The Cast of Your Dream on the Stage of Your Life: How Your Dreams Can Teach You To Pray Effectively

Week 5 (of 10) of the Dream Article Arc: Your Dreams, the Bible, and Carl Jung

A frightening figure in your dream is not what you think it is. Neither is the stranger you cannot place, nor the beautiful, radiant stranger. The friend from elementary school, or the ex-boyfriend from twenty years ago…still not what you think. Today, we discover that the cast of characters in your dreams can have an extensive catalog of meanings, or it could be reflecting a message you need to hear. A message that is tailored to the prayers you are praying, the needs you have in life, and the dreams that you are pursuing. The figures also convey a message about who God made you to be when the world tries to make you into something different.

Where We Are in the Journey

We are on the 5^th week of the Dreams article arc. If this is the first time you’ve read these articles, I invite you to read weeks one and two, where I discuss both the Biblical and historical early church’s belief in the significance of listening to your dreams. We also established that dreams are a primary mode of communication from God in Scripture, not something to be dismissed.

Over the last 3 weeks, we’ve looked at how dreams help develop and mature your soul for the work you are called to do, showing you where you may have ignored certain feelings or compensated in certain areas of your life. We also distinguish between symbol and sign.

This week, we consider the people in your dream:

· Is the person in your dream the literal person, or do they represent someone else?

· What can they reveal about your own inner life?

· How your dreams can teach you to pray effectively.

Let’s jump in.

My Returning Ex-Boyfriend

For nearly two decades after a painful breakup, and even into some of the first years of my happy marriage, my ex-boyfriend kept showing up in my dreams. At first, I did not know why he was showing up, so I would just use that opportunity to pray for him. I would wake up, register that he had appeared, say a prayer that he was doing well, and move on with my day. That felt like the responsible way to navigate these dreams. It also, I now see, missed everything the dream was actually trying to say.

As I began studying dreams from the Christian and Jungian traditions, I reconsidered why he was showing up in my dreams in the first place. In some dreams (not all), a person shows up to remind you of the season of your life in which they were a large part. When I was dating this boyfriend at age 17, I became clingy and co-dependent. It contributed greatly to why we broke up. In the years after that relationship, I worked hard at becoming someone who was secure with Christ within her. But when I was dreaming of my ex, it had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with the original wound within me: the fact that I felt I needed to earn love. I had done everything I could think of to heal from that wound of rejection, but these dreams were giving me clues that my original wound needed to be healed from a deeper place, beyond my intellect and doing what I knew to do in the natural realm; God wanted to heal me at a soul level.

With that awareness, I began to pray differently.

I began asking God to do the work only He could do at the level of the soul. I began poring over every dream I had had with my ex-boyfriend, and I saw how this realization unlocked each dream’s meaning. There were clues in each of these dreams that showed me how to pray for my soul's healing.

· In one dream, the loss of this boyfriend triggered great grief. I realized that I needed to ask God to help me express my emotions about rejection, not just from that relationship but from many significant relationships in my life.

· In another dream, the time I had spent with my boyfriend became an onramp into an expedited season of growth for God and me. I realized that God wanted me to heal from rejection so that it wouldn’t be a stumbling block between him and me.

As you can see, these dreams didn’t have anything to do with my boyfriend! My prayer life intensified, aligning with Jesus’ hopes and desires for my life. A life free from rejection!

For several years after this, the dreams kept coming, but I now knew what they meant: my ex-boyfriend represented a feeling of rejection that I needed to heal! So each time I dreamt of this person, I was now able to take another layer of rejection off my life! Bit by bit, God was healing me of a huge soul problem that could have run my soul’s direction if I had not understood these dreams!

I also:

· Used the dreams as a springboard of questions that I would journal with God about: Where was I performing instead of receiving? Where was I working for what had already been given?

· Recognized where rejection was working in other areas of my life: a boss, a parent, a sibling, or a new friend.

But here is the biggest transformation I want you to see: the dreams freed me from feelings of rejection and allowed me to feel love towards others instead. This was genuine fruit being produced in my life, fruit of the Spirit (love) that was bursting up out of me without me having to manufacture it.

Once the Lord did deep work within me, the dreams about my ex-boyfriend ended because I had received the message He was trying to give me.

People Rarely Represent Themselves

This is a key point, and most people who dream miss it: the people in your dreams rarely represent themselves. Those people can represent:

· A feeling or season of your life

· A soul wound

· Their name can mean something, or reveal a message to you

· Their archetype is being confronted in you (this is a topic we will cover in later articles)

· Only about 1% of the time do they actually represent themselves

Carl Jung utilized the term ‘projection’ to convey that the figures in our dreams carry qualities, fears, desires, or unresolved tensions in our own lives. The dream figure becomes a container of what the inner life needs to be resolved. The beauty of dreams is that they name the things that are so difficult for us to name (or face) ourselves.

In Genesis 32, Jacob wrestles with God until he gets God’s blessing. Jacob names the place Peniel: “I have seen God face to face and my life has been delivered.” God came to him in the night, and He was more than he appeared.

And what was Jacob’s posture? To not let go until he received the blessing. That is what we do every night when we don’t listen to our dreams. Leaning into what they mean helps you lean into the blessing.

How to Begin Working with the People in Your Dreams

When someone appears in your dream, ask:

· What three words would I use to describe this person?

· What role or archetype do they play?

· What season of my life were they in?

· Does their name mean something?

And then bring it to the Holy Spirit. Ask Him to show you what they represent, don’t “lean on your own understanding.” (Proverbs 3:5). Be prepared to receive an extravagant gift of love from God for the area you are least expecting to hear about.

1 John 4:18 says that perfect love casts out fear, and that fear and torment are working against love in your life. The figure who keeps returning in your dreams, whether you fear, or dread, or question, may be something within you that God wants to remove: some soul wound, or feeling of inadequacy. The Perfect love of God sends a dream so that you are not tormented in your soul. Let God heal the soul wound that the people in your dreams can represent.

Pause ~ Pray ~ Heal

Pause: Think of a figure who has appeared repeatedly in your dreams. What three words would you use to describe them. Write them down.

Pray: A prayer drawn from the story of Jacob wrestling.

Lord, I will wrestle with the people you sent to me in the night. I am willing to be changed by what it may mean. I am willing to limp away even as the Blessing appears in knowing you more. But I will not let go without a blessing. Show me what my dreams are holding for me. And help me to hold my life before You.

Heal: This week, when a person appears in your dream, try these practices. And let the Holy Spirit bring you into all truth.