Job chapter 33 and verse 15, In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls upon man, and slumbering is upon the bed. And finally Acts chapter 2 and verse 17, probably the most definitive verse, And it will occur in the end time, says God, that I will pour out from my spirit unto every kind of person, and your sons and your daughters will prophesy, and your young people will see visions, and your seniors will have dreams. So dreams and visions are mentioned very clearly in the scriptures as being part of what God is doing and will do in the church.

We're going to be covering this specifically related to the prophetic ministry. Now dreams and visions are very very important as a vehicle for ministry and I'm going to be showing you how they operate and how you can use them in your prophetic ministry. What is the difference between visions and dreams? They have a lot of similarities but they're not exactly the same.

So I'm going to be covering the two of them separately so you can see the differences between them. The first and most important thing that you need to realize even before we go and look at this from a supernatural viewpoint or from a point of ministry, is the fact that everybody has dreams and visions. Everybody.

Everybody has dreams and visions. Now I'm not only even speaking about Christians and born-again believers. Every human being has dreams and visions.

But when we come into the realm of the prophetic ministry, dreams and visions have a very special place. And so that's why we're going to discuss in detail how to use it in ministry. So I'll start first by looking at visions and then after that we'll go and we'll look at dreams.

And we're going to cover it in a fair amount of detail. I'm going to show you how these things work, how you can use them, how you can interpret them and make the best use of them in your prophetic ministry. So we start then with visions.

As I said, everybody has dreams and visions. So looking specifically at visions, everybody has visions. But not all visions are from God.

Let's make this very clear. Not all visions are from God. Seeing visions is actually a natural process.

But it can become a spiritual process. But seeing visions is actually perfectly natural. Now many people, as they begin to move into ministry, say, oh I wish I could see a vision.

I wish I could see a vision. Are you human? If you are human, you've already seen visions, just not aware that they were visions. Seeing a vision is a natural process.

And if you are a believer, you have definitely seen visions. But I want to explain to you the difference between natural visions and the other kind of visions. So we're going to start firstly by looking at natural visions.

So you can understand what they are, how they come and how you can tell the difference between what is a natural vision and what's not a natural vision. Visions are part of our human makeup. Now I often use this little chart here to illustrate the way God made us.

We're made as a tripartite being, which means we have three parts to our being. The external part, the body. The inner part, the soul.

And the innermost part, the spirit. I've taught this extensively everywhere, so I don't need to explain it now. However, what I'd like to explain is what I've got in this chart down here, which is laid out slightly different.

Instead of looking at it in three circles, I've laid it out as layers. And so we have the spirit, the soul, and the body. Now within the spirit is where the Holy Spirit resides when you are a born-again believer.

The Holy Spirit is dwelling inside of your spirit. He doesn't live in your soul or body, although strictly speaking he is, because the spirit's right in the center. So yes, the spirit is within the whole person.

But the Holy Spirit especially has become united with your human spirit from the day that you were born again. Now when it comes to the realm of the soul, we have the three main functions of the soul, which are mind, emotions, and the will. Now I'd like to look at the mind specifically, because the mind is what is involved in seeing visions.

The reason being that the ability to see, being one of the five senses, actually is communicated inwards via the mind. Now when you see something from your body, that information is communicated downwards into the soul, into your mind. But the moment you use the word mind, it now starts to get a bit complicated, and psychologists have coined a new term now for the mind, which they call the subconscious mind.

So I'm going to explain to you very quickly the difference between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. The mind itself sits in the soul, but where the soul and the body join together, which is usually in the brain, we have the conscious mind. Okay, that's the thoughts that you have while you're awake, and you're thinking.

All the thoughts that are going through your mind right now, that you are conscious of, is your conscious mind. But a lot of what enters here into the conscious mind, over time begins to sink down deeper into another place here, a kind of a storage area, if you like, which is the subconscious mind. Now if you know a little bit about computers, I can explain the conscious mind and the subconscious mind to you using a bit of computer terminology.

