Hearing God's Voice in DreamsA–Z symbolsActions in dreams
84 symbols · biblical meanings from Hearing God's Voice in Dreams by Apostle Nicholas V. Mbanjwa
Being Chased
A warfare dream — being delivered from enemies, whether police at night, animals, or a group of people pursuing the dreamer.
✦ Positive: Being chased and NOT caught, representing deliverance from the enemy or enemies; Enemies fleeing before the dreamer, representing a reversal of the pursuit
⚠ Warning: Being chased and CAUGHT, representing having been overcome by the enemy or enemies
Being Late
Missing one's appointed season; missing one's appointed time.
✦ Positive: Arriving late but still received, which points to mercy rather than merit
⚠ Warning: Missing one's season; Arriving after the door has shut
Being Lost
Living outside the faith; missing one's calling.
✦ Positive: The Good Shepherd going all the way to seek the lost sheep; Hope of restoration; Being found and carried home
⚠ Warning: Being outside God's care and protection; Wandering without direction
Being Taken a Picture
To surmount, to overcome, and to be praised or elevated.
✦ Positive: Overcoming; Being praised or elevated
Being Unable to Move
Spiritual oppression — where the dreamer is held in a dream, this signals spiritual paralysis and indicates spiritual warfare.
✦ Positive: Waking and immediately calling on the Name, which ends the episode
⚠ Warning: Spiritual oppression; Being held and unable to respond
Being Unable to Speak
Under sleep paralysis this represents spiritual oppression and indicates spiritual warfare. In an ordinary dream it represents loss of influence — being muted or silenced.
✦ Positive: Silence in the awe of God's sovereignty, where the dream is bright and reverent rather than oppressive
⚠ Warning: Being deprived of spiritual authority; Being deprived of a voice or an opinion; Spiritual oppression under sleep paralysis
Breaking
Shattering bondages; overthrowing systems; tearing down strongholds; a prophetic call.
✦ Positive: Calling people back to God; Removing idols; A call to revival; Preparing hearts
⚠ Warning: Tearing down God's work instead of the enemy's; Destroying what was righteously built; Covenant infidelity and unfaithfulness — a vow made and not kept; The crushing of nations, as a potter's vessel is broken; A vessel broken beyond mending, as Jeremiah broke the bottle before the elders
Breaking Bread
Harmony; the breaking of bread; communion and fellowship.
✦ Positive: Salvation; God's deliverance; Being set free; Fellowship and harmony among believers
⚠ Warning: Fellowship broken; Eating together while the heart is divided
Burying
Putting an end to the past; concealing something; covering completely.
✦ Positive: Where the tone of the dream is positive, moving on and burying the old or the past behind
⚠ Warning: Where the tone of the dream is negative, this may be literal; if the dreamer was burying a family member, they should pray for that family member
Buying
Accessing things through your faith; claiming what belongs to you.
✦ Positive: Accessing your inheritance by faith; Claiming what God has given you
Carrying a Load
Being burdened; guilt; condemnation; being overcome by sin.
✦ Positive: A load willingly shared, since we are to bear one another's burdens; A load laid down at Christ's invitation — His yoke is easy and His burden light
⚠ Warning: Being weighed down; Carrying more than was given to the dreamer; A heavy weight of stress
Cheating
Spiritual unfaithfulness — giving something other than the Lord priority over your life; violating God's rules for your own advantage; dishonest dealings, trickery.
⚠ Warning: Spiritual unfaithfulness; Prioritising something above God; Violating God's rules; Dishonest dealings, trickery
Choosing Between Two Paths
A need to exercise choice; a point where the dreamer is required to make a decision.
✦ Positive: Choosing one's outcome; Determining one's result; Free will exercised; Choosing God rather than one's own way
⚠ Warning: Taking the road the dreamer knows they should not choose; Going the wrong way; Refusing to choose at all
Cleaning/Bathing
Putting away unnecessary things; purifying; a process of sanctification.
✦ Positive: Sanctification; Purification; Putting away what is unnecessary
Climbing
Personal effort required to ascend to something; working one's way up; an upgrade.
✦ Positive: Ascending to new heights through personal effort; Being made to walk upon high places, where the elevation is given rather than seized
⚠ Warning: The work of the flesh; striving and toiling; Building a tower to reach heaven by human effort; Labouring in vain where the Lord has not built
Closing a Door
A final end; the termination of access; the deliberate sealing off of an opportunity, relationship or phase of life.
