Greetings,
You
are waking up in a cold sweat. Your heart is frantically beating, trying to
escape from its place in your chest. You have stress, anxiety and fear all at
the same time. Surrounded by darkness, you are trying to collect your thoughts.
Your palms are sweating, and you're
breathing is heavy. What is going on? As the moments pass ,you begin to settle
down. There is no threat. You are safely in your bed. Then you realize that it
was all a dream. Or should I say, a nightmare?
Nightmares
are the dreams that no one wants to have. They are scary, disturbing, and
unpleasant. The evil that accompanies them can be felt, sometimes even after we
have awakened from them. We have been in a long series on spiritual warfare. This
week we will learn how to apply spiritual warfare techniques to solve the
problem of nightmares.
The
first thing that we need to understand about dreams is that they have three
main sources.
1. Dreams
can be inspired by the Holy Spirit (the kingdom of light)
2. Dreams
can be inspired by our own anxieties, passions, and experiences
3. Dreams
can be inspired by demonic entities (the kingdom of darkness)
True nightmares are often inspired
from the kingdom of darkness. While we can have "nightmares" that are
not inspired by the kingdom of darkness, these are not the ones that this email
is going to focus on. How can we tell the difference? When the nightmares
include a component of evil that can be "felt," it is a good
indicator that the dream has been inspired by the kingdom of darkness. If the
source is normal stress or anxiety, the dreams are typically not much more than
unpleasant.
For instance, when I was waiting
tables years ago I had a dream that I was waiting on two tables at opposite
ends of a mall! No matter how hard I tried it was impossible to keep up with
the pace of the meal that these guests were trying to enjoy. This dream was
unpleasant by every definition, and I could feel overwhelming stress the whole
time. However, without a "presence" of evil in dream, this
"nightmare" was most likely not inspired by the kingdom of darkness.
On another occasion (years ago) I had
what I will consider a true nightmare. In this situation, I had a sinking
feeling throughout the entire dream. As it continued, I kept going lower and
lower into this sewer type area. The lower I went, the more threatened I felt.
Eventually I encountered this guy that keep pushing me back. The further back I
was pushed, the more the feeling of threat increased. At the end of the dream I
found myself isolated in what seemed like a cell, awaiting impending doom.
Instead of sticking around for the inevitable, I woke myself up. I immediately
began to pray.
I have had many unpleasant
experiences in my sleep that were distributed to me by the kingdom of darkness.
Some of you reading this may be resonating with my experience. You may have
experienced death, torture, terror, worst case scenarios, violence,
humiliation, or things that are even worse in dreams.
I have learned that the enemy is
always going to be a coward. Instead of confronting peoples strongest points,
he will always prey on their weaknesses. He also never sleeps. The enemy is
just as interested in attacking people in their sleep as he is during their
waking hours. In order to sabotage his efforts to attack me in my sleep, what I
do is prepare. Since I am not going to be conscious in order to conduct any
necessary spiritual warfare, I have to make sure that I won't have to. You can
think about it like this. Who is safer: the man who sleeps in the grass in the
middle of a large field or the man who sleeps in a fortress surrounded by armed
guards.
Many people don't consider that
because we are members of the kingdom of light, we actually have the ability to
go to sleep in a spiritual fortress. Instead of taking advantage of these
potential sleeping conditions, many Christians opt to simply sleep with no
defenses. These vulnerable Christians will inevitably suffer more attacks in
their sleep. This will be especially true when personal revival for the
individual begins to take place.
In order to go to sleep in a
spiritual fortress, we have to rely on the spiritual principles that God has
given us. He gave us a tongue with which to speak. As we speak in faith, our
spoken (not politely thought in our head) words will actually create realities
in the spirit realm. This is why the Bible says death and life are in the power
of the tongue, and those that love it will eat of its fruit (Proverbs 18:21).
We use our tongue to speak out the situation that we will be sleeping in.
The next step is to use the promises
that God has given us. The way promises work in the Christian faith is that we
have to give our yes to God's yes. In other words, there are promises that are
waiting for us to grab a hold of. However, before we experience their impact we
have to agree with them and begin to declare them with our mouths. According to
the following verse, we see that God has already given His yes and His Amen to
all of His promises towards us. By agreeing with His promises and experiencing
their impact, we will actually bring God glory.
"For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us." (2
Corinthians 1:20)
Understanding this, our next step is
to find our ideal sleeping conditions in His Word. The following are the
scriptures and quotes that I speak over myself before going to sleep every
night. By doing this prior to going to sleep every night, I rarely if ever have
to deal with nightmares.
Scriptures
"When thou liest down, thou
shalt not be afraid: yea, thou shalt lie down, and thy sleep shall be sweet."
(Proverbs 3:24)
"There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any
plague come nigh thy dwelling." (Psalm 91:10)
"No weapon formed against thee
shall prosper" (Isaiah 54 :17)
"I will say of
the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I
trust." (Psalm 91:2)
"So shall they fear the name of
the LORD from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall
lift up a standard against him." (Isaiah 59:19)
Quotes
"Father, I cancel all nightmares
in Jesus' name. I thank you in advance that tonight all of my dreams will be
inspired by Your Holy Spirit."
"Father, I pray right now that a
hedge of protection is established round about my house (based on Job 1:10)"
"Father, I pray that angels
would guard this house round about, both above and below, in the name of Jesus
(based on Psalm 91:11, Matthew 26:53, Hebrews 1:14)"
"Father, I plead the blood of
Jesus over myself, my house, and all of my property in the name of Jesus (based
on Revelation 12:11)"
"Father, I pray that every
curse, hex, spell, divination, demon, human spirit, form of voodoo, spiritual assignment,
and any other unnamed work of darkness sent against me be rendered powerless in
the name of Jesus (based on Luke 10:19)" [note: in some cases you can even
pray that these things would be reversed upon the heads of the senders that
they would know that Jesus is Lord... it works]
Happy sleeping!
