I was not raised in a Christian world that knew what to do with dreams.
I knew Scripture. I knew prayer. I knew how to pursue God with sincerity and discipline. But when it came to the inner life, to images that surfaced in the night, to experiences that did not fit into clear theological categories, there was no framework. Dreams were either ignored or quietly dismissed as irrelevant, something closer to imagination than revelation.
And yet, they would not leave me alone.
And there is something here that still unsettles me. Across the world, people are encountering Christ in dreams. Entire testimonies begin in the night. Jesus meets people where there is no access to Scripture, no preacher, no church building. He comes through image, encounter, and presence. Whole villages are saved and transformed – based on a dream.
And yet, in much of the Western Church, we quietly move past this.
At best, dreams are treated as occasional signals about calling. At worst, they are dismissed entirely. But what if that framework is far too small for what Scripture actually presents? What if dreams are not primarily about revealing your future, but about exposing what in you is not yet aligned with Christ?
“In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.”
(Acts 2:17, NIV)
This is where Jung’s insight becomes unexpectedly helpful. Dreams bring forward what we suppress. They expose patterns we avoid. They reveal tensions, wounds, and contradictions that remain hidden in waking life.
Not to condemn you, but to form you. Because you cannot live fully in your calling while remaining fragmented within.
Where We Are in the Journey
Week by week, we are unrolling a systematic theology of psychological wholeness, one that refuses to separate the life of the soul from the life of the Spirit
We are reclaiming the psyche not as something suspect, but as the very terrain where transformation, healing, and sanctification take place
We are learning that without the formation of the inner life, spiritual practice becomes shallow, performative, and ultimately unsustainable
And we are rooting this work in contemplative Christianity, where silence, attention, and interior awareness create space for God to meet us beyond words and into the depths
Dreams Have Always Been Part of God’s Language
So, I began to consider: what if I took dreams seriously, as Jung did? When I returned to Scripture with new eyes, I began to notice something that had been there all along, quietly waiting for me to see it.
Dreams were never treated as random or disposable. They carried weight. They interrupted history. They revealed what could not yet be seen in waking life. Joseph dreams of sheaves bowing and stars aligning, and those images contain his future long before it unfolds. Daniel interprets visions that no one else can understand, not because he is more analytical, but because he has learned to see symbolically. The Magi are warned in a dream. Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus, is guided in the night.
Again and again, God chooses to speak in images that must be received, not controlled.
This creates tension for us. We have been formed to trust what is clear, what is direct, what can be explained. Dreams do not offer that kind of clarity. They arrive uninvited. They resist immediate interpretation. They require patience. And because of that, we often decide they must not matter.
But Scripture never makes that decision. In fact, an entire one-third of the Bible is dreams, visions, or prophecies – symbolic language for incredibly important truths.
Jung and the Refusal to Dismiss the Soul
Years later, when I encountered Jung, I realized he had spent his life paying attention to the very thing I had been taught to ignore. He believed dreams were not mental leftovers. He believed they were communications from the depths of the soul, written in a symbolic language that unfolds over time. He described the dream as a hidden door into the most secret places of the inner life. Not something to solve, but something to listen to.
And suddenly, something began to come together.
Because Scripture and Jung, though speaking from different worlds, are both pointing toward the same reality. Human beings are not only rational. We are symbolic. We are addressed not only through ideas, but through images that carry meaning beneath the surface.
A lion is not just a lion. A storm is not just weather. A child is not simply a child. These images carry weight across both Scripture and the inner life. The lion may reflect power that has not yet been integrated. The storm may mirror chaos that has not yet been faced. The child may point to something in you that is waiting to be brought into new life.
Dreams are not primarily about predicting what will happen to you. They are about revealing what is happening within you.
A Story from the Depths
Before Jung ever wrote a book or formed a theory, he was a boy who could not ignore what he saw in his dreams. He recorded them, returned to them, and noticed something that would shape the rest of his life. The images did not disappear. They repeated. They transformed. They resisted simple explanation.
While others were focused on what could be measured and observed, Jung began asking a different kind of question. Why do dreams feel more truthful than waking life? Why do people across cultures encounter the same kinds of images, the same figures, the same patterns? And what if these images are not only about the past, but about what is being formed in us?
