Do You Need a Courage Dream

by Lauren Stinton

When God speaks in dreams, His voice carries the power to instill courage in our hearts. That is what He did with Gideon—through the dream of an enemy soldier.

At the beginning of his story, Gideon is threshing wheat in a wine press because he’s afraid and hiding from his enemies. An angel appears and tells him, “God is going to use you to deliver your people from the hand of Midian.” 

Courage is not something that comes easily to Gideon. He has to confirm more than once that God really is speaking to him. He tentatively steps out and does what God tells him—but at night, when (hopefully) no one will see him. When he starts to believe his calling, he summons an army of 25,000 men to fight against Midian. And then watches as God reduces his army to 300. 

Eventually God says to him, “Gideon, if you’re still scared, this is what I want you to do. I want you to go down into the camp of Midian, and I’m going to speak to you there.” 

Taking his servant with him, Gideon sneaks down into the enemy camp, where he happens to overhear a soldier talking about a dream. 

The soldier tells his friend, “I saw a loaf of bread, and it rolled down the hill and hit the tent, and the tent fell over.” 

That’s the entire dream, yet the friend says, “Oh no! That’s Gideon!” 

What?! 

How did this man know that a loaf of bread, of all things, meant Gideon? 

He knew because of how Gideon’s story started. 

Threshing Grain in a Wine Press

The Bible doesn’t specifically say that Gideon’s story spread like wildfire, but an angelic visitation of this nature would be difficult to keep private. 

Imagine the hope pulsing in people’s hearts. “God is coming, and He’s going to defeat our enemies. We are about to be saved!” 

In particular, the Midianites would be interested in this story because it proclaimed their downfall. They obviously knew about Gideon because the moment the soldier shared his dream, his companion answered with confidence: “This is the guy! He was threshing grain when the angel called him. He was making bread, and you dreamed about bread crushing us!”

Grain, bread. Something incomplete in the beginning was brought to fruition, and now it could provide sustenance for God’s people who needed it.

God Knows How to Speak Your Language

God will do this in dreams again and again: He’ll pluck something out of the story line and use it to represent a person (nation, church, group of people, etc.) in the dream. With Gideon, the symbol was grain becoming bread.

Several years ago, a friend of mine asked God to awaken the seer gifting inside him. He wanted a stronger ability to see things in the spirit. In reply, the Holy Spirit told him to step into it by faith. My friend didn’t know exactly what that meant, but he chose to believe it.

The next time he was praying for people, he saw a peanut sitting on a girl’s shoulder. It was an odd picture, and he said out loud, “Peanut?”

The girl began crying. “That’s what my dad always called me!” 

God took something beautiful and specific in this girl’s story and used it to speak to her heart. He saw her and He wanted her to know. He will communicate this way—with depth and emotion and heart—constantly in our dreams.

3 Dream Principles from Judges 7:13–15

Here are three great interpretation principles we can learn from this dream story:

1. On a regular basis, God will pick an element from the dreamer’s life—something specific to their identity—and use that element to speak to them. When we understand this principle, certain dreams become much easier to interpret.

1. God speaks to all kinds of people through dreams, even to those who don’t know Him. In The Dream’s Guy podcast, we’ve looked at a number of dreams from Scripture, and so far only four were given to believers. Let’s learn to look for God’s voice in the dreams of unbelieving people. We can then help them recognize who He is and what He’s saying.

1. When we realize God has spoken, we need to allow faith to rise up in our hearts. Gideon heard the soldier’s dream and the interpretation, recognized the promises of God, and finally had the faith to stand. When you trust in the Lord, you will receive the right interpretation at the right moment, even if it comes to you in a highly creative, unexpected way. Take hold of that interpretation, stand up in faith, and courageously do whatever God has shown you.

To learn more about dreams and the amazing ways God can speak through them, check out The Dream’s Guy podcast, new from Streams Ministries. Click here.