Long before it happened, God showed it to me in a dream!

 A monthly column in which Jenni Pretorius Hill shares stories of hope which bring Heaven’s perspective to Earth

God is speaking to us all the time. Some Christians think He only speaks to a special few, while others believe Him to be so remote and removed from the details of our lives that He speaks very little, if at all. I believe these are excuses. We don’t hear Him because we don’t listen, and while He may be speaking, we don’t recognise His voice.  

The question should not be whether He speaks to us – the Bible clearly states that He does – but rather: “How does He speak?” God is spirit and Jesus states it plainly in John 14:16-17 that His Spirit is inside of us, forever remaining with us (once we have invited Him in). It’s rather silly then to expect Him to talk to us in the manner of the flesh. He speaks spirit to spirit, but unless our spirits are awake and exercised, we’ll miss Him. God really wants us to hear Him, because His voice directs us into His purposes, His goodness and warns us of danger. 

I have learnt to recognise the different ways He speaks to me. Sometimes, He just apprehends me in the middle of my day with a fleeting thought or impression. I know to respond immediately in these moments. A few weeks ago, I was in a staff meeting when a strong urge to attend to my phone interrupted me in mid-conversation and I ran from the room in search of it! I found it ringing on silent mode: someone was urgently trying to get hold of me. Other times He speaks to me through sight, or sound, or even a scent. My eyes might be drawn to something: a colour, a slogan, a person…, and it’s as if everything else fades in contrast and the thing I see is illuminated in my vision. When this happens, if I don’t pause to consider what I have noted, I will invariably miss what He is saying. Most often He simply wants to encourage me and to remind me of His love and care. 

Of all the ways God speaks to me, my favourite is through His dream language. I am a dreamer, but I have learnt to distinguish my soulish dreams from God’s. His are generally more vivid and I’ll often wake up after having one and it will linger with me. Generally, I won’t understand it immediately, but it will “ping” in my spirit as something I need to pay attention to. I write these ones down. I have several stories of how He has shown me things in my night visions, but I will share one of my more recent experiences. In November 2022, I had a dream of a house that I knew intuitively to be in Scotland. It was a large face brick building overlooking a large body of water. At the back, and to the side, there was a wooded area. In the dream, I peered through the window of a ground floor room and saw several paintings on easels. I wrote in my journal that this was an “artists’ retreat of sorts’” The dream meant nothing to me: I had never been to Scotland, and I had no attachment to it, but I made a sketch of the house and recorded as much detail as I could recall.  

Nearly two years later, I was introduced to the YWAM (Youth with a Mission) world when I was asked to teach on editing at their first-ever Africa Author School. The connection came through a friend who put them in touch with me. So, for a week in July I taught at their Durban base. There, I met an American writer who had started the school in Europe and was in South Africa to support the Durban start-up. One afternoon after class she asked me whether I would consider teaching my course in Scotland in 2025. It was too wonderful an opportunity to miss, so I agreed and in March this year I travelled to Seamill in West Kilbride. The YWAM base, where I was hosted, was a large facebrick house. It looked over the sparkling firth of Clyde, and behind it lay a wooded glen! It looked very similar to the quick sketch I had made of the house in 2022. But I needed to be certain, so I went on a hunt for the room that had been filled with art. In the dream it was a room at the end of the building on the ground floor, so I headed in the direction I thought it would be, and there they were! It was the classroom that I would be teaching in for the next week, the 20 little paintings (on easels) done by the students I hadn’t yet met. 

I still can’t get my head around it. Before this school was launched and the students registered, before YWAM had determined the exact location for my class, God knew. And He showed me. I don’t know why He did that. I didn’t need the confirmation: I hadn’t been indecisive about going. I knew the moment I was invited that this was God opening the door. I think He showed me because He was excited. I do that: I get so excited about something we plan to do as a family, that I can’t keep the secret. I give my children clues. He wanted me to know that this was Him, that He had planned this wonderful event in advance. “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10)

God has beautiful things for your life. He prepares them just for you, and He takes great joy and delight in doing so. He wants you to know that He has gone before you and made a way; He wants you to recognise Him as actively participating in every part of your life because He’s longing for that deep, personal connection with you. He is talking to you; He’s trying to get your attention, but you may be in too much of a hurry, or too distracted, to pause. Perhaps He’s speaking in dreams, but you’re not writing them down. I would not have remembered my house in Scotland had I not recorded it. Or, possibly, you think you’re being spiritual by praying for hours without pausing for breath; He speaks in the silence, waiting for you to keep quiet and give Him a moment. 

Abraham would have killed Isaac had he not listened for the fresh word of God. We love and serve a very present God: He does not leave us to live on yesterday’s stale offering. Every day, our paths are strewn with love notes that He leaves for those who are willing to look. 

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