✦ Positive: God closing a door to protect from danger or distraction; A definitive end to a toxic season or destructive habit; Boundaries secured against spiritual or physical harm
⚠ Warning: Missed opportunity through premature finality or stubbornness; Hardening the heart to a genuine invitation; Closing doors on those in need of grace
Constructing
Being called to grow people spiritually; equipping; perfecting the saints.
✦ Positive: Raising disciples for Christ; Releasing able believers for the work of the ministry; Equipping
⚠ Warning: Building on another's foundation without care; Building with material that will not survive testing
Cooking
Serving or waiting on people.
✦ Positive: Serving others; Ministering to people's needs
Counting
Divine assessment and sovereign accounting of people, nations, deeds or time — and the deliberate human evaluation of one's own spiritual state, resources and commitments.
✦ Positive: God numbering His people for protection and care; Names recorded in the Book of Life; Numbering our days to gain a heart of wisdom; Believers soberly counting the cost of following Christ
⚠ Warning: Prideful self-reliance through human census, as with David numbering Israel and trusting military might; Relying on mortal metrics rather than spiritual truth; Failing to count the cost, leading to unfinished commitment
Crying
A season of heartache and tests coming ahead; something that will be touching enough to make you cry.
⚠ Warning: Heartache coming; A coming season of testing; Grief over spiritual conditions; A premonition of impending pain or hurt
Descending
Demotion; a level lower than the dreamer's own; something beneath them.
✦ Positive: A descent made in obedience rather than in retreat
⚠ Warning: Leaving one's given position for something less; Settling for less than what was appointed; Going down for help to what cannot save
Digging
Preparation; persistence in faith; searching for truth; building deep and stable foundations.
✦ Positive: Creating capacity for more; Preparation; Searching deeper; Making the valley full of ditches before the water comes
⚠ Warning: Seeking trouble; Opening up buried wounds; Setting a trap — he made a pit and fell into the ditch he made
Drinking Milk
Being obligated to eat from the elementary teachings of the Word of God; needing to outgrow elementary teachings toward maturity.
⚠ Warning: Remaining on elementary/milk-level teaching when God is calling to deeper things
Sucking milk from a bottle specifically: needing to outgrow elementary teachings of the Word to matured things.
Driving
Being in charge; leading a ministry — pastoral, prophetic, intercessory, home cell, prayer group, or a particular group of people.
✦ Positive: Being in charge; Leading a ministry or group
⚠ Warning: Someone else driving your car — you have surrendered leadership you should be holding
Drunkenness
Being under influence — people's influence or demonic influence.
⚠ Warning: Being under people's influence; Being under demonic influence
Eating
Being taken care of as a child of God — eating in the Bible is the highest order of fellowship.
✦ Positive: Being taken care of by God; Deep fellowship with God (the highest order)
⚠ Warning: Spiritual poisoning — finishing the meal means you may have received something harmful spiritually
Eating Bread
Eating the Word of God; deep fellowship with God.
✦ Positive: Eating the Word of God; Fellowship with God
In the Old Testament the meal-offering was offered to God through the priest, and the offerer ate from it — this represented the highest order of fellowship between God and man.
Eating Strong Meat
Eating the matured things of the Word of God — deep spiritual nourishment beyond elementary teaching.
✦ Positive: Spiritual maturity; Feeding on deep, mature Word of God
Scripture: Hebrews 5:14
Escaping
Breaking free — physical rescue, spiritual deliverance from sin, and the promise that God provides a way out of temptation.
✦ Positive: God delivering the dreamer from sin, temptation or trouble; Having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust
⚠ Warning: Escaping a responsibility rather than a danger; Fleeing when no one is pursuing
Falling
Something that will cause you to draw back in faith; a setback; something that will be humiliating.
⚠ Warning: Setback; Drawing back in faith; Humiliation coming
This falls under warning dreams — it calls for prayer.
Falling Asleep in a Dream
Being spiritually complacent, spiritually lazy, or in spiritual drowsiness.
✦ Positive: Peaceful sleep in a positive tone while everything around the dreamer falls apart, representing rest in the midst of trouble
⚠ Warning: Sleep in the midst of spiritual warfare, in a dark tone or negative context, representing spiritual dullness and complacency toward what is happening around the dreamer or to their life
Fighting
Spiritual warfare; about to be engaged in or involved in an argument, conflict, or misunderstanding with someone.
