Sid Roth

Sid: As a matter of fact I can’t understand how someone can even exist in this thing called life if you’re just a lukewarm Christian, I mean you’re mashugah, that’s a Hebrew word for you’re crazy.  I mean there is no other position once you’ve tasted the good things of God go all the way, go for the gold.  And according to the prophet Joel in the second chapter, you’re very familiar with it because that’s also quoted in the New Covenant in the second chapter of Joel 2:28 says “In the last days God’s going to pour out His spirit on all flesh.”  If you haven’t checked lately the thermometer we’re in the last days. He said that “Were going to have dreams and visions.”  And that’s why my guest is Jane Hamon, she is co-Pastor with her husband of Christian International Family Church in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida.  Many of you are familiar with her father-in-law Bill Hamon, a father of prophets if you will.  On yesterday’s broadcast I posed a question, and my question is, yes I do get dreams, and as a matter of fact I have had a couple of dreams that were not symbolic and I have said to God many times…and the ones that were not symbolic I mean they were literal dreams and they were wonderful dreams and it affected my entire future as a result as following it was almost like God told me to do something.  And He did not want me to make any mistakes so He literally showed it to me.  And I thought that was wonderful and I have prayed to God and I’ve said “God, just give me literal dreams and I will do them.”  But most of my dreams Jane are symbolic and I’m just so pragmatic and practical and I question my understanding of these dream. Have you ever felt that way and said “Lord why don’t You just tell me straight on and what is this symbolism business?”

Jane:  (Laughing) I absolutely have felt that way. You know Sid what I realized was that when Jesus came and began to teach the crowds even he taught through symbols because He communicated to the crowds thought things that we’ve come to call parables.  And really the parables are stories that what the scripture has to say many people in the crowd had no idea what He was talking about because they had symbolic messages.  And the truth is that whether we’re reading the Old Covenant or whether we’re reading the New Covenant we have to understand that God has always used symbols to communicate some of the truth that He wants to get across to us.  In the book of Isaiah when it says that we’re going to mount up with wings as eagles as we wait upon the Lord I don’t think that means that were going to sprout feathers and go jumping off of cliffs. (Laughing) I think that God is intending for us to understand that when He speaks to us in a picture that there’s a depth and a wealth of meaning that comes to us whenever we are communicated to in picture form.  A picture is worth a thousand words.

Sid: Listen I have a copy of your book “Dreams and Visions” here it’s a very simplistic, practical Biblical book that answers a lot of questions that I’ll pose to you this week and I’m sure a lot of other people have.  How did you happen to write this book?

Jane:   I felt the challenge really as I have been pastoring a church of very prophetic people that I found that many people were receiving dreams from the Lord but they really had no idea what to do with the dreams they had received.  On the other hand many people were telling me “Well, this one and that one get dreams but I don’t ever get a dream.”  And I believe that scientifically it’s proven that we all dream, I don’t believe that every dream is from God. I believe that there are dreams that are just fleshly or carnal dreams. I believe that there’s demonic dreams I believe that there are dreams that are very much spiritual dreams.  I wanted to write in a simple as form as I could a little bit of guide to help believers prophetic believers that are hearing from God be able to respond to what God is saying in a very proper, a very balanced and a very practical way to be able to aid in their Christian growth, and to be able to really prophetically discern the signs of the times.

Sid: But Jane this is not a book that you just sat down one day and researched, this is almost like a life book message because you not only teach based on the Bible, but you then give experiences and then explain them from the Bible.

Jane:  That’s right you know I had to go back; you know when I started having the experiences of dreams and visions I honestly to be just really honest I never heard one person ever tell me God speaks in dreams.  So I went back and started studying the scriptures, I started looking for dreams, for visions, and for prophecy.  Of course we got the prophets and the major-prophets and the minor-prophets and those are fairly obvious but what I found is that there is actually over 50 references to dreams and visions in the Bible.  And actually the entire foundation of the Jewish race actually came in Genesis chapter 15 when God dealt with a man named Abram who had a vision and then who had a dream.  And God actually cut covenant with Abraham in a dream. So I felt like this was very important to look at as part of our Christian foundation. That if Abraham was communicated within a dream, Jacob and Joseph and Solomon and Daniel and so many others both in the Old Covenant as well as in the New Covenant we find that God has always communicated to His people words of direction, words of comfort, words of insight, words of promise through dreams and through visions.