He eventually came to a conclusion that most people still resist. Dreams are not chaotic fragments. They are structured communications. They reveal an inner reality that is already present, even when we are not consciously aware of it.
In his clinical work, even among those who appeared most fragmented, he found order beneath the surface. Patterns. Meaning. A kind of intelligence within the soul that refused to be reduced to randomness.
The soul was not silent. It was speaking.
The Blind Spot We Rarely Name
I have already developed some of my dreams in previous articles; however, what I want to do in this article is explain how paying attention to my dreams has ordered my Christian life. Every morning, my husband and I have devotionals together. Often, we will tell each other our dreams. We discuss what the possible meanings could be and why certain symbols stand out. In this way, a few things have radically changed in my walk with Christ because I’ve integrated dreams into my life:
· I see my own weaknesses or failings more quickly and am able to bring them to Christ’s light in repentance and desire for transformation
· I am able to study the Bible in the language it was written in: symbols
· I am able to integrate my body and my feelings into my Christian experience; something we are rarely taught to do
· My depth of relationship grows with Christ because I am listening to ways He is speaking to me: in symbols through dreams and synchronicities
There were moments where I would wake up with a sense that something had happened, not just mentally, but spiritually. Not always clearly, not always comfortably, but with weight. With presence. With the kind of impression that lingers long after the images themselves begin to fade. I have learned to let dreams impact me. Looking back, I can see something I could not see then. God was already speaking in a way I had never been taught to recognize. Perhaps you are feeling that stirring as well.
Where This Becomes Personal
This is the moment where everything shifts.
It is one thing to talk about dreams as a concept. It is another thing to allow them to confront you. Because this is where the dream stops being interesting and starts becoming revealing. It begins to show you something about yourself that you would not have chosen to see. It presses against the version of you that you have learned to present to the world.
And this is why most people turn away.
“For God speaks in one way, and in two, though man does not perceive it.
In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on men…”
(Job 33:14–15, ESV)
That means the issue is not always whether God is speaking. The issue is whether we have been formed to recognize His voice when it comes in a form we cannot control.
So the question is not simply whether your dreams matter. The question is what you might be avoiding by ignoring them.
→ Step Into the Inner Room
Inside the Inner Room, the paid subscriber tier, this is where we move beyond reflection and into formation. I teach how to engage dreams in a way that leads to transformation, not confusion. We explore how dreams reveal patterns of sin and misalignment, how to discern between psychological material and the movement of the Spirit, and how to integrate what is revealed so that you can live more fully in Christ.
This is not about chasing experiences. It is about becoming whole.
Pause • Pray • Heal
Pause
Sit quietly for a few moments and allow your body to settle. Recall a recent dream, even if only fragments remain.
Pray
This is a prayer from St. Augustine:
“Late have I loved You, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new.
You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for You…
You called, You cried out, and shattered my deafness.
You were radiant and resplendent, You put to flight my blindness.”
Heal
What if the parts of you that feel most confusing are not broken, but waiting to be understood?
Next week, we will step deeper into this world by exploring symbol and archetype, and how Scripture and the structure of the soul together reveal the patterns shaping your life.
In the meantime, what are your thoughts about dreams and their possible meanings after reading this article?
Very nice. Towards the pathway to wholeness, learning more about this ancient reality is quite compelling. Thanks for raising awareness. Curious how an individual who is internally hungry for deeper integration of the self can partner with the Holy Spirit to better steward this in their own life?
I agree that dreams can be a reflection of the soul and/or the Spirit realm. I don’t always remember my dreams but when I do, they reflect either something from my psyche or the Holy Spirit. If I do remember them, I ponder the symbols and ask the Lord to reveal the meanings. I still recall in detail a prophetic dream from 1997 that came to pass. I have thought of keeping a journal of dreams but haven’t done that yet. I know God speaks through dreams at times but sometimes it remains a mystery as to the meaning. Recently I’ve been having dreams with a recurring theme that is more relevant to my soul than prophetic. I don’t know what to do with it except think of them as a mirror. And seek the Lord.