✦ Positive: Engaging in spiritual warfare with God's authority
⚠ Warning: Conflict, argument, or misunderstanding coming
Flying
Strength and the grace to overcome obstacles or challenges (Isaiah 40:31); it also represents God’s deliverance.
✦ Positive: Strength and grace to overcome obstacles (Isaiah 40:31); God’s deliverance; Empowered to escape or avoid something (Psalm 55:6); Grace to operate above your limitations and enemies (Revelation 12:14); Soaring effortlessly: entering a realm of rest
⚠ Warning: Something flying away from you: something lost (Hosea 9:11); Flying above and looking down on others: pride (Obadiah 1:4); Struggling to fly: not yet flowing in the spirit; adjusting to a new spiritual operation
Giving an Offering
Reveals your degree of surrendering to God — depending on the amount given.
✦ Positive: Surrendering to God; Deeper levels of giving reveal deeper surrender
⚠ Warning: Giving little reveals little surrender
Going Backward
Regressing in the things of faith.
⚠ Warning: Spiritual regression; Moving backward in faith
Harvesting
God revealing you are in a season of harvesting everything you have sown; expecting a harvest; evangelism; soul-winning.
✦ Positive: A season of reaping your sown seed; Expecting harvest; Evangelism and soul-winning
Hiding
Being safely secured by God from an enemy, where the dream is dark, grey or fearful.
✦ Positive: Being covered and preserved while a real threat is present; God's pavilion and the secret of His tabernacle
⚠ Warning: The shame of disobedience, as when Adam hid himself from the presence of the Lord; Withholding oneself or one's gift from those who should have access to it
Kissing
Fondness, affection, engagement, covenant — a deep and personal relationship, commitment, and agreement.
✦ Positive: Deep covenant, commitment, affection; A personal agreement or engagement
⚠ Warning: A wrong covenant or ungodly agreement
Kneeling
An act of worship; submission, surrender and yielding.
✦ Positive: Worship; Prayer; Honouring God; Yielding willingly
⚠ Warning: Kneeling from weakness rather than reverence — the body without strength; Bowing the knee to what is not God
Knocking
Requesting entry; seeking attention; persistent petition directed toward a closed door, barrier or person of authority.
✦ Positive: Persistent prayer and seeking God, with the promise that the door will be opened; Christ standing at the door of the heart, knocking and seeking fellowship; Opportunity presented through persistent engagement
⚠ Warning: Unwelcome intrusion; Pounding on a door with malicious intent, as the mob at Lot's door; Knocking on doors that lead to forbidden or deceptive spiritual paths
Laughing
The joy of the Spirit; a tone of victory concerning something you felt worried about or prayed for; worrying less; not anxious.
✦ Positive: Joy of the Spirit; Victory over worry; Answered prayer; Freedom from anxiety
Learning
Being required to be teachable; to diligently learn; or to observe a specific instruction or lesson.
✦ Positive: Being teachable; Diligently learning a specific lesson
Locking
Securing something; concealing a thing; keeping something safe; Kingdom authority.
✦ Positive: Being in full control over something; Something only the dreamer can access; Rightful authority to shut
⚠ Warning: Keeping a secret; Not wanting to share personal struggles with anyone; Shutting what God intended to be open
Losing Something
A warfare dream — experiencing a total, overwhelming or monumental loss.
✦ Positive: Recovery of what was lost; Restoration of the years the locust hath eaten; Seeking diligently until the lost thing is found
⚠ Warning: Being dispossessed of what belonged to the dreamer
Measuring
Evaluating moral character, truth or spiritual integrity against a divine standard of righteousness.
✦ Positive: God using a plumb line or measuring reed to establish righteousness; Ensuring structural integrity in spiritual building; Mapping out secure boundaries and protection for His people
⚠ Warning: Self-righteousness measured by flawed human standards — comparing ourselves among ourselves; Weighing actions on false scales of deceit; Coming up short against God's absolute holiness
Missing Transport
Spiritual unpreparedness or distraction.
✦ Positive: Being left behind and using it as a call to prepare
⚠ Warning: Missing one's set time; Being left behind through unpreparedness
Opening a Door
A divinely provided or accessible opportunity that requires human effort, faith and action to step into.
✦ Positive: God orchestrating circumstances for advancement, ministry or personal breakthrough; A door set open which no man can shut
⚠ Warning: Forcing a door open outside God's timing; Entering deceptive or unbiblical pathways masquerading as opportunity; Failing to act when an authentic door is presented
Planting
A need to sow the Word into your mind and spirit; to sow finances to a specific person or ministry; to sow service.
