So my dear Sister, I want to finish up my response to your letter today. It turned out that the issues you raised were quite sensitive that they required some good space to be properly addressed.
Last week, I told you why you cannot lose your faith in God’s direction on marital affairs or even the affairs of life generally simply because He spoke to you about someone for marriage and the person rejected you.
The summary of last week’s message is that even though God can choose to be infinitely omniscient, the clear evidence we see in scriptures leaves us with no other conclusion than that God seems to have limited his omniscience in respect of the choices and decisions of men in order to ensure we remained free will beings. If he accurately foreknows our thoughts and actions, then He has predetermined them. If he predetermines our thoughts and actions, then we HAVE TO think those thoughts and carry out those actions so that God will remain infallible. That being the case we are no longer free wills. We would have become robots and God didn’t plan to make men robots. He wanted beings who will love him and stay loyal to Him by choice because this is the only way true love can be proven.
Today I want to speak into the other aspect of your letter. The dreams you saw about this guy and the fleece you put out to further confirm the leading.
Clearly, God leads through dreams. There are 34 recorded instances in scriptures of God bringing direction or instructions through dreams. Twelve instances of these 34 occurred in the New Testament. So we can confirm that leading through dreams is a new testament phenomenon. But you know we must clearly distinguish between dreams that are a mere figment of our dominant thoughts weaved into different complex movies by the master playwright – our mind – and dreams that are inspired by God to convey a message. The challenge is that both ordinary dreams and “spectacular dreams” always appear similar in that they both occur in our sleep and use active images to convey their messages. I think that this is where the tendency to mistake an ordinary dream for a divine guidance lies.
I found that even though the book of Mathew while presenting the way God severally led Joseph the earthly father of Jesus describes divinely inspired dreams simply as “dreams” (the Angel of the Lord constantly appeared to him in his dream to bring instructions), in Acts 16:9, the bible described a divinely inspired dream as, “a vision appeared to Paul in the night.” So permit me to forthwith describe divinely inspired dreams as night visions as opposed to ordinary dreams which are a recreation of our dominant thoughts.
So how do you recognise if a dream is an ordinary dream or a night vision? The first thing you need to check is whether what you dreamed about has been in your thought. If it has been there, it’s most likely an ordinary dream. Your mind is just simply recreating your dominant thoughts in 3D. If the issue has not been in your thought and it passes the three other tests I’ll shortly share, then likely the message is from God.
Now if romantic thoughts about someone has already been activated in your mind before you start seeking God’s counsel concerning that person for marriage, a dream is no longer a safe medium for God to speak to you on the matter. If anything comes by way of a dream, don’t take it. Ask God for other confirmations.
From my personal walk with God, anytime God wanted me to be sure He was the one speaking to me about something emotional like a woman who has been in my thought, one thing God always did was to ensure I didn’t for once dream about the sister. He will just shut that realm completely. On an occasion I continued to ask God for extra confirmations and He brought myriad of them continuously for a space of six months during which the sister was always in my thought at least twenty hours in a day and I didn’t dream about the sister once. God brought the initial leading and other confirmations using other means so I’ll be sure it was Him.
Every time I have accepted a leading through a dream (night visions) on a matter including marriage, I had never prior thought about what or who God was speaking about in that light. This confirmed I wasn’t having an ordinary dream. The matter had never been in my mind. I had never thought of the sister in the light of marriage.
Second test which stems from my personal experience is that the setting of visions and the play of its images is often serious rather than lose. Ordinary dreams always carried a lose setting. The atmosphere even in the dream is usually unserious. There is always a way the atmosphere of every single night vision I’ve received of the Lord was serious and sacred.
Thirdly and very importantly, if it is a night vision, the message that God is passing across to you will float assuredly in your spirit as you rise up from the vision. Sometimes the message will be so urgent and impressive on your spirit that it will wake you up in the middle of the night. If you’re only remembering you had a dream midday, probe it before you accept it as a vision from God. Usually, if it’s a vision from God, latest as you’re opening your eyes in the morning, you’ll know you saw a vision and the message God is passing across will float in your spirit and your mind at the same time and it will be so sure that you won’t need anyone to tell you what God is trying to communicate. You will know it assuredly. If you needed someone to interpret the dream to know what it’s saying, I’m afraid it’s not a vision from God. I’m sure of what I’m telling you. By God’s grace, God has spoken a lot to me in the past through countless often spectacular night visions all of which have been confirmed and have stood sure after many years. Those that were prophetic have come to pass to the letters. There wasn’t a single time I needed someone to tell me what God was saying. I don’t know how God does it, the information will always float assuredly. I have compared notes with other brothers including one Bro. Kenneth Hagin on this and I found the experience is the same. More authoritative on this my assertion is the fact that there isn’t a single record in the new testament of anyone who God spoke to by dream (night vision) who didn’t know what God was saying assuredly and needed an outsider to interpret it.
Lastly and maybe most importantly, if it is a vision from God it will be in agreement with God’s word and God’s character. God cannot be speaking to you about a sister for instance by showing you a dream of the two of you in a romantic romp. That’s impure since you aren’t married to that sister yet. That can’t be God. His word forbids premarital sexual interactions. So if you see such, just know you have either been lusting after someone or have been taking in a lot of poisonous pictures. That’s not God speaking about marriage.
Let me warn that before you accept a dream as a night vision from God, the vision must pass all four tests or at least test one, three and four.
Now I want to encourage you not to hope to be led henceforth by way of a fleece. A fleece is saying “God if it is your will for me to marry Sister Carol, let her come to church today in a red gown.” And then she comes to church in a red gown and you’re like, this is a confirmation. We saw Gideon use this in the old testament but we haven’t seen any example of such in the new testament. The problem with this mode of leading is that you tie your conviction to something that can be a pure coincidence. Sister Carol’s red dress may have nothing to do with your prayer. More disturbingly, putting out a fleece is you commanding God to speak to you through a restricted means by compulsion. God is not your boy that you can restrict like that. None of us is able to dictate how God speaks to us on any question we bring to Him. Sometimes the question is so serious and delicate that you wish God can speak to you through a spectacular way like writing the answer on the sky because you think that will make you more sure and He chooses to communicate by way of an inward witness.
There are just too many reliable way of hearing from God in this era of the Spirit than for anyone to go for fleeces. He speaks reliably through the witness of the Spirit in your heart, through His word in a manner that is specific to you and your question that you’ll know the word is for you specifically, through the audible voice of the Holy Spirit that can be heard as though someone spoke to you face to face and sometimes through unmistakable circumstances reinforced by His witness in your heart. Even though I’m an ordinary brother, there is none of these ways that God hasn’t engaged more than three times to speak to me on several issues. Just saying, if He can speak to me a floor member, he can to you also.
Because I want this matter settled permanently, I will recommend a book written by one Bro. Kenneth E. Hagin for your careful reading. The book is titled “How you can be led by the Spirit of God.” I have both soft and hard copy if you care for. When you are done reading it, you should write me again so we can compare notes.
Love you Sister and please keep your faith strong and your confidence in God intact. His schemes will always succeed no matter who tries to delay it. He has everything figured out for you. Keep trusting Him.
Your Brother,
Peniela Akintujoye.
Write me via:
hello@lovestraighttalks.com
