A Revealing Move of God

A revealing is taking place. This revealing is happening in the mix of the COVID-19 virus, a heated election cycle filled with social discord, and evolving worldviews. This reveal has been developing over time and remained undetected until uncovered in these challenging times. No longer will the distinctives of a denomination or a familiar circle of fellowship be what motivates our future affiliation or involvement.  Something personal and redefining has taken place as we have been absent from the familiar.

Those who lead groups of people into the future will be challenged as to how they can lead a group that now possesses an unusually wide variety of interpretations of what each individual considers a valid expression of faith and community. Leaders who assume their followers will continue to walk in continued lockstep when it comes to their understanding of theology, worldview, and values are beginning to realize the fallacy of their assumption. 

Not all of this newfound diversity is healthy or biblical, yet some of it is a work of God's Spirit and will reveal the way forward. What is taking place must be discerned over time. Be careful not to prematurely judge what is not yet fully understood. 

The Lord is stripping away layers of our assumptions to reveal a new, and in some cases, uncomfortable reality. This stripping away will reveal where we really stand with each other and ultimately before the Lord. All of this is taking place to set up the next move of God, calling forth participants we would never expect to come into the Kingdom to radically follow Jesus and eventually become the next generation of leadership within the Church. 

This defining move of God will bring needed clarity and understanding of the essentials of our faith.  It will also help us off-load the excess baggage of our assumptions freeing us up to engage this unique moment in history.

Moving at the Speed of Change

We currently have at our disposal the fastest vehicle of migration ever known to humanity: the Internet. We are moving at warp speed through time and space, exposed to differing worldviews and ideas previously isolated within a specific culture and not easily accessible on a global scale. 

Our current technology has migrated past the first generation (1G) of wireless technology, through the terrain of 2G, 3G, 4G, and now into 5G. 

Collective learning has even formed what is called the “global brain,” the collective intelligence of humanity. The global brain is collecting, storing, and retrieving data at blinding rates of speed. God is going to use this global brain to shift every sphere of culture—not by force but by a Spirit-directed process of influence that will lead to renewed ways of thinking across the world. 

Futurist David Houle wrote a book called The Shift Age. Houle said that in the twenty-year period of 2017 to 2037, we will experience more change than in any fifty-year period in human history. We are currently experiencing that shift—and it will accelerate the rate of our migration. 

With that kind of rapidity, we will need to continually redefine and streamline our message and mission. We need to be able to move alongside the increasing tempo of culture in order to remain relevant. That relevancy is not the result of compromising our ideals, ethics, or truth, but to better communicate our message. 

(Excerpt from “BEYOND: Exploring the Frontier of God’s Expanding Revelation” https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Exploring-Frontier-Expanding-Revelation/dp/0578634317/ref=sr_1_7?crid=1RVIWS0E0OO9S&dchild=1&keywords=garris+elkins&qid=1599478738&s=books&sprefix=Garris+Elkins%2Caps%2C227&sr=1-7

Heaven's Intervention

For every issue, there are typically two camps at polar opposites of each other. Each side is entrenched in its narrative with supporting evidence to uphold its position as the only viable option. We are at that place concerning many issues in our culture. This impasse has created an opportunity for divine intervention. In the coming days, turn your eyes from the limitations of earthly solutions and look to Heaven. God is about to demonstrate His Lordship over the affairs of Earth in ways that will astound us all. My hope is placed only in the intervention of God. Without Him, all other options hopeless.

Keep Your Eye on California

As a native Californian having lived in Oregon now for more years than I spent in the state growing up, I have watched California's life and politics with interest. Yesterday, Kamala Harris was selected as Joe Biden’s running mate. Again, my focus was directed to California. 

I was born and raised in California. I love the state’s diversity of geography, climate, and culture. The state is now large enough economically to represent the status of a nation. It is also a state in trouble. Some of its cities are revealing deep despair. People are leaving California in droves. It is not the state of my youth. California has been described as a national indicator of the future direction of the nation. At this moment, it is indicating trouble. It is also destined by the Lord to become a spiritual indicator exhibiting potential for revival and transformation. God loves California, and its people and He has something good planned for the future of the state. 