✦ Positive: Sowing the Word; Sowing finances or service into God's work
Playing
Lacking seriousness concerning godly things; not giving necessary attention to spiritual matters; a need to pursue spiritual maturity.
⚠ Warning: Lacking seriousness about spiritual matters; Sexual sins or orgy
Playing Cards
An amusing experience; using a resource to achieve a purpose; or about to be involved in an argument set to achieve a purpose.
✦ Positive: Using resources skillfully to achieve a goal
⚠ Warning: An argument with a hidden agenda
Playing Chess
Facing a single opponent who opposes your ideas and intellectual capacity; someone emotionally trying to strain you and close in on your moves.
✦ Positive: Winning — overcoming the intellectual/emotional opposition
⚠ Warning: Being intellectually or emotionally outmaneuvered
Playing Soccer
Facing a group of opponents and being required to work as a team — typically when your church or ministry faces tight opposition from the community, or in formidable business competition.
✦ Positive: Victory — winning in the dream reveals coming victory
⚠ Warning: Defeat — losing reveals being at a disadvantage
Playing Sport
To delight yourself; also mischief, play, mockery, or disdain.
✦ Positive: Delighting yourself
⚠ Warning: Mischief; Mockery; Disdain
Scripture: Isaiah 57:4; Proverbs 10:23; Proverbs 26:19; Judges 16:25,27
Playing Tennis
Facing a single opponent that opposes your labor — at work, in business, or in ministry.
✦ Positive: Winning — overcoming the single opponent
⚠ Warning: Losing — being overcome by the opponent
Pouring
The releasing or discharge of contents — liquid, spirit, wrath or mercy — from a source onto a person, place or object.
✦ Positive: The outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon believers; Pouring out one's heart in honest prayer; Pouring oil for healing, consecration and hospitality
⚠ Warning: The pouring out of God's wrath upon the disobedient; The shedding of innocent blood; Wasteful and reckless expenditure of resources or of life
Rain (Being Wet)
Blessings or overflow (spring/summer rain); dishonor or shame (heavy rainfall).
✦ Positive: Spring or summer rain — blessings, overflow
⚠ Warning: Heavy rainfall — dishonor or shame
The type and season of rain is the determining factor.
Reading
A call to apply diligence to your study of the Word; an area of your life requiring introspection; devotion and commitment to your calling and purpose.
✦ Positive: Diligent study of the Word; Devotion and commitment to calling
Receiving a Cake
An upcoming event of celebration, joy and gladness; or being wounded/demonically afflicted (negative).
✦ Positive: About to experience a happy celebration; Promotion (birthday cake); Marriage surprise (wedding cake)
⚠ Warning: To be wounded or demonically inflicted with sickness (from Hebrew root word 'chalal' meaning to profane or defile)
Receiving a Present
About to be surprised by something — good or bad depending on context.
✦ Positive: About to be surprised by something good
⚠ Warning: Something that will negatively surprise you
Resting
Responding in faith and trust in God concerning what you are going through; being at ease, calm, and having confidence in God.
✦ Positive: Faith and trust in God; Peace, calm, confidence in God
Running
Spiritual warfare; running away from what the Lord requires you to do; avoiding God's calling; or hastening to finish a task or project.
✦ Positive: Hastening to complete a God-given task
⚠ Warning: Running from God's calling; Avoiding what God requires; Spiritual warfare
Searching
Seeking; looking for an answer; being inquisitive, diligent, prayerful, and studying the Word.
✦ Positive: Being prayerful; Seeking the Word; Looking for answers with diligence
⚠ Warning: Having lost something; Being lost; Being without identity
Selling
To exchange, offer, swap — or forfeiting spiritual virtues or gifts; despising the gifts of God; profaning; spiritual fornication.
⚠ Warning: Forfeiting spiritual virtues or gifts; Despising God's gifts; Profanity; Spiritual fornication (like Esau selling his birthright)
Scripture: Genesis 25:33; Hebrews 12:16
Sex
Idolizing something that seeks to take God's place in your life; or spiritual unfaithfulness.
⚠ Warning: Idolizing something above God (girlfriend, boyfriend, money, success, fame); Spiritual unfaithfulness; Lusts of the flesh operating through soulish dreams; Spirits of oppression; An attempted false covenant (recurring, felt as physical, leaving heaviness)
Shaking a Hand
About to meet someone; closing a deal; coming into an agreement.
