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A Dream Interpretation Journey
Starting in the second half of 1998, I recorded and studied my dreams. For the first two years, I made guesses about what they might mean, but I wasn’t confident about many of my interpretations. There were enough highlights, however, to let me know God was working. The most amazing of these started with the following dream:
I was Indiana Jones.[15] I was afraid that someone had stolen my credit card and was using it, but when I looked in my wallet, I saw that I had three credit cards. Then I was running from a person who was chasing me, and another man was running with me. We ran into a cage made out of razor wire, and I couldn’t escape. I cried out, threw myself against the razor wire, and wanted to die. Others were in the cage with me, and they were reaching out to me.
The fear and angst I felt when I woke up were intense. I needed to step back from my emotions in order to interpret the dream, but I gave it my best shot. Indiana Jones was an action movie character, so maybe God was telling me that I was a man of action. Thinking that I didn’t have a credit card could be symbolic for going through a time when it would look as if I didn’t have credit with God, but in reality, I had abundance of credit with Him (three credit cards). Being chased meant something scary might come after me, and the razor wire cage was symbolic for something extremely unpleasant. I hoped it wasn’t a picture of my future.
This dream brings up a common question. Could a dream that scares a person be from God? I believe it can be, and I generally assume it is until shown otherwise. Here are some principles for interpreting frightening dreams:
God doesn’t give us a spirit of fear (i.e. don’t panic) (2 Timothy 1:7).
A frightening dream may not be from the Lord, so there might not be any reason to be concerned.
If a frightening dream is from the Lord, it probably only tells part of the story. When the rest of the story is filled in, it may not be nearly as scary.
Remember this previously-shared principle: 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.
Emotions in a dream can be exaggerated. The emotions that show up in the real-life fulfillment of the dream may not be nearly as intense.
Some frightening dreams are foretelling possibilities we can avoid. They are warnings, and we can sidestep the scary problem by heeding the warning.
Some frightening dreams are pictures of the plans of darkness. They are a sort of spiritual reconnaissance in which God shows us what we are praying and fighting against. This may especially be true if a dream seems so evil that it is difficult to find any redeeming value in it. These dreams are not pictures of what will happen. They only tell us what the devil wants to have happen so we can resist Him (James 4:7).
Even if we can’t avoid a frightening situation symbolized in a dream, the hidden assumption we should always read into any scary dream is that God will be with us as we humble ourselves and follow Him through the danger (James 4:8).
I realize that these principles don’t take away every reason for fear. In fact, they may actually make scary dreams more frightening. You may be thinking, “Those dreams were bad enough when I thought they had nothing to do with real life. Now you are telling me they could actually be symbolic for something that may happen!”
Please remember the first principle above. “God doesn’t give us a spirit of fear (i.e. don’t panic).” When He speaks through a frightening dream, it comes to help us prepare for difficult circumstances. Isn’t that better than for those circumstances to catch us by surprise? The dream is a tool to help us find His grace in the middle of fears.
The Indiana Jones dream showed me running from someone. Was I running from something in real life? I didn’t need to look far to see I was.
I had spent the past nine years focusing on wisdom, and in the process, I had seen how my emotions tended to sabotage my life. In order to keep them from doing that, I had found ways to avoid them. I shut down unproductive anger. I didn’t let myself think about various temptations. I clung to truths that would stir me toward love and good works.
All of this worked pretty well – at least in terms of good decisions and the resulting benefits. Unfortunately, it hadn’t worked nearly as well for my emotional health. I had expected my emotions to gradually fall in line with the truth; instead, they had become increasingly divided. Parts of me loved walking with Jesus, but other parts felt that He was an unfair tyrant who had no right to demand that I do the impossible.
My tendency toward emotional dysregulation was asserting itself again, and it was dividing my heart as it pulled me in conflicting directions. There is a symptom of Borderline Personality Disorder called personality fragmentation. It is where a person’s emotions are so strong that they refuse to play nicely together.[16] The person becomes unable to work through internal disagreements, and his or her heart separates into warring factions.
This was happening to me. I had a “serve the Lord” faction, which worshipped, prayed, and did its best to follow Jesus. It motivated me to lay down my life for God and others. Yet I also had a “God is unfair” faction. It fell into fits of rage, created a daily pull toward addiction, and tried to sabotage much of what the “serve the Lord” faction was receiving from heaven.
The battle had progressed from annoying to threatening. I had become increasingly dissatisfied with life. I felt as if God had abandoned me to languish in inner turmoil that no human being could be expected to endure – and nothing seemed to fix that. I prayed, worshiped, obeyed, sought God, studied the Bible, hung out with Christians, ministered, let go and let God, grabbed hold and fought with all my might …nothing worked.
The best I seemed able to do was to quarantine the “God is unfair” faction so it wouldn’t come to the surface, and I had done that faithfully for many years. I controlled myself and trusted that God would heal or remove whatever was wrong before it broke into the open …yet it demanded control …so I prayed and sought Him more …and it grew worse …so I clamped down on my emotions with greater intensity …and they became furious.
