The Spider Dream

One night, I laid my head down to go to bed and simply said, “God, it’s cool how you work in other people’s lives through dreams. It would be nice to experience that myself.” And then, within a short amount of time (that night I think), I woke up from a dream.

The main character in this dream was a fairly small, yet scary looking spider. I didn’t count how many legs it had, but it almost seemed as if there were more than eight. I became aware of its presence as it crawled across a mirror I was looking at myself in.

As brutal as it sounds, I wanted to find a long pair of scissors so I could cut the spider in half while keeping my distance from it. However, I couldn’t find a pair so I decided to just ignore it. Of course, it’s not easy to ignore creepy bugs because you’re continually aware that they are hiding out somewhere and the last thing you want is to find them climbing on you. So eventually I tried to find another way to kill it and I finally captured it in a clear container in the middle of the room. What I hadn’t noticed was that there were three candles inside of the container. As soon as I saw them, all three of them ignited in flames and obliterated the spider.

Based on some of the Biblical interpretation tactics we’ve already covered, take a moment to reflect on my dream and see what kind of interpretation you can come up with. You don’t have the convenience of having heard the story before, so it’ll be a good test. When you’re ready to read the interpretation I felt was accurate, feel free to continue.

For me, the spider represented my sin. There I was, staring at a mirror image of myself, but unable to focus on anything but the spider—a tiny little arachnid that hardly took up any space on the mirror. I wanted to get rid of it, but I couldn’t bring myself to do so. I didn’t even want to get close to it as it grossed me out, so I just tried to ignore it. Ignoring it was impossible though. I knew it was there and that I had to deal with it, so eventually I captured it. In that moment, three candles—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—destroyed it instantly and completely. I had taken hold of my sin and given it to God and He took care of it with His purifying power.

I woke up from this dream like most people would and thought nothing of it at first. But then I remembered my recent prayer, “that it would be nice to experience a dream from God,” and I paused and thought it over. It was the three candles that especially caught my attention. That element seemed so spiritually obvious to me that I had no choice but to reflect on it. And as I thought over what the candles represented and what the candles did, suddenly the symbolism of everything else started to become clear. 

And as I began to reflect on the overall message, I realized the whole thing was spot on with my life. Whenever I become introspective, I get completely hung up on feeling shameful for my sin—it’s all I can focus on. In fact, the mirror isn’t just symbolic—sometimes I literally stare in one and pick myself apart for my sin. The fact that God made sin look so little in this dream and powerless in regards to His strength spoke volumes to my condition.

I couldn’t help but smile. God had given me a dream. I finally felt like I had heard His voice and experienced something supernatural. This dream testified to my spirit so strongly that I couldn’t help but want to experience more. And because I’ve been open to it, God has been able to do so.

Want to continue the conversation? Take the long journey with my book/audiobook, The Rush and the Rest, or take a shorter path with my condensed version, Fantasy IRL.