Josh wrote:The Church of God in Christ exercises spiritual gifts and indeed early in our founding dreams were very important. Today we believe strongly in the Holy Spirit for guiding people into our church, and also for changing people's lives, and for giving ministers insight into hidden sin.
This quote got me thinking, where do dreams fit into Anabaptist theology/ practice?
For many Christian groups, dreams seem to be a bit of a taboo subject. In others, they seem to be a bit over the top.
Josh wrote:The Church of God in Christ exercises spiritual gifts and indeed early in our founding dreams were very important. Today we believe strongly in the Holy Spirit for guiding people into our church, and also for changing people's lives, and for giving ministers insight into hidden sin.
This quote got me thinking, where do dreams fit into Anabaptist theology/ practice?
For many Christian groups, dreams seem to be a bit of a taboo subject. In others, they seem to be a bit over the top.
I am not sure... I never heard anyone talk of dreams in the conservative church I went to. It seemed mixed on whether people thought it was possible to speak in tongues today so, I am thinking this might be taboo to them.
However, I have experienced this myself.
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I don't hear anything on the subject. I believe if someone shared a dream, it would be received with a large grain of salt, and a wait and see approach would be taken. No action would be forthcoming. Just my opinion.
Awakening this little thread... clearly not many had much to say, but I saw this article on the CGCM site.
Are "dream testimonies" valued or acknowledged in any other CA circles??
I do think about my dreams - but they are never as methodical or clear as what Joshua writes about. There tend to be three or four recurring themes and sometimes in my dreams I have memories of an earlier dream. I did read that dreams are related to thoughts that we have had but don't really see that myself.
I have many dreams about the farm and chores that I did not enjoy. Most take place on the old home farm but some are situated at two different farms where I worked as a teen while others are obviously at a farm where I did chores twenty years later. Sudsy mentioned in another thread of two calves following him wherever he goes; that is my experience in some of the dreams, only the calves (or baby cows according to Peta) follow me to suck on my clothes or fingers.
I see some dreams as being a warning about the future - after the end of life.
Interesting, Hats Off.
Do you just rely on the Holy Spirit to inform you whether a dream is meaningful vs meaningless?
Sounds like your dreams are pretty rooted in your past experiences.. That's neat! It does seem that common "themes" recur in dreams.
I don't have any clear answers, but do consider some as probably being in the nature of a warning. (Maybe they are all warning me of what the next life can be - perhaps instead of feeding the white horse in the back pastures of heaven, the dreams are warning of the chances that I will be cleaning out pig pens and other undesirable things if I don't repent of my failures.)