Bad Dreams after Becoming a Christian

[dhatura]

I've been having bad dreams after I became a Christian days ago. For example, on the day I became a Christian, I dreamed that I murdered someone and wanted to have inappropriate sex with my boss. Then, in the following several days, I dreamed that I was driving on a long mysterious road not being able to get out. One day, I dreamed that I was haunting down someone but was found out and cornered, where I got raped.
Does anyone know what this means?

 

[asiyreh]

Looking for interpretation in dreams is essentially a freudian idea. Psychology has moved on allot since then. The most widely believed idea about dreams these days is that it's a way for you mind to backup up all the information you've digested that day. Like a hard drive that backs itself up at at night.

But ok let's assume Freud was correct. Many people still like this idea.

I would suspect that you are worried if you follow Christ you'll have to give up your sin for the rest of your life, which may seem like a long road.

The idea with Christianity is Christ does the heavy lifting. It's not that you force yourself to give up sin of your own validation. What happens is that Christ changes your heart from within. The exciting worldly things begin to lose their sparkle and you begin to realise these things don't really grant you any lasting satisfaction. Like alcohol for example, temporarily helps you forget your problems but usually doubles them in the morning, leaves you with a bad hangover and a foul taste in your mouth.

Christ doesn't load you up with heavy burdens he makes it easy for you to make the right choices.

 

[dhatura]

asiyreh, thanks for your response.
I guess I take this religion thing more seriously than I thought I do. It weighs on my thoughts.
It's not that Christ loads me up with heavy burdens. It's more that my sins weighs upon me heavily. It's more that I'm not sure I deserve to be cleansed of my sins by having faith in Jesus.
I guess this is just the start of it. I've a long way to go in terms of my faith in Jesus Christ.

 

[Bible2]

dhatura said in post 1:

It's more that I'm not sure I deserve to be cleansed of my sins by having faith in Jesus.

Nobody deserves cleansing (Romans 3:9-26); it's a free gift (Romans 6:23; 1 John 1:9).

 

[St_Worm2]

I've been having bad dreams after I became a Christian days ago. For example, on the day I became a Christian, I dreamed that I murdered someone and wanted to have inappropriate sex with my boss. Then, in the following several days, I dreamed that I was driving on a long mysterious road not being able to get out. One day, I dreamed that I was haunting down someone but was found out and cornered, where I got raped.
Does anyone know what this means?

He DHatura, welcome to CF .. You're a brand new Christian and you're having bad dreams. Did you ever have dreams like the ones you just described above before you became a Christian?

Thanks!

Yours and His,
David
p.s. - BTW, the exact same thing happened to me 25 years ago when I first became a Christian, so I do know what you're going through and how awful it is.

 

[dhatura]

Before I became a Christian, I sometimes also had bad dreams, but not the ones like these.

 

[Justaman0000]

It sounds like you are being spiritually attacked. Same sort of things happened to me after i became a christian. All sorts of wierd visions, dreams, seeing, hearing, and feeling things. I came to the conclusion that Satan only attacks Gods children not his own so now i feel special when i get attacked in these ways. Haha ;p

 

[dhatura]

It sounds like you are being spiritually attacked. Same sort of things happened to me after i became a christian. All sorts of wierd visions, dreams, seeing, hearing, and feeling things. I came to the conclusion that Satan only attacks Gods children not his own so now i feel special when i get attacked in these ways. Haha ;p

Thanks Justaman0000. Some church friends also interpreted my dreams as Satan's attacks. They said he doesn't like that I became one of God's people.

 

[Tigger45]

Thanks Justaman0000. Some church friends also interpreted my dreams as Satan's attacks. They said he doesn't like that I became one of God's people.

The same thing happened to me when I first started following Christ. But then I realized my course of action must be in opposition to Satan's' so it only serves to convince me I'm headed in the right direction. Sometimes I'm still attacked in different ways but I still hold that mind set and it strengthens my resolve to be faithful which in turn discourages the devil's attempt to discourage me.
James 4:7-10

New International Version (NIV)

7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

 

[St_Worm2]

Thanks Justaman0000. Some church friends also interpreted my dreams as Satan's attacks. They said he doesn't like that I became one of God's people.

Hi dhatura, I agree with Justaman, Tigger, and your friends at church, these were "flaming arrows" from the evil one. You should probably study Ephesians 6:10-18 as that concerns spiritual warfare and how to best survive Satan's attacks.

Like your dreams, mine were very different than anything I'd ever experienced before becoming a Christian, so vile and horrible that I began to question my salvation (because I thought that a Christian could never think or dream such things). It turns out that, like you, I had a little help coming up with those particular dreams. That didn't make me hate having them any less, but it did help to know where they came from.

A book that helped me back then is a collection of C. S. Lewis short stories called, "The Screwtape Letters". The book is fiction, of course, but it will help you understand how and why demons think the way they do. Lewis tells these stories from the perspective of the book's various demons, whose job is to unravel and undermine the faith of the Christians in the book. I read that it was very difficult for Lewis to complete because he literally had to think like a demon while writing it.

You can buy it or read it online for free HERE. BTW, if you do decide to read part or all of it, be sure to read the preface first. Also, remember that this story is written from the demon's point of view, much of it correspondence from one demon, "Screwtape", to another demon, "Wormwood". It also uses special terminology. Humans, the one's they've been given to break, are called "patients", while God is always referred to as the "Enemy".

Praying for you!

Yours and His,
David

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the
devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe and to
feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are
equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a
magician with the same delight. ​

Preface, The Screwtape Letters​

 

[dhatura]

Thanks Tigger45 and St Worm2.
The book is fun to read. C.S. Lewis is very imaginative.