Four months ago, I wrote a blog article titled, “Out From the Shadow” (linked below). At the time, I knew what the Lord was saying to me, but did not have permission to write in detail. My words appeared like a riddle by design. At the time, I told Jan I felt Kamala Harris would be selected as Biden’s running mate. In the brief article, I said, “One will come forth and walk in the shadow of another. This shadowed one is the primary, not the secondary.”

 

Like some have already expressed they believe Mr. Biden may not have an extended stay in office if elected, for whatever reason. Behind Vice-President Biden now stands Kamala Harris and behind Harris in the shadows, stands the Governor of California, Gavin Newsome. Harris and Newsome both came from the seedbed of the San Francisco political arena. Harris was the city’s District Attorney and later became the state’s Attorney General, and was eventually elected to the state Senate. Newsome was the mayor of San Francisco and later ascended to state politics as Governor. Newsome has been seen by some political observers as a person with presidential aspirations. Also hailing from San Francisco is Speaker Nancy Pelosi. San Francisco is a powerful and well-funded political machine that has produced state and national leaders.

 

What California is revealing to us is the course of a nation’s future in natural terms. Politics, whether you like them or not, do not accurately reveal a nation's spiritual future. Keep your eye on California, not for its politics, but for its spiritual potential. Politics are only natural indicators, not the future spiritual potential of a nation. People in office from any party are not an enemy. They are people loved by God who deserve our prayers. Look past the personalities and platforms to see what God is doing in the state. Begin to pray for those in power and those aspiring to power. Don’t limit your prayers to simply a change of those in office or a particular policy with which you disagree. Keep praying for the hearts of the state’s leaders to experience God’s love. Also, keep praying for God's justice to be revealed so that real change can take place.

 

I am believing in something beautiful and transformative to happen in my home state. God wants to show us that those we might deem as enemies of the good can actually become partners in righteousness. For some, this will be a leap of faith to believe it could be possible because they only know and have been led to believe a negative narrative, not a Kingdom narrative.

 

God is creating a new narrative for California, and that sound is being heard by those with ears to hear. That is the narrative we need to pray into and its where we should invest our resources and energy. Keep God’s heart for California in the forefront of your thinking and call to remembrance the prophecies of goodness spoken over her. 

www.prophetichorizons.com/2020/03/out-from-shadow.html

Making a Righteous Sound

Speaking the truth in love requires sound. A silent church that hopes to get back to “normal” without addressing the elephants in the room will have missed an opportunity to express the sound of truth in this time of growing anarchy and censorship. Yes, we are to be the hands and feet of Jesus, but we are also to be His voice. An honorable protest is part of our rich cultural history. Violent riots are the work of a spirit of anarchy and never lead to righteous outcomes. Civic leaders who have abdicated their assignment to protect a community will have to answer to a higher authority for their compromise and complicity. Evil taking place even within the smallest part of a city is like leaven. A tiny bit of leaven left unchallenged will eventually corrupt the larger host. We need to find our voice as believers, or someday our descendants will ask why we were silent. The fear of man will not be an excuse that will stand the test of integrity.

Turning Over the Tables of Our Faith

When we read about Jesus entering the temple and turning over the tables of the moneychangers, our interpretation of that event is viewed through the lens of our worldview. Our worldview, no matter how right we think it might be, is only a partial view of a greater reality.  We always have more to learn than our current understanding would lead us to believe.

What Jesus was overturning that day in the temple was a misrepresentation of God's heart. The temple officials who represented God to the people and the moneychangers they allowed into the temple complex to conduct business were portraying a false image of God. They were rejecting the sacrifices the people brought to the temple and required them to buy a “temple approved” sacrifice at a higher price. The average family was being abused financially and morally, but the greatest abuse was creating a false image of God.

Jesus is moving through the Church at this moment, looking for any abuse and misrepresentation of His name. The way He challenges that abuse or misrepresentation could make some of us uncomfortable, especially if it is our table being overturned. 

Before every move of God, a dismantling and overturning of our motives and assumptions must take place. We will all be subject to this overturning.  No one is exempt. When Jesus interrupted and overturned the status quo 2,000 years ago, it was an act of love. That same love is moving through personal temples today, bringing order and clarity to our individual lives and to the mission of the Church currently being represented in culture. 

A Time of Interpretation

This morning, I sensed the Lord saying that unusual and unexpected interpretations of private prayer in the Spirit are coming. These interpretations are similar to an understanding that occurs when a tongue is offered in a public assembly followed by an interpretation, but this particular manifestation will come from private prayer. 