If you've got a computer, you'll know that there's two storage areas in a computer. The one is called the memory, or the RAM. We usually like to try and put a large amount of RAM in the computer, because the RAM, or the usable memory of the computer, is the place where all the transactions are taking place, where all the programs are being run, or while you're working on the computer, everything that's happening right then is taking place within the memory, or the RAM of the computer.

But you don't keep the information in the RAM. When you switch the computer off, the RAM empties, and there's nothing in it. So to store your information permanently, so you can use it later, we have a hard drive, a hard disk, a large storage area in the computer.

So when we feed information in to the memory of the computer, we tell our program to take that data and store some of it away onto the hard drive, so that if we need it later, we can bring it back again. Okay? Make sense? So the RAM is like your conscious mind. It's the part that you're working with right now, and the subconscious mind is like the hard disk.

It's got all the information stored that you might want to use later. And so if you think of the subconscious mind as being the hard drive of your human computer, that has stored everything that you've put in during your lifetime. It's all hidden away there, but it's too big for you to remember at all.

You can't remember every moment of your life, especially if you've lived a long time. But it's stored away there, ready to be pulled out again. Okay? Okay, that's the technical lesson over.

Now visions, visions come from the subconscious mind, what we call a vision. Okay? How does a vision come? Information that you over time have fed deep down has got stored away in your deeper memory, at times will begin to come back out again. Okay? When you see something, receive it in the beginning, it goes into your mind, and eventually settles down into the subconscious.

When you get a vision, all that's happened is the process has come in reverse. In other words, you weren't thinking about it, it wasn't in your mind, but now it comes up from deep within. From where? From your memory, because those are pictures that you put down there before.

So when you see a vision in the natural process, a natural vision, what you're actually doing is you're seeing images that you put down in there maybe years ago, and they come back up out again into your mind. It's a natural, normal process. Okay? There's nothing super-duper or supernatural about it in any way.

And it's seldom original, because all that can come up out of your subconscious is what you put down in there in the first place. So if you never put anything in the subconscious in the first place, there's nothing to come out. Okay? So when you get a natural vision, you will always see something that you've seen before.

You may not even have fully remembered it, but when it comes back out, you say, that looks familiar, I've seen that before somewhere. You know, sometimes the world have coined a little term which they call déjà vu, which of course is slightly different, but déjà vu is the same sort of thing where you suddenly find yourself in circumstances and you say, I feel like I've been here before. This looks familiar.

I'm sure I've done this before. I'm sure I heard that before. See, these are, this is natural visions that come up from the subconscious mind.

Now, we can actually create that by deciding to visualize. What is visualization? Visualization is when you use the act of your will to purposefully put a picture in your conscious mind. Okay, so I can make you visualize.

Think of a dog. Okay, let's be a bit more specific. Think of a black dog.

What kind of dog are you thinking of? Okay, let me be a bit more specific. Think of a small black dog. Okay, are you beginning to see something? Think of a small noisy black dog that keeps barking all the time and keeps you awake at night.

Now, if you had something like that from your memory in the past, I'll tell you exactly which dog you're seeing right now is that small black dog that used to irritate you. See, so you have chosen through visualization to actually call up something from your memory and now the picture comes up and you can see it clearly in your mind. You just got a natural vision.

Okay, so natural vision can be created based on your past experience through a process of visualization or even speaking it out but choosing and deciding, bombarding, digging deep down in there and pulling it out again. Okay, now when you get a vision in that way, you can use it. You can use it in your ministry, you can use it in your preaching, you can use it in counseling people, but the way you're going to use it is you're going to use it as an illustration.

You're going to say, okay, I see your situation as being similar to this kind of situation and you pull something back from your memory, from your past, something that you've seen and experienced in life and you can use that and so you have a kind of a natural vision which you can now use to minister to people. Okay, now a natural vision, natural vision is always a real vision that you can use as an illustration but it is not an allegory. It is not symbolic, it's real.

Okay, now I want you to understand it very clearly because when we get to the next kind of vision, you're going to see it's very different. So a natural vision isn't a symbol or a picture that comes. You can convert it into a symbol or picture.

