Sid: And I want everyone everywhere to take one third of their life while they’re sleeping and be able to have dreams from God that they totally understand. My guest Mark Virkler has just put together a three CD set, five sessions and a workbook, titled “Hear God through Your Dreams.” And he believes that anyone that goes through this teaching in the tense tough times that are coming on planet earth are going to get redirection of jobs; are going to get Devine protection; Devine inspiration; solutions to problems; escape disasters. Can you image you are literally going to be excited before you go to sleep. Mark are you excited with expectation before you go to sleep that God’s going to speak to you?
Mark: I am and I tell my spirit to work on different things, if I got a problem that I’m in need of solving I ask for my heart to work on that and for God to give revelation. If I’m struggling to give counsel I ask for that, because I know my heart through dreams will work on that all night long and give me an answer to the question that I posed to it before I go to sleep at night.
Sid: Can you give me an example of someone that perhaps had a supernatural warning from God about something awful that would happen in their life; I mean a real life experience?
Mark: I can, it’s a lady that I talk to she’s actually part of our School and she’s in the California prison system currently serving a life sentence. She had grown up in California and her family moved her away when she was a young girl and in her teen years she wanted to go back to California and she received a dream at night and she shared this with me over the phone, she received the dream at night where the Lord clearly showed her if she went back to California she would go to prison. And she ignored that dream and she went back to California, she got involved in drugs. Her roommate was in drugs with her she actually killing or purposely killing her roommate alright when she was on drugs, she was tried for it and she is now spending doing a life prison sentence because she did not honor the counsel and the warning that God had given to her through a dream.
Sid: You know, God is such a good God that I believe he is speaking to us so clearly in dreams if we only understood the language. Speaking of understanding the language you had just touch a little bit about you approach symbolism different than just about anyone that I know. To me the way you approach it is easier and makes more sense than the way that most people do because each of us has different meanings to different symbols so therefore God can’t use the same symbol for everyone and say this is what it means as many people take that approach. Let’s take you, your about ready to go to sleep at night, you told me you have a pad next to your bed on a little table with a pencil ready to right down whatever God shows you; give me an example, and by the way that’s an act of faith in itself, that means you’re expecting to use it being pragmatic as I am I wouldn’t want to put that there if I wasn’t going to use it. Alright, what would you pray before you go to bed and take me kind of step by step of what occurs?
Mark: Whenever I go to sleep I’m going to lay there and I’m going to say, “Lord, will you give me a dream tonight?” A simple one line prayer, but, “Lord would you give me a dream tonight?”
Sid: I’m reminded of the scripture that “You have not because you ask not because you ask not.” But what happens if someone says Lord, would you give me a dream tonight and they wake up the next morning and they did not have a dream and maybe this goes on for a couple of nights? Most people would give up.
Mark: Well, okay if your heart wakes you up within five minutes of the dream ending you will recall the dreams. So you need to let your heart know that you want it to wake you up and you do that by saying, “I take dreams seriously, I believe they’re a message from God and I want God to speak to me through the dream. That’s a signal to your heart saying wake me up. When you put your paper next to your bed, that’s your signal to your heart saying, “Wake me up.” When your heart does wake you up you then immediately record your dream, you don’t say I’ll get it in the morning because you’ll forget it. You’ll immediately record it, that’s a signal to your heart saying I’m taking you seriously.
Sid: Now, I’m a little concerned about what you just said, Mark because I don’t want to be so alert that I’m woken up right after I have the dream, let’s suppose I have it not just as I wake up, but in the middle of the night, I’m afraid that’ll wake me up and get my mind active again. What do you think about that?
Mark: Well, you’re going to have your dream during the light sleep period anyway so you’re going to be almost awake anyway you won’t be totally groggy when you wake up. And if you wake up and you just take four or five minutes and you jot down the essence or the symbols and basic things of the dream you can drift right back off to sleep again and you can ask God to put you back to sleep. I mean you can ask for these kinds of things, He’ll honor those things and He’ll do it, alright.
Sid: Okay, so alright you’ve asked, you’ve received, you write down your dream on a piece of paper then what?
Mark: And then when I’m up in the morning and ready to interpret the dream I’m going to ask okay, what does that symbol mean and what does this symbol mean and what does this symbol mean to me and I’m going to a tune to flow once I ask the question, I’m going to go back and picture the dream, ask the question, “What’s the key action, what’s the key motion, what are the key symbols. I’m going to a tune to flow because I know that God’s voice sounds like flowing thoughts and flowing pictures out of my inner most being shall flow rivers of living water.