For over 40 years, praying in the Spirit has been a significant part of my prayer life. I do have prayer lists of things I pray in my known language, but it is prayer in tongues that has occupied more and more of my prayer time. I remember as a young believer reading Paul’s words in I Corinthians 14, where he said, “I thank God that I speak in tongues more than any of you” (v. 18). He also placed a high priority on the gift, “I wish you could all speak in tongues” (v 5). I took Paul’s words and the example of his prayer life seriously.

If you are one who utilizes this power gift of prayer, expect there to come insight into areas of life and culture that will arrive not because of your experience or education, but because the Spirit found someone through whom Heaven could pray Spirit-inspired solutions into this world. God is increasing the tempo of these interpretations that will reveal His plan for individuals and culture. In some cases, the interpretations we receive today will come from prayers offered in decades past when our Spirit, not our mind, was engaged in prayer.

Chasing After the Wind of Social Demographics

Chasing after ever-fluctuating social demographics is the work of a political spirit. State and national demographics will always change as people with differing social views move in and out of an area. We can try to redraw voting districts and even state lines, but in the end, these will be futile pursuits. In God’s Kingdom, the most important demographic is the human heart. The heart is where Jesus invested His time and energy. It is also where He wants us to focus our attention. The Great Commission will not be accomplished by adjusting natural demographic lines. It will happen when individual hearts are changed - one at a time. That is the most profound culture-altering demographic.

The Danger of Relevancy and Credibility

As warm and embracing as our faith might be to us personally, to some, it will come across as strange, insignificant, or even foolish. One reason why we are seeing unhealthy doctrines entering the church is that, in some cases, our core message has been compromised in the pursuit of relevancy and credibility. For some, the highest compliment of their faith is to be accepted by all. The record of Scripture paints a different picture.

The Epicurean and Stoic philosophers listening to Paul in Athens said of his message, “What’s this babbler trying to say with these strange ideas he’s picked up? When they heard Paul speak about the resurrection of the dead, some laughed in contempt” (Acts 17:18,32). These Greek philosophers were the thought-molders of the culture in their day.

The Roman court dismissively referring to Paul’s faith, “It was something about their religion and a dead man named Jesus, who Paul insists is alive” (Acts 25:19). This “something about their religion” attitude conveyed a feeling of irrelevance toward the message of Christ in the highest civil court of the day.

The believers in Corinth, who in some ways resemble the Church in Western culture, faced a similar issue. In his first letter, Paul let the Corinthians know their faith will not always appear credible to the surrounding culture. Paul wrote, “For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the very power of God” (I Corinthians 1:17).

So, how then do we live? We live with an on-going tension between actually wanting to be relevant and credible in the right way, yet not compromising truth. There was something the Early Church carried with them each day that allowed them to move through the rejection of the message they preached. They carried anticipation of the supernatural.  The signs, wonders, and miracles of God confirmed their message in a way that legal or social acceptance could not.  The same is true for us today. An expression of faith without the expectation of God supernaturally confirming our message will always lead to compromise because we will seek an unhealthy expression of relevance and credibility as our solution. This compromise happens because the confirming element of what we preach is something we produce, not God.

“And God confirmed the message by giving signs and wonders and various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit whenever he chose” (Hebrews 2:4).

We Are Meant For More

If our New Year resolutions are limited to weight loss programs, gym memberships, or planning our next vacation, we may have lost our way as followers of Jesus Christ. Around the world, fellow believers are paying for their faith with blood. In our nation, dark agendas are working to undermine righteousness and truth, while many in the Church fail to identify, engage, and confront these agendas. My prayer is the next Great Awakening will not be defined as just another enthusiastic meeting but the awakening of the Church to the danger of living a life of faith within an insulated and self-focused existence. We are meant for more.

The Revival of Rest

Rest will be the place from which the next revival will spring. We enter this place of rest when we choose to lay down our undisciplined ambition and our need to always have to produce to validate a lesser identity. We enter rest through the gauntlet of mocking voices and self-doubt. Those who cross the threshold and enter rest will step into the arena of the miraculous where only if God shows up can the impossible take place.