✦ Positive: Meeting someone significant; Closing a deal; Entering an agreement
⚠ Warning: A wrong agreement or covenant
Signing
Authorizing something in the spirit; consenting to defeat or victory through your words (confession); a deal.
✦ Positive: Authorizing victory through your words; Closing a God-ordained deal
⚠ Warning: Consenting to defeat through your words or actions
Sleeping
Being unaware, ignorant, unwary, or oblivious to situations or a specific situation around your life.
⚠ Warning: Unawareness; Ignorance; Obliviousness to what is happening around you
Standing Still
Trusting in the Lord; ceasing from one's own strength; taking one's position and standing one's ground.
✦ Positive: Being grounded in Christ; One's spiritual stance and position; Protecting one's territory; Defending one's heavenly inheritance
⚠ Warning: In a warning dream or negative context: complacency, not claiming what is one's own, unbelief, fear, spiritual paralysis; Being settled on the lees — at ease where God has called for movement
Sweeping
Clearing away dust, debris or unwanted elements from a surface — thorough cleansing, the exposure of hidden dirt, or sweeping judgment.
✦ Positive: Conviction and cleansing of the heart through the Word and the Spirit; The woman sweeping the house until the lost coin is found
⚠ Warning: The swept and empty house to which the unclean spirit returns with seven others worse than itself — moral reformation without divine regeneration
Swimming
Flowing in the Holy Spirit; involved in a personal move of the Spirit; inspiration.
✦ Positive: Flowing in the Holy Spirit; Personal move of the Spirit; Inspiration
Taking a Picture With Someone
Sharing an experience with that person or someone like them.
✦ Positive: Sharing a significant experience with someone
Taking a Selfie
A need to look into yourself; a need for self-inventory.
✦ Positive: Healthy self-reflection and self-inventory
⚠ Warning: Self-idolizing; Self-centeredness; Self-glorification; Self-exaltation
Training
Preparing or being prepared for a given task.
✦ Positive: Being prepared by God for a task
Turning Around
Repentance and reconsidering.
✦ Positive: Regret that leads to change; Conversion; Repenting; Reconsidering rightly
⚠ Warning: Indecision; Instability; Doubt; Double-mindedness
Unlocking
Authority over restricted opportunities; uncommon favour; access to exclusive spaces; setting captives free.
✦ Positive: Doors opened that no man can shut; Uncommon favour and access; Loosing the bands of wickedness and letting the oppressed go free
⚠ Warning: Opening what should have remained shut; Access sought by a way other than the door
Urinating
Being relieved or being given the ability to take care of business.
✦ Positive: Relief; Being empowered to handle your affairs
Vomiting
Spiritual purging — the expulsion of toxic spiritual influences, ungodly word curses, or sin that the inner man is rejecting and casting out.
✦ Positive: Spiritual purging; The inner man rejecting and casting out sin or toxic influences
Waiting
Holding one's position; standing in faith; being steadfast and unmovable.
✦ Positive: Trusting God; Exercising faith; Practising patience; Renewed strength given to those who wait
⚠ Warning: Delaying oneself; Wasting time; Waiting where God has already said go
Waking from Sleep
Something will catch you by surprise.
✦ Positive: A positive surprise coming
⚠ Warning: An unwelcome surprise coming
Walking
Your destiny — where you are going in the future; your current walk of faith or walk of purpose.
✦ Positive: Moving purposefully toward your destiny; A healthy walk of faith
⚠ Warning: Walking away from God's direction
Watching
The Lord is revealing a vision to you — it may concern you personally, someone you know, or something you are acquainted with.
✦ Positive: Receiving a vision from God
Worshipping
A calling to be involved in the ministry of worship; called to praise; a call to prophesy; gifts of utterance; to lead worshippers.
✦ Positive: Worship ministry calling; Call to praise; Call to prophesy; Gifts of utterance (tongues, interpretation, prophecy); Leading believers in worship
Writing
A requirement to plan purposefully concerning your destiny or a certain mission; laying out your future; a need to prophesy over your future.
✦ Positive: Purposeful planning for destiny; Prophesying over your future
Writing an Exam
A life test — positive: a test God is taking you through. Negative: exposing an area of attack to the enemy.
✦ Positive: A God-ordained life test, building you
⚠ Warning: Exposing an area of vulnerability to the enemy