You can say, you know, you sound just like a barking dog and in your mind you're seeing this barking dog that used to irritate you. You see, you've now turned it into a symbol but the vision wasn't an allegory. You saw a very clear vision.

So a natural vision can be taken, it can be applied, it can be used to illustrate but you don't have to interpret it. You don't have to say, I'm seeing this black barking dog, what does it mean? It doesn't mean anything, it's just something from your memory. It doesn't have an allegorical meaning, it doesn't need to be interpreted.

Okay, and that's the main characteristic of a natural vision is that it doesn't have to be interpreted. It doesn't have an interpretation. There is no allegory or symbol in it.

That's a natural vision. Now we move from a natural vision to a spiritual vision. Natural vision is only involving the body and the soul.

Spiritual vision now goes deeper and begins to involve the human spirit. Now every human being has a spirit. Unbelievers are spiritually dead towards God.

The Holy Spirit is not living there and they are unable to make contact with God in the spirit. But it doesn't mean that their spirit is dead and doesn't exist. Everybody has a spirit and the spirit is deeper than the subconscious.

The subconscious lies very deep and very often people confuse the spirit with the subconscious. And sometimes people think that they are getting revelation and a vision from the spirit, but it's actually not. It's just coming from their subconscious.

And one of the clearest ways of telling the difference is that when the spirit brings something up and you get a vision that's influenced by the inner spirit, some of the characteristics are not the same as the natural. And I'm going to show you which ones are. Firstly it comes from much deeper and secondly it's actually influenced by the functions of the spirit.

Now just as the mind has, the soul has, mind, emotions and will has its three functions, the spirit also has three functions which we call communion and intuition and wisdom. And all of those I've covered elsewhere. But when an influence comes up from the spirit, the spirit then brings an influence outwards like that into your conscious mind and you see a vision, a spiritual vision, usually it will come under the influence of one or more of those spiritual functions.

So a vision that is communicated upwards from the communion aspect of your spirit. Now the communion part of your spirit is the ability for your spirit to make contact with other spirits. So if you are uniting your heart with other people, you begin to pick up stuff from their spirit.

Okay, now that stuff you pick from their spirit can come up into your mind in the form of a vision. Doesn't mean it came from God. I'm still speaking about what lies in the realm of every human being.

I have not got even into what is unique to believers yet. I want you to understand that. The fact that I'm speaking about spiritual visions does not mean that this only applies to believers or that it is necessarily from God.

So it could come up from the communion of your spirit. It could be something you picked up from people that you've been involved with. And in an extreme it could be even from another kind of spirit that's been influencing you.

You have the intuition of the spirit which is an inner knowing or revelation. And that comes up from something deep within your own spirit. The third function is wisdom.

And wisdom always has a kind of a future orientation. It's the part of our spirit that allows us to kind of predict what's going to happen and to act accordingly. To make choices based on what could happen or is likely to happen in the future.

And so visions that you receive from these influences of the spirit, your human spirit within, can all have some of these characteristics to them. Now what makes a spiritual vision different to a natural vision is that it's not based on past input. In fact some of what's coming from your spirit you could have been picking up from people around about you at the moment right now.

Whatever is influencing your spirit could come up and produce a vision. So what comes up in a spiritual vision is not based on past experience or past knowledge, it's original. What you're going to see when you receive a spiritual vision is something you probably haven't seen before.

So that's the first difference between a spiritual vision and a natural vision. Secondly it's always allegorical or symbolic. Spiritual vision, the language of the spirit, is not words.

The language of the spirit is always pictures. So when your spirit communicates upwards into your mind it always comes in pictures and the language of the spirit is usually symbolic or allegorical. So when you see something you're not seeing something that you saw before, although you may see something that you are familiar with that you've seen before.

Go back to my little illustration of the dog, okay, you may see a very different kind of dog. Maybe a dog that doesn't exist in this world, maybe a dog that you've never heard of or seen before, a dog that looks really strange. Now I'm going to leave to your imagination what kind of dog it'll be but it doesn't matter.

You look at the dog and the dog has something specific about it that is different. You say, I've never ever seen a dog with a tongue this long. I've never seen a dog with one ear bigger than the other.