The End of the Teflon Season

With the approach of the year 2020, it is tempting for many of us to use those numbers to speak of clearer vision and greater focus like someone with 20/20 vision. While the comparison is obvious and subject to overuse, it is not without some merit and prophetic importance.

For the last year, I have been sensing we are coming to the end of what I would call The Teflon Season. Teflon was one of the first frying pan coatings that helped food not to stick while cooking. There is a downside to this coating. Using a Teflon coated frying pan at high heat will begin to breakdown its coating capabilities and release toxic fumes into the air. 

The phrase “Teflon Don” was associated with gangster Don Gotti who seemed to always be able to elude prosecution until one day his situation heated up and his defenses broke down like a Teflon frying pan under high heat. 

The issues of justice and fairness have not seemed to stick to some individuals and institutions. A righteous consequence has slipped off their life like an egg fried in a Teflon frying pan slips unhindered onto a waiting plate. This ability to slip away without sticking is about to change. 

The Spirit will be who applies the heat that will cause the breakdown of these defensive barriers, not our preferred vein of politics or our agenda for cultural transformation.  Human heat can only apply emotion to a situation, not a righteous resolution. When God applies heat to a culture, He does so to redeem, not destroy. He forgives the guilty and confronts the remnants of a Pharisee heart in all of us as the process unfolds, and things heat up. God’s application of heat is no respecter of persons. It is applied to everyone and everything on the cultural stovetop.

As 2020 approaches and things continue to heat up, align yourself with the heart of God, not the unbridled passion of people. If you can subdue your emotions and not be led by the demands placed on you for your agreement and alignment, you will begin to see clearly what is taking place. With 20/20 spiritual sight, you will see what God is doing in our nation that is preparing us to witness the most amazing season of national revival and reformation.

Digging Deeper into Your History

While walking along a trail, I sensed a nudge to turn around and face into the sun. When I turned around, I saw where I had just hiked. The sun was reflecting off the leaves, giving the path a faint glow. This is a historic mining area called Rich Gulch. It is lined with glory holes. 

A glory hole is a small hand-dug pit created in the 1850s by gold prospectors looking for surface gold and financial glory. They dug these holes with pick and shovel and quickly moved on. We are told only 10% of the gold was found using this method and that more still exists under these shallow pits. After taking the photo, I turned back around and continued my hike. Then the Lord began to speak. 

Don’t be quick to dismiss what lies beneath the recent surface activity in your life that produced little results. You quickly worked over an area of undiscovered relational and spiritual treasure and moved on. You left behind a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. The thought of returning and working the claim again has no appeal. If the Lord asks you to return to what you have defined and dismissed as a failure, do not let the fatiguing memory of your past efforts or a lack of faith stop you from returning and digging deeper this time around.  A mother lode of revelation and glory awaits your obedience. 

The Woke Church

After spending 46 years sharing the same bed with Jan, we have learned how to discern the difference between our sleeping sounds and when one of us is beginning to wake up. Early this morning, I quietly called out to Jan, “Are you awake?” She replied, “Well, it sure sounds like you are.” Such is life when the clocks get changed.

In the natural cycles of sleep and becoming awakened, we all make unique sounds. The same is true in matters of the Spirit. The sounds we make with our life will let those around us know our status of awareness. In our culture, the term “woke” is being used with more frequency. The definition of the word can be broad. Simply, it refers to someone who is socially awake to issues of justice, discrimination, and human need. Being a woke person is not a bad idea if we are being awakened to issues that are on God's heart. Many times the term is used to define people who are not aligned politically with a particular worldview. At that level of understanding, little traction is gained, only further division.

There is a spiritual awakening taking place in our culture. The awakening has the potential to be a woke moment for the Church.  Believers who choose to live isolated, nervous, and fearful of a changing culture will retreat into irrelevance. Those not under the umbrella of a traditional definition of faith will toss “woke” bombs at the Church, seeing their irrelevance as a lack of social engagement. This divide is growing wider each day.

The awakening taking place within the Church looks a lot like the ministry of Jesus. He gathered 12 people who were not filled with the Spirit and not yet believers in a traditional sense of the word and called them to be His first disciples. Disciple is a word that defines a person as a learner. Jesus gave His disciples authority to cast out demons, raise the dead, and perform miracles. All of this took place before they would fit neatly into our 21st-century evangelical definition of what it means to be Christian and signing them off on each point of our preferred doctrinal statement. Jesus did the same thing with the 70, and with anyone willing to learn the ways of Heaven. The early disciples belonged before they believed. They belonged because they were invited by Jesus to follow Him. 