 

[TheTruth101]

I've been having bad dreams after I became a Christian days ago. For example, on the day I became a Christian, I dreamed that I murdered someone and wanted to have inappropriate sex with my boss. Then, in the following several days, I dreamed that I was driving on a long mysterious road not being able to get out. One day, I dreamed that I was haunting down someone but was found out and cornered, where I got raped.
Does anyone know what this means?

In the kingdom of God, the first will be last and the last will be first.


It is also said that God comes in dreams.

You are getting repeanted by the Holy Spirit for all the sins that you have commited before you became a christian.

Its called penal atonement.

 

[tturt]

Dhatura, yes welcome to CF!

What about praying and asking Yahweh to protect you during the night? Then thinking about His sacrifice, His love, etc.

 

[Bible2]

tturt said in post 13:

What about praying and asking Yahweh to protect you during the night?

Yes, good advice.

Following the model of the Lord's prayer, where we pray that God's will be done and that he deliver us from evil (Matthew 6:10,13), right before we go to sleep we can pray something like: "Oh God, your will be done in this sleep, and deliver me from evil in it. And your will be done in my dreams, and deliver me from evil in them. And your will be done in this dwelling, and deliver us from evil here. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen".

 

[HisSparkPlug]

I've been having bad dreams after I became a Christian days ago. For example, on the day I became a Christian, I dreamed that I murdered someone and wanted to have inappropriate sex with my boss. Then, in the following several days, I dreamed that I was driving on a long mysterious road not being able to get out. One day, I dreamed that I was haunting down someone but was found out and cornered, where I got raped.
Does anyone know what this means?

Hi there,
Yes, there are spiritual symbolisms all thru the dreams you have mentioned here.
A lot of times the dreams we think are bad are not all that bad .. for instance, your dream about murdering someone (I have these dreams) is most likely symbolic of you putting your flesh to death as is mentioned in the bible.

Sex dreams also have meanings but I would need to know more about how it came to pass.

The rape dream symbolizes you being victimized or taken advantage of in some fashion (it doesn't mean actual rape)

Dreams are most often symbolic - Jesus spoke to us in parables while here on earth and He still speaks to us in parables today via our dreams. Some dreams are warning dreams, some are letting you know what to expect, and a few come from the enemy. Do you dream a lot or did you only start to dream after coming to know Jesus?

 

[dhatura]

Hi there,
Yes, there are spiritual symbolisms all thru the dreams you have mentioned here.
A lot of times the dreams we think are bad are not all that bad .. for instance, your dream about murdering someone (I have these dreams) is most likely symbolic of you putting your flesh to death as is mentioned in the bible.

Sex dreams also have meanings but I would need to know more about how it came to pass.

The rape dream symbolizes you being victimized or taken advantage of in some fashion (it doesn't mean actual rape)

Dreams are most often symbolic - Jesus spoke to us in parables while here on earth and He still speaks to us in parables today via our dreams. Some dreams are warning dreams, some are letting you know what to expect, and a few come from the enemy. Do you dream a lot or did you only start to dream after coming to know Jesus?

Thanks for letting me know.
I dream a lot. Sometimes bad, sometimes okay. I rarely have good dreams. But they have been unusually bad during the first few days after I became a Christian.

 

[HisSparkPlug]

Thanks for letting me know.
I dream a lot. Sometimes bad, sometimes okay. I rarely have good dreams. But they have been unusually bad during the first few days after I became a Christian.

The enemy is just angry because you gave your life to Jesus so he's exacting revenge. I've seen this happen too. Tell him to shut up and you belong to Jesus now! With the right counsel you will learn how to stand up to the little red-pitchforker. You may also need to have some spiritual residue stuff cleaned off you, but I can help you with that so you'll be free from the harassment.
Bless you and welcome child of the Most High King!

 

[Bible2]

HisSparkPlug said in post 15:

A lot of times the dreams we think are bad are not all that bad .. for instance, your dream about murdering someone (I have these dreams) is most likely symbolic of you putting your flesh to death as is mentioned in the bible.

Or it's symbolic of hating that person, in the sense that "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer" (1 John 3:15a).

Such a dream could help us to repent and ask God's forgiveness (1 John 1:9) for hating that person, and to ask God to help us to forgive and love that person (Matthew 6:15, Romans 13:10).

 

[dhatura]

Yes Bible2, you certainly got a point. Someone concurred that the murdur means I've ended my grudges against that person, apparently by becoming God's child. By the way, I indeed held grudges against that person in the past.

 

[parsley]

You made a big decision, and it is natural for your brain to try to figure out how that will fit with the previous years of your life. Like buying a dining room table and then realizing your exercise equipment needs to be moved somewhere. Like the earth's tectonic plates need to heave and shift under pressure.

I've been having bad dreams after I became a Christian days ago. For example, on the day I became a Christian, I dreamed that I murdered someone and wanted to have inappropriate sex with my boss. Then, in the following several days, I dreamed that I was driving on a long mysterious road not being able to get out.

Murdering someone might have visually described how it felt to turn your life over to God. You had to let go of part of what you knew about your life, to replace it with a new viewpoint and way of doing things.

Inappropriate mergers -- very vulnerable, too much out in the open, worrying what people would think of you. He is halfway approved -- your authority, but not your lover. Your co-workers would criticize or be jealous or blame you for sleeping to the top. So there's a lot of self-consciousness there, similar to what you might be feeling with becoming a Christian.

There are also dreams which show larger pictures, and prepare us for challenges ahead. There are dreams which lead us to pray for other people, especially large groups. In those, each character might represent a country or organization. When researching or looking up news, these will click and symbols will fall in place like a puzzle.

But since you just went through a major decision, I think it's normal to experience some shifting.