I've never seen a dog that has weird-looking teeth sticking out like a tiger. I don't know, whatever, I'm just being extreme. The point is what you will see is something that your mind would not normally conceive.

It's different, it's unique and when you see that you know that this has some kind of symbolic meaning. It's got to be interpreted as an allegory. It's not a dog you're seeing but that dog is picturing something, okay.

That's the difference between a natural and a spiritual vision and because of that a spiritual vision has to be interpreted to be understood. What exactly does this dog mean? Does this dog now mean if the vision that you see relates to yourself that you have an imbalance somewhere, your one ear is bigger than the other? Okay, this symbol could be saying there's an imbalance in your life. You know, you need to come to order, something is out of order, something is abnormal, something is wrong.

There's a symbol there, okay. That's the difference between a natural and a spiritual vision and now we're beginning to transition towards the final stage which is the supernatural vision but I want you to understand that a spiritual vision is the kind of vision we're looking for. It's spiritually in nature but a spiritual vision isn't necessarily from God and doesn't necessarily have a supernatural, it's just come up from our human spirit from within.

Now once we add God into the picture and we add the Holy Spirit to our spirit we now have the ability to receive a supernatural spiritual vision, okay. Supernatural spiritual vision. So spiritual, we have natural, we have spiritual and then we have supernatural spiritual vision, okay.

And that's the kind of vision we're looking for because this means that the Holy Spirit within your spirit inspired something to come up out into your mind to produce a vision and that is the kind of vision we're talking about. That's what God spoke about that when he pours out his spirit on all flesh in the last days we'll see people, we'll begin to see visions, okay. So let's look at supernatural visions now and see where they come from, how they operate, how they function.

Now as we come to the supernatural vision, the first thing we must identify is that the Holy Spirit is the author of this vision. So an unbeliever cannot have this kind of vision. If an unbeliever has a supernatural vision, it's produced by another spirit and it's not the Holy Spirit.

It's the kind of faith. It's demonic spirit, okay. So if an unbeliever has a supernatural vision, it's not God and we're not interested in looking at that because we know that that comes in the realm of the occult and all the demonic phenomena.

So we're speaking now as believers who are involved in ministry, a supernatural vision comes from the Holy Spirit. Now when the Holy Spirit gives a supernatural vision, he can do it in two ways, two ways. He can impart that knowledge into your spirit and that knowledge is communicated outwards and that is what we call an internal vision.

In other words, the vision, God placed something into your spirit and your spirit spoke to you and said, this is what I want you to see, this is what I want you to hear. So the supernatural internal vision comes up from inside you, that's why we call it an internal vision. Now an internal vision is a message from God.

It's a message from God because God put it in your spirit, your spirit is communicating it outwards. An internal vision always carries revelation. So the functions of the spirit of intuition, communion and wisdom have now been inspired by the Holy Spirit and so when you receive an internal vision, you can be sure that God is trying to tell you something through those inner revelation abilities of your spirit.

Internal vision, supernatural internal vision is always symbolic, always allegorical. Now I say that again, the internal vision is always symbolic or allegorical. So when you see an internal vision, what you are seeing is a picture that must be explained or interpreted and you can't understand it unless you interpret it.

You can't say, well I've had this vision or what does it mean? Well it's a vision, well what does it mean? Until you can interpret that vision and understand what it means, you actually can't use it in any way. An internal vision usually is always directive, especially when it's a vision given personally for you. If God's given a vision for you, God is giving you a direction in your life.

He's giving you some specific instruction, he's pointing out something to you or he's telling you something that you should do or that you shouldn't do, whatever the case, God is giving you direction. So an internal vision is always directive. So I've got this vision, that's really interesting, that's really quite exciting to know that.

I'm so glad I had that vision, it's really fun to have visions. No, no, God doesn't give you visions for fun. He gives it to you for a purpose.

He wants you to do something about it. Okay, so I just love to have visions. Why? Because I just like to have visions.

I can tell everybody, you know, I had this super-duper vision today. No, it's not what they're for. They're there to tell you something, they're there to point out something and give you specific direction.

