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After graduating college, my husband Tim and I served as missionaries in Africa for a few years. Many times throughout my life I have reflected back to the experiences I had and the lessons that I learned during the time we were there.

In our youthful enthusiasm, Tim and I set out on a trip to visit our missionary friends. We followed what we had been taught as new missionaries in Zaire in 1974. We had our directions since there were no street signs or traffic lights on these dirt roads. There weren’t even any gas stations or other stores where we could stop to ask for help.

We had everything we needed in the car before we left – food, things to take to our friends, and plenty of gas to make the trip there and back. Not long after we left home, less than an hour into our trip, our car started having problems running properly.

Tim tinkered with the engine but it didn’t help. We prayed and asked the Lord for wisdom to know how to fix it so we could make it to our destination. We had really been looking forward to this trip. It became obvious that we couldn’t make it another hundred miles since the car would go no more than 25 miles per hour, so we turned around and limped home. I was confused and disappointed. Why God hadn’t answered our prayer?

When we returned home we had a mechanic at the missionary station who looked at the car for us. He was stunned by what he saw. He told us that the gas line was leaking directly onto the engine and that he had no idea how the engine kept from exploding. If we had continued the trip as we wanted, the engine certainly would have exploded and we probably would not have survived.

We were stunned! God knew what our need was even though we didn’t. He answered our prayer by making it impossible for us to continue our trip successfully, and by giving us the wisdom to turn around and head home. How thankful we were for His goodness!

Thank you God for protecting us, even when it is from our own desires. It blows me away that you know all of our needs and that you care enough to guide and protect us.

Following several years as a missionary, Dr. Ann Shorb began a career in counseling and is the founder of Christian Counseling & Educational Services in Hanover, PA. She provides a variety of services including pre-marital counseling and help with overcoming sexual addiction.

God speaks to people through many different ways. He communicates with people with thoughts or unnoticed feelings. Philippians 2:13 “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” He also communicates with a minor group of chosen people at more intense levels, like prophetic dreams, visions or even audible voices. For average believers like us, how can we separate what is from God and what is not? We can know better with some common points of the revelations from God, like their efficacy.

From the examples inside our Bible, we see that divine dreams are always beneficial to the dreamer or the faith community the dreamer belongs to. The dreams bring or signal the help from God. In the Book of Jeremiah chapter 23, the Jeremiah the Prophet criticized the false dreams. The false prophets claim to have got dreams from God where in fact they did not, because the dreams they claimed did not bring any benefits to the people.

The first book of Corinthians chapter 14 verse 3: he that prophesies speaks unto men to edification, exhortation and comfort. All dreams and visions should abide these criteria. Real revelations bring life, hope and love. It helps the dreamer with guidance. It delivers someone from bondage. It may be a turning point of a situation, the answer for a perplexed man.

In the Gospel of Matthew, there came the wise men from the east to Jerusalem. They observed star and knew that a great king is born. Herod the King heard about it and met them. They were instructed to report back the location of the baby. But after the wise men found baby Jesus and worshipped him, they received a dream from God which warned them not to return to Herod. This is one of the most important dreams in human history, because it protected the life of Jesus as the son of man and hence the lives of all His followers for He is the fulfillment of God’s salvation. Worthy is the Lamb!

God would also give dreams and visions about someone else also for the goods of the dreamers and the community. A fabulous example happened on Daniel the prophet. He was in the Babylon under the rule of Nebuchadnezzar. In an incident, he received a vision from God about the king’s dream and the whole group of people was saved as a result.

We are taught to judge a tree by its fruit. A real prophetic message whether by means of dreams or visions or any other form, if it was from God, the result it brings must reflect the characters of God. He has loving kindness. His mercy endures forever. He is just and true. He is the same yesterday, today and forever.

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God lives. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. We see He spoken to people in the ancient times in the Bible, therefore, we know that He still speaks today. One of the ways which He speaks is through dreams and visions. When we talk about this, the most frequently asked question is: How could we know whether the dream or vision was from God or just our own imaginations?

There are different denominations of the Church of Christ today. Some believe that God speaks frequently to each person, some believe the opposite. Whatever denomination you are in, we all agree that we must treasure the words of God and receive fearfully. We must stand in the middle of truth, avoiding the two extremes. If we treat every dream as divine revelation, this would cause serious problems and confusions. It is also clearly rebuked in the Bible (Book of Jeremiah 23). If we ignore all the dreams even the real divine ones, we would be missing importance guidance from God and disobeying the command of God in 1 Thessalonians not to despise prophesyings.

We should not despise prophesying but test every one of them with truth. Real divine dreams share some common characteristics; we could have some hints of whether a dream carries divine information from God by reviewing these characteristics. One of them is the intensity of the dreams or visions. A real divine dream almost always creates deep reflection within a person’s heart. Unlike a normal dream which are often unclear, illogical and random. During sleep, the brain rests and even during the working of dreams, it is only partially turned on. The normal mental abilities and activities are suppressed, resulting in the chaotic attributes of normal dreams.

In contrast, when divine dreams happen which are supposed to be caused by supernatural power of God, we enter into a different realm. The power is a kind of intrusion in nature, although God is tender and He does it gently. The intrusion of information carries divine power that would engage the whole person and affect his deepest being. We see this happened in the book of Genesis chapter 28. Jacob, the son of Isaac met God and saw the ladder to heaven in Bethel.

The power of the messages from God is likely to cause the receiver to react emotionally. Dreamers of divine dreams often find them more vivid and real then normal dreams. They could remember them clearly even after a long time, especially the message which God tries to communicate through the vision.

The powerful messages in divine dreams leave long term impression in someone’s mind. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. The divine revelations are given for the good to people who love God. Sometimes more than personal, God speaks to individuals about a group of people, nations or even the whole human race. The intensity of a dream provides us with a clue to judge its origin.

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