desires to emphasize is discerned by the Holy Spirit and not worked out in the carnal mind. Practicing the gift of interpretation of dreams and visions needs endurance. The more you know your Bible, the more Scripture the Holy Spirit can use to bring it to mind.
To update my symbolic dictionary, I use the Bible, books on the animal and plant kingdoms, Bible dictionaries, Bible encyclopedias, Hebrew and Greek lexicons and dictionaries. I also use the Internet in my research. As a rule I prefer to exclude secular material as far as possible. Occasionally secular material proves to be useful. Make use of Bible programs (e.g. E-sword), which can be downloaded from the Internet for free, the Internet and your local library as books are expensive. Over time, if you faithfully do what I tell you, you will develop a good understanding of the leading of the Holy Spirit in dreams and visions as well as the meaning of most objects and symbols. Practice makes perfect.
The Lord occasionally uses objects and symbols that relates to a person’s occupation and interests. A shopkeeper may receive dreams and visions about products, services and customers, while a professional hunter, from time to time may receive dreams and visions about wild animals, rifles, ammunition and customers.
Fifthly, you need to discern if your dream is a spiritual or natural dream. You need to know whether the Holy Spirit inspired the dream or whether it was a product of your mind.
We also need to know if the dream is symbolic (parable) or literal. Normally if something in a dream is not literal then the whole dream with all objects and symbols must be interpreted. However, there are rare occasions when this rule does not apply. Refer the chapter on dreams