Okay, and if God gives you an internal vision, that's for somebody else, then he intends you to take that vision and to give it as a direction to other people so that they can act on that vision. Otherwise, what's the point? Well, I have this really fun revelation, it's really fascinating and interesting. Let's think about it and let's just toy with the idea of how wonderful it is to have visions.

No, God gave me a vision for you. God is showing you something that you need to do. God is showing you something that he wants to do in your life.

God is giving you a direction and because of the vision I've received, I want to now share with you what God says to you right now and from here you must take that vision and you must do something with it. Not just give them for fun. Very important that.

That's an internal vision. What happens if we get an external vision? An external vision also comes from the Holy Spirit. The difference now is that instead of God imparting that to your spirit and saying, okay spirit, go ahead and communicate it, God will actually bypass the spirit and communicate it straight to the soul.

He'll actually bypass the spirit and put it straight into your mind with a very forceful, very powerful way. Now, the problem with external is that the counterfeit spirit also works that way. You see, when you get the counterfeit demonic spirit, the demon does not work through your spirit because the demon doesn't have access to your spirit.

The Holy Spirit's living there. So when a demon gives you a vision, he gives it straight into the soul and it usually comes very forceful and very strong and because of that, when people get into deception and they receive visions and influences from demonic powers, very often they think this is of God. I heard this voice speaking.

It was strong. God said, do this right now. I saw this clear vision.

I saw a funeral. I saw you in a motorcar accident and people think that this is a vision from God and they must warn and go and tell the person you're gonna die. See, God doesn't work that way.

That's another whole realm which I'm not going to cover in detail right now. I just warn you to watch out for the external influence of a demon. Now, when the Holy Spirit moves, he also moves externally, directly on the soul and he will also come with a very strong, very strong, clear revelation.

It bypasses the realm of the spirit. You're actually hearing God speak directly into your mind, much stronger than the internal and sometimes it can actually even override the influences that are coming from there. The inner voice is totally overridden by that external and it gets imposed over your current vision.

In other words, for an external vision, I everything around about me and now comes this sudden external vision that's imposed right on top of it. Now, sometimes that imposition can be so strong that you literally see something imposed on your vision, what is known as an open vision. If you, for example, saw an angel standing there, that external vision has been imposed on your normal vision.

It's a very strong thing. It doesn't always come that directly, because sometimes you can only see it in your mind. You can say, I can see there's somebody sitting there in that chair.

I can't see him physically with my eyes, but in my mind I know. I can see him spiritually in my mind. See, an external vision usually comes that way.

When it comes to an absolute extreme, where the external is so strong that it overwhelms and supersedes your natural vision, then we have what the Bible calls a trans-vision. A trans-vision is when your vision is so strong that you no longer feel that you're here right now, but you're actually in the place of whatever that vision is. So if the vision is a picture of you standing by a river, you feel like you're actually standing at the river, even though you're not.

You're sitting here in the meeting hall. That is how an external vision comes. Trans-visions are always external visions, not internal visions.

Now, an external vision isn't always symbolic. The external vision is the one time God can show you a person who is a real person. He can show you a thing or a place which is a real place.

God has imposed that picture on you, and so what you see may be symbolic, but it doesn't have to be. It could actually be a real image that you're seeing. Now, when it is symbolic, God will usually give you the interpretation of that symbol at the time that you get it.

You won't have to sit and rack your mind and say, what is my spirit trying to say to me? What does this dog mean? When you get an external vision and you see an object, God will at the same time tell you exactly what that object means. An external vision very seldom needs you to sit down and discuss with other people what you saw, and let's see if we can come to an understanding of what it means. Usually, God will give it to you spontaneously, supernaturally, very forcefully, and you'll know exactly what to do with it, and you must take it then immediately and minister it forth, as we'll look at next.

These then are the three kinds of vision, natural, spiritual, and supernatural, and in the supernatural we have the internal vision and the external vision. Now, if you've had any of these visions, you need to know how to interpret them, how to apply them, and how to use them in your ministry, and I'll cover that in the next message.

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