there and not wanting it stolen? Consider the third principle I listed above: “If someone you don’t trust in real life tells you something in a dream, there is a good possibility that what they say is wrong.” Should I trust the church denominations? The fact that they are called denominations is a hint that I shouldn’t. Though people in church denominations are often not sectarian, the word ‘denomination’ in the dream implies sectarianism. Why not just call them “churches” or “groups of Christians?” And the message given to me in the dream was certainly sectarian. In effect, it said, “If you want our stuff, you have to be a part of us. We don’t let strangers take stuff from our attic.”
Please don’t misunderstand me. I know many people in church denominations, and most of them are not sectarian. This dream is not a comment about people or organizations; it is a warning about a temptation I faced in the attic. At the time, I was learning from Christians in groups of churches other than my own. The easiest way to do this would have been to leave my church for one of theirs. In fact, leaving seemed like it might be the only way for me to have a fruitful ministry.
<page 18>Yet doing so would have undermined the purpose of God symbolized in this dream. The attic was about me finding the wisdom to be prophetic, not about me abandoning the prophetic.
In the attic, I faced the possibility that I had to choose between being a part of a group of Christians who emphasized wisdom and being a part of a group who emphasized the prophetic. It seemed as if I couldn’t have both. Yet this was a message I shouldn’t trust.
In the end, God gave me both. I was able to learn from those who emphasized intellectual truths and from those who emphasized the Holy Spirit speaking to our hearts:
For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men? For when one says, “I am of Paul,” and another, “I am of Apollos,” are you not carnal? …Therefore let no one boast in men. For all things are yours: whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or things present or things to come – all are yours. And you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.
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