Everything that God does, Satan will attempt to counterfeit. Just like God will send you a warning dream to protect you, Satan will send false warning dreams to put fear in you. How then do you know the difference between a dream from God and a deceptive dream that came from Satan? Remember that God often deposits His plans for your future into your dreams at night. That deposit can be likened to the planting of a seed in your heart and one intended to produce a specific harvest later. This activity is what Satan is trying to mimic. He’s trying to make his own deposit and get something deceptive and destructive established in your life. You might experience a series of repeating dreams, for example, that something bad is going to happen to you such as an accident, or a dream of your spouse leaving you or that your child goes missing or dies. These dreams can be accompanied by a choking fear or a sense of total helplessness or hopelessness.
Whenever you have a warning dream, it’s important to first discern the source of the dream so you know how to respond. When you are aware of God’s heart and His promises from continual study of His written word, you will easily identify the counterfeit because it doesn’t align to what you know about God. You’ll recognize that your dream doesn’t look or sound like Him and it doesn’t feel like Him. One of my baseline scriptures to help me discern properly is, “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly (John 10:10).”
When I see unwarranted death, theft, and destruction to my future in my dreams, then the dream is most likely sourced to Satan and not God. Our response to a false warning dream is to first harness any wild and negative emotions that may have come with the dream. Dreams like this might engage deep-level insecurities and require personal discipline to hold those emotions in submission to the Holy Spirit. Secondly, do not give voice to the contents of the dream. Satan has supplied you with a narrative and wants you to engage your faith in a negative way by saying what he is saying and not what God is saying.
We read, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue and those who love it will eat its fruit (Prov. 18:21).” Satan knows these scriptures too and will attempt to twist these spiritual laws against you but only if you let him. Next, find a clear promise of God in the Bible to counter that negative dream and begin to give voice to those promises instead. When I’ve had dreams that threaten the well-being of my children, I never give voice to the dream. I habitually begin to decree from Psalm 91 that the Lord is our refuge and no evil befalls us.