I was diagnosed with night terrors at age 3. I remember those extremely vivid nightmares and the absolute feeling of powerlessness. My mother did everything she could. And as a child, I was terrified of the night.
The enemy used this to build a deep fear in me about sleep and about what type of control he could have over me. For twenty years, I battled this demon. And then, early in my twenties, I woke up with yet another nightmare, but something had changed. My soul had finally found a way to battle. Before I was even awake, I screamed out, “In the name of Jesus, I break off this torture, I cast it out of my life forever, and I bind myself to Jesus’s perfect peace!” From that night forward, for the last 20 years, I have never had another nightmare…except one. More on that later in this article.
Where We Are on the Journey
We are now on week 7 of the dreams article arc, where we are building an understanding of how God speaks through dreams. If you are not a big dreamer, take heart because many of the stories in this series will help you remember your dreams or begin to build a better way of addressing them. We also cover the fact that dreams were regarded as God’s speech to us all through the Bible, and all the way into the 20th century, when Enlightenment and Rationalistic worldviews stopped the church from considering dreams. You can learn more about that in weeks 1 and 2 of this dream article arc.
This week, I am going to cover nightmares, because we need to be grounded in what they are and how they tend to operate.
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The Dream I Rebuked
I firmly believe that the nightmares I had as a child were sent by Satan to torment me, build fear into my life, and make me distrust the adults in my life. Those twenty years growing up were torturous at night, and I will never underestimate the fear that comes with that level of torment for a child or an adult. And if that is you, I really, truly am praying for you to get deliverance through this article today.
However, as Christians, we need to understand that God always uses these things for good, and I want to share with you the good this season taught me, without excusing how very difficult it was.
· I learned to lean very deeply into Jesus during that scary time. When I woke up from a nightmare, I made sure to use that time to pray for every single person or circumstance in my life that needed prayer. I wanted to make the devil pay for sending the nightmare!
· I learned how to recognize fear as a vehicle of torment (1 John 4) as opposed to fear as a vehicle of building my awe in God. This taught me a deep discernment of my feelings.
· I learned how to battle for my own victory. My mother did everything she knew to do to help me, including every prayer she could think of. But sometimes God is building a resilience in you to battle from a place of His power, not the power of others.
When I had my breakthrough at the age of 22, I never once had a nightmare since (except for one time I’m about to tell you). I now know how real the spiritual realm is and that God truly does help us overcome the evil one.
However, I have had one nightmare since then, and this may be a bit of a trigger warning if you need to jump down past the dream. Just meet us at the next sub-heading if you need to skip this. About ten years ago, the only nightmare since my deliverance preceded the most challenging season of my life.
In the dream, I was in the shower, and a man came in and stabbed me in the heart repeatedly. Blood was mingling with the water, and I could feel myself dying. I woke up at 1 am and was not able to return to sleep that night. I rebuked every devil I could think of and prayed through my house and over every relationship I could think of. Around 8 a.m., I finally fell back asleep for a few hours.
I did not know it then, but I was about to enter the single most difficult season of my life.
The nightmare I assumed was definitely from Satan, but because I had been delivered, I was terrified that I had lost my deliverance. Turns out, the nightmare was actually a dream sent to warn me about the next season of my life.
As we know from John 10, Satan is a stealer, killer and destroyer. In the dream, he came as a thief into my house and stabbed me in the heart, which is symbolic of your love for God, your passion for the work God has called you to, and the intimacy you’ve built with Jesus.
The nightmare I thought was from the devil was actually a message from God letting me know that the season ahead could potentially kill my heart and my soul. It was a message to be prepared that the enemy was going to try to sift me like wheat. And God wanted me to be aware that my own passion, intimacy, and love for God were the very things the enemy was trying to steal from me.
That season lasted for five years. And it took everything out of me. But my heart, my zeal, and my fire were preserved. At the time, I had rebuked the message intended to save me, but God, in His great mercy, helped my heart remain His, and helped me find His passion and love in a greater way. By God’s mercy, the message in the nightmare got through to me anyway, but it wasn’t until that season was over that I realised I hadn’t lost my deliverance; I had actually rebuked a message from God.
Why Would God Allow a Nightmare?