Sid: The key that you have is that you expect the Holy Spirit to do the interpretation rather than a book of formulas.
Mark: Exactly, that’s exactly right and the Holy Spirit will do the interpretation you know and He does it through the voice of God which comes to you through flowing thoughts and flowing pictures.
Sid: All right give me, if you will because I’m kind of like you, I want things in a logical order; give me some keys to hearing God’s interpretation of my dream.
Mark: Alright, well you want to quiet yourself down, you’re going to picture the dream; you’re going to ask the question, “What does this symbol mean; you are going to attune to flowing thoughts and then you’re going to write down the flow that comes back to you trusting that’s it’s the Holy Spirit in your heart communicating that to you. And of course once you have written out you’re interpretation you can bounce it off your spouse and your spiritual friends to make sure that they feel good that you’ve got the right interpretation. But those are the basic steps that I would take in interpreting the dream. And I would ask like, “What’s the key, what’s the key action of the dream? What’s the emotion of the dream?” If the key action is I’m falling then, I’ll say where in my life, yesterday was I falling, because the dream came out of yesterday, of what I was wrestling with. And I may say, “I know where I was falling.” I believe God was going to do this thing in my life and He didn’t do it and my faith was shook and I felt like I was shattered and I was falling into unbelief and doubt.” Alright the dream showed that I was flying like a bird, I’d say okay, yesterday where was I flying; and I said I know where, man I was just so free in the Spirit; the bonds of sin were broken; I was soaring in the Spirit it was an awesome day. So you ask where in my life am I experiencing that symbol right now? And then you write down what you receive back from the Lord. So you’re the key, the emotion of the dream, you want the key emotion and you want also the key action of the dream. You want those two written down.
Sid: Does it matter at all if the dreams are in black and white or Technicolor?
Mark: I don’t believe it matter at all, you know I’ve heard people suggest that it does but when I go back to the Bible there is no teaching on it either way alright, so the Bible is not going to need to clarify it. When I look at my own experience when I began to work with dreams I was a left brainer so my stuff was pretty black and white. And now I have moved over to the right side and so my dreams are more full color; so I just think it’s the way that we’re wired.
Sid: What if it’s a dream that you’re in it as opposed to a dream that you’re an observer; does that make a difference?
Mark: I think that that does tend to indicate one thing verses another. When Pharaoh was watching seven skinny cows and watching seven fat cows, he was just an observer of the action; it wasn’t it wasn’t really about stuff taking place in his heart, it was about the next fourteen years of his kingdom. So I think when we’re observers of the action of the dream that’s an indication that it’s about something outside of my heart. Something out there in real life that maybe is going to happen, where if I’m a participant in the action then it’s about struggle going on inside of my heart that I need to resolve and wrestle with.
Sid: Now, you’ve explained that the principal of dreams showed the screams of an unhealed heart, what do you mean by that?
Mark: Well, you know in my, you know I had a fifteen year dream you know and it didn’t go away and it was a scream of an unhealed heart saying look, you have fear down here. And you need to heal this fear and I’m going to come and show you that fear every single night in a dream until you come and apply some inner healing prayer, some deliverance prayer, whatever it takes and once you get it resolved then the scream is going to go away and you will not have that dream any more from that point on.
Sid: Mark, tell me one dream in your life that really made a difference.
Mark: Well, how about if I give you a dream from my wife’s life, from Patti’s. She went to bed mad this night and she said, she doesn’t remember why she was mad she just knew that she had a right to be angry and she was. And so in the dream she opens up the door to her house and there is a bull like a cartoon character bull standing outside on his hind feet; takes his front feet and knocks her glasses off her face and steps on them and crushes them. So she wakes up and she asked the question, well what emotion does a bull represent to me? And she said, “Well, I would usually put the word, angry with the bull, an angry bull.” So the bull is talking about anger, which she went to bed angry. And what’s the main action of the dream, the main action is he knocks the glasses off her face and crushes them. So what does that action symbolize? Well, it’s going to destroy your ability to see clearly and so the interpretation is when I open the door to anger in my life, I lose my ability to see things clearly. And that’s wonderful counsel saying you may have a right to be angry, but you don’t want to be angry because it’s going to devastate and wreck your life.
Sid: So you can be angry and the Bible says, sin not, but the more that you’re angry you just distort your vision; and who wants to have distorted vision.