Eventually, I felt as if explosives were being stockpiled in my soul, and I had to expend larger and larger amounts of energy to snuff out any fuse that might ignite them. It was as if an approaching emotional breakdown was chasing me, and no matter how fast I ran I couldn’t escape it.
I didn’t know anything about Borderline Personality Disorder at the time, so I didn’t realize that this was what emotional dysregulation can look like. I had also never heard a sincere Christian describe his experience in the way I would, so I felt alone in my struggles. There seemed to be something flawed at the foundation of my being – as if I was unfit to follow Jesus.
I had no theological grid to explain my experience. My faith told me to expect love, peace, joy … (Galatians 5:22), yet rage reached up to swallow me from beneath. Was I so sinful and wicked that even with all that God had done in my life it wasn’t enough to save me from being a hypocrite? I couldn’t make sense of what was happening.
The dream had shown me running from someone, and I believe this symbolized me running from the struggle I have just described. It defied what I believed a Christian should experience. For years I had hoped that Jesus would do something to reverse it, yet that hadn’t happened. It looked as if He was refusing to hear my prayers.
The day after I dreamed the Indian Jones dream, some extremely good events unfolded. My family came together in a way we hadn’t in over a year. I, however, was struck by the contrast between the good we experienced and my inner turmoil. No amount of positive news was going to fix my heart. I stared at the encroaching darkness within me and wondered how long I could continue to hold it off. Was it only a matter of time before either the explosives in my heart ignited or I had some sort of emotional breakdown?
I did remember a couple of times in my past when I had faced similar darkness and found answers. Those times had always involved embracing my emotions as valid parts of me no matter how messed up they were. I had learned to ride their sinful craziness, almost as if it was a wild horse, until God helped me to tame it into something healthy.
This approach had worked in the past – but it had taken time, and I had made mistakes along the way. The cost of emotional honesty was that I sometimes spoke or acted in ways that hurt those I loved.
I didn’t want to make any more of those sorts of mistakes, and I had largely avoided them for over ten years. I was happy with the benefits of that, yet the cost had been a fragmented personality. And unfortunately, the more fragmented it became, the more the explosives threatened to do the exact damage I was fighting so hard to avoid. The offended parts of me felt that I had sacrificed too much! They felt justified in trying to remake the world into their image, even if people were hurt in the process.
My heart pondered what I should do, and I found myself unravelling a terrifying knot. Was God saying to me that I needed to stop running from my inner turmoil?
I knew that for some time He had been showing me my need to face scary situations. Here is a song I had written several months earlier:
When the walls begin to crumble, demons breaking down the gate
When my heart begins to tremble, saying just escape
I will turn and face the darkness, waiting for my Lord’s command
God’s strong angels are around me; I will stand
Stand in the struggle; stay in the fight
Satan’s cruel darkness melts in the light
Stand in this hour for all God’s planned
Love overcomes fear; rise up and stand
The song fit my situation perfectly. My emotional life was crumbling. The demons were breaking down the gate. My heart was trembling, and I just wanted to escape. Was it time to turn and face the darkness?
The Indiana Jones dream showed me thinking my credit card had been stolen, which I suspected symbolized going through a time when it looked as if I had no credit with God. That certainly matched my situation; I had sought Him for years, and in this one vital area, it seemed that He had refused to answer. Yet the dream said that just the opposite was true: I had three credit cards. He had heard me and was answering.
Was there any good reason apart from the dream to conclude that this was the case? I believe there was. I knew that He had taught me for years with insights from the book of Proverbs, other books, and teachings. I was also hearing from Him through prophetic experiences like dreams. All of this supported the idea that there was much more of His grace in my life than my problems seemed to indicate.
I was closing in on an interpretation, but the evidence wasn’t enough to convince me to embrace my emotions and try to work through them. There was simply too much at stake; I was afraid I would ruin my life. It was only when I added the fact that every day I delayed made my problems worse that I decided to turn and face the darkness. If I didn’t change directions now, when would be a better time? I had already seen times when the poison within me had leaked out and hurt people. How much worse did that need to get before I would act?
Putting it all together, I decided to take the gamble of embracing my emotions and trusting Jesus to guide me through their insanity. I hoped He would do this in a way where I wouldn’t make serious mistakes, but I wasn’t sure if that would be the case. There was risk …yet it seemed best to roll the dice.
Looking back with hindsight, I can see that the Indiana Jones dream gave me even more reasons than I realized to take this step of faith. It portrayed me as Indiana Jones. If you had to go into a situation where you would face dark fears, is there anyone else you would rather be? He was an expert at walking into harm’s way. He might even come out with some sort of amazing treasure in his hands. God was telling me that I was ready for this challenge.
The razor wire cage was a picture of what I was about to face. The fuse I had been snuffing out was going to ignite, and the explosives stockpiled in my soul were going to painfully explode. Yet Jesus was going to be with me! He was the person in the dream who joined me in the cage, and the people reaching out to me were His people.
It is unlikely that a competent counselor would have recommended I do what I was about to attempt. I was going to face dangerous emotions with no trained human help to guide me. So much could have gone wrong …yet God had prepared me …it was time to run into that razor wire cage.
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