There is often a theological assumption that does not serve the church. The assumption is that if you are afraid, it’s not from God. But clearly God sends scary things, which is why many angels who appear in the Bible often say, “Do not be afraid!” In Ezekiel 33, the prophet receives scary messages about the people of God and is told that if he doesn’t deliver the message, blood would be on his own hands. I want us to be careful not to rebuke scary things just because they are scary. Instead, we ask God to help us discern whether the dream is from Him or the enemy.
In Daniel 7:15, Daniel receives a dream that makes him sick for three days. “As for me, Daniel, my spirit within me was anxious, and the visions of my head alarmed me.” In Job 7:14, Job talks about getting nightmares from God: “Then you scare me with dreams and terrify me with visions.” These verses let us know that God will absolutely send a nightmare to tell us of something that really needs our attention.
But there is another thing we must consider in the realm of nightmares, and that is, why would God allow us to receive a message from him as a nightmare?
>>>> HERE IS WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO GET
Even though God does send scary dreams, we need to understand His motives. In the nightmare I shared with you, God wanted me to realize that my soul dying was just as important to him as if my body was dying. We tend to overestimate the body, but God greatly esteems the soul. He loves your soul. He loves the Imago Dei within you, the image of God that He has built into your human life, and He loves and values it so much that He will risk sending a nightmare to wake you up and help you value the thing He values as well.
· He could use the nightmare to warn you about people you love, you pray for, or are intimate with
· He could use the nightmare to wake you up from a path that you are taking that is not from Him
· He could use the nightmare to save a people group, a nation, or a culture that you are sent to
· He could use the nightmare to warn you about Satan’s attempts on your soul, just like my nightmare was
The nightmare shakes us out of complacency so that we are truly hearing what He is saying to us. We may pray through the night, take action that we wouldn’t have taken before, or be alert about the motives of others; all because Jesus is shepherding our souls toward His perfect will for our lives.
How else could a nightmare show up in your life?
· Sometimes a nightmare could be compensatory, showing you, what emotions are aspects of your life you are ignoring at the expense of your soul. For example, they could be used to help you grieve the loss of a loved one and the nightmare helps you tap into emotions that your waking life keeps under wraps.
· Sometimes a nightmare, very similar to my example, could prepare you for a season that is ahead, in a prophetic sense. In those cases, God uses the nightmare to help you pray for yourself and what is coming, just like Jesus told Peter that he was praying for him with his 3x disowning of Jesus on the night he was betrayed.
· Sometimes a nightmare helps you process through trauma, and they can be used to heal you by giving your soul something to grieve and bring to God in prayer
· Once, I had a dream that was close to a nightmare, in that I was a girl who was trafficked for sex. I experienced in the dream everything a trafficked girl would experience; all of the emotions and fears were raw. When I woke up, the peace of God immediately wrapped me, and He said, “Now you know better how to pray for victims of sex trafficking.” I will never forget that dream.
But then again…not all nightmares are from God
This is a challenging dream category because it requires such discernment. As you can see from my own nightmare testimony, I did not know until 10 years later, when I was reflecting on this nightmare, that it was even sent from God. But you are reading this article, so I hope you will learn from my mistakes.
But what about the nightmare NOT sent by God?
I’ve been very detailed in the paid articles about how the early church used discernment in their dream practices and how discernment is a missing aspect of the church these days. Knowing if a dream is from the enemy requires real attention to discernment. Because a nightmare will result in making you shaken, scared, and sleepless, but those things are not indicators of whether it’s from God or not. What is an indication is that it will result in fruit in your soul: are you hopeless, further from God, oppressed by the devil? Most likely, it is Satan bringing the terror.
Also, rebuking the enemy is still a legitimate response when you wake up from a nightmare. Even if it is a nightmare sent from God, you do not want him to twist you into not receiving God’s message. He is a deceiver after all, and I think a faith-filled rebuke, where Jesus is called upon, can be extremely effective.
This week, in the paid Inner Room tier, I do a deep dive into discernment practices for the nightmare, as well as how to be delivered from your own nightmares sent by Satan to torture you. Subscribe here:
Pause ~ Pray ~ Heal
Pause: Hold a questionable dream before God now. Ask in faith for Him to help you discern it.
Pray: A prayer of St. Augustine:
“Lord, govern what I cannot govern. Purify what arises within me while I sleep and let nothing that comes in darkness possess my heart.”
Heal: Journal through what this article brought up for you and join us in the paid tier of the Inner Room for more discernment practices that you can put to work today.