Sid: You know you quote proverbs 29 verse 18 and then give the Hebrew understanding of it.  Proverbs 29:18 says “Where there is no vision the people perish” but in the Hebrew it means “Where there is no vision or communication from the Lord the people perish.”  That’s strong!

Jane:  That’s a very strong word and I believe that being prophetic is not a sideline issue with God whatsoever.  I mean I believer that being prophetic is very much a mainstream part of our Christian walk, it’s really no optional.  I believe that we need to hear the voice of God, we need to live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.  Obviously the written word, but also that that those things that God is uttering forth to us today.  You know in the Old Testament and Numbers chapter 12 verse 6 it says “If there be a prophet among you I will make myself known to him in a vision and I’ll speak to him in a dream.”  But that was during a time when God was really only speaking to a prophet here, or a prophet there to be able to be His mouth piece to His people; to be able to speak His mind and His purposes.  But we’re living in a day where God hasn’t just singled out just a prophet here or a prophet there, but He has an entire prophetic generation that He’s pouring His Spirit out upon.  As He’s pouring His Spirit out upon us we’re receiving power, we’re receiving revelation, and we’re receiving that unction of the Spirit to go out and change the world.

Sid: Now on yesterday’s broadcast, and we didn’t have enough time to pick up on it. You said that some people tell you they don’t dream and yet you said from a physiological viewpoint everyone dreams.  But if someone doesn’t remember their dreams it’s just like not dreaming what should they do?

Jane: Well, some of it is that sometimes we have not because we ask not and if you don’t actually realize that God wants to speak to you in a dream then you would have the approach that I said on yesterday’s program “Oh, it’s just a dream, it’s just an imagination, it’s really has no value for my life.”  But if you recognize that there’s value even when you sleeping that God can be communicating to you and speaking to you about things then you can pray.  What I recognize to people is to pray and ask God to give you a dream, and number two and be able to alert, and I know that that’s hard when you’re sleeping.  But believe it or not you can actually train yourself to sleep in a state of alertness ready to the voice of God.  Now one….

Sid: Now let me ask you a question you talk about having a piece of paper and writing your dream down.  But I don’t like to do that because I’m afraid that will wake me up and I won’t be able to go back to sleep.

Jane:  Well, there is a level of commitment when you are getting used to the concept of remembering your dream and that’s really the problem   Because I remember one time I pray I said “God I really need an answer about a certain situation” and I prayed and asked the Lord about it, and in the middle of the night I woke up and I had the most phenomenal dream.  It answered every question in life I ever asked for and I thought there’s no way…

Sid: I want that dream.

Jane:  (Laughing) I thought there’s no way I’ll ever forget that dream and I rolled over and I went back to sleep and in the morning I knew I had a dream but I couldn’t remember it.

Sid: That would motivate me to want to write it down.

Jane:  You know there is and if you don’t like writing things down I recommend to people maybe keep a little tape recorder that you can just pull off your bedside table, just click it on, just give the details of the dream. In Daniel chapter 7 it says “That Daniel just wrote down the main details of the dream,” you don’t have to go into…

Sid: Okay, you wake up in the morning you remember your dream you don’t have a clue at what God’s saying because it’s one of the symbolic dreams what do you do?

Jane:  Well, what I do is I found a really good pattern in the scripture for kind of breaking a dream down when Jesus gave the parable of the sower of the wheat and the tares. What He did He kind of…He gave them the whole story first, and then He went back and He kind of started breaking it down into bite size pieces.  So what I recommend is write the entire dream, or I want to say, or vision and basically the difference between the two is that the dream happens when your asleep and the vision happens when you’re awake okay. So write it down in its entirety and include the main details, and include the way it made you feel.  Did you feel alarmed? Did you feel at peace? Did you feel like you needed to pray? What did it make you feel? Because sometimes that’s part of God’s alerting spirit.  Then we like to take it and break it down into little symbols, each symbol and I like to make a list down one side of the page.  And then as I write by each symbol maybe the first two or three words that come to my mind.  Now some people say “Well, that’s leaning to the mind” but we have to remember we have the mind of Christ and the thing about symbols that I think is very important for the Body of Christ to understand is that is that there is no book of symbols, I wished that there was.

Sid: Yet, you do list a number of symbols in your book.

Jane:  And I do I list a number of symbols and what I do is I give an understanding of how I arrived at what that symbol meant to me okay. Now…

Sid: You know and this is awful I hate to stop but we’re out of time.