You will see evidence of this awakening when spiritually woke believers begin inviting people from outside the familiarity of their community of faith to follow them in the Kingdom's mandate to make disciples of all nations. These woke believers will see people from every walk of life as a potential learner who just needs someone to give them a chance to taste and see the goodness of God. Believers who are willing to do this and risk the condemnation and wrath it will bring are the woke ones God will use to advance His Kingdom. They are the people making the noise of someone being awakened from religious slumber.

The Accelerated Dismantling of Our Faith

Perhaps one reason for much of the angst and concern in certain quarters of culture and within the Western Church has to do with a dismantling that is taking place. God is dismantling ways of thinking, theologies, and worldviews we have accumulated in the last few generations that do not reflect God’s heart or His mission on Earth.

When Gutenberg invented the printing press, Scripture no longer remained in the hands of a few clerics who told the people what to believe. When the Word of God was released to the masses in written form, it brought about the Reformation. In scope, impact, and immediacy, the Internet far exceeds the potential of Gutenberg’s printing press. We are living in a moment of history where an accelerated dismantling of our assumptions is taking place – assumptions we have carried defining them as truth. Much of this dismantling is taking place because new insight, information, and historical context are now available at the click of a keyboard. 

As the known and familiar is being taken apart, don’t allow fear or anger to direct your response to the discomfort of the process. The things being dismantled are not sacred in God’s eyes. We have made them sacred in our tradition. Our misconceptions are being dismantled and reconstructed into a way of faith that many of us have never known in our lifetime.  If we are willing to follow the leading of God’s Spirit and not allow the spirit of fear and control to have its way, we will see God do remarkable things in us and through us once we have been dismantled and put back together again. 

The Language of Revival

Wallace Henley, a revival historian, shared an interesting note about the Welsh Revival of 1904-5. Henley wrote, “The transformation was so profound and so personal that the mules pulling the coal out of Welsh mines had to be retrained. They only knew the foul curses by which the miners drove them. But the converted miners quit cursing, and even the animals had to learn a new language.”

God wants the evidence of His presence in our lives to break out of our meetings and move into the streets. We love to fill up what I call our three C’s – conferences, coliseums, and churches. While it is wonderful to see and experience a full venue, it will do little to steer the course of culture toward a flourishing future if these remain as standalone events. Our gatherings will cease being isolated events only when they are purposefully connected by vision and mission to the Great Commission of Matthew 28, calling us to disciple nations.

We will know our faith has broken out of the orbital pull of attending just another meeting when from the depths of a coal mine, or behind the closed doors of a backroom political deal, or around the table of a corporate board meeting, the sound of personal integrity is expressed with the language of a different Kingdom. The evidence of these transformations will be so profound those involved will have to learn a new way of speaking to conduct business because the old language no longer communicates the content of their heart. 

The Fire of God is Announcing a Change of Seasons

When the fire of God’s Spirit begins to burn to announce a new season, the first response by those not aware of how the Spirit works might be less than joyful. In fact, some may consider it distasteful and even unpleasant, but there is a reason for that response.

This morning, I turned on our gas stove for the first time. It is a stove that looks like a log burning stove except that it runs on gas. It happens each fall, a musty, kind of funky smell fills the room the first hour of burning after several months of inactivity. The smell comes because of dust that gets in the stove’s system over the summer and is burned off with the first fire of fall.

As believers, we can accumulate the dust of spiritual inactivity when we live for long seasons of time without a personal encounter with God’s Spirit. These encounters heat up our life, relationships, and the environment in which we live.  The accumulated dust of our inactivity can create an unpleasant disruption and reaction until the Spirit can fully have His way in those situations. 

Don’t run when the Spirit's fire begins to burn. Stay put until the Lord says otherwise. Choose to look beyond what is taking place in the natural realm. When the fire comes, it will burn away the inactivity of the previous season, preparing us for something new, warm, and inviting. This will be our announcement that a new season has arrived. Whoever runs from these encounters will end up out in the cold spiritually. Those who remain have learned the burning and our resulting reaction will always take place as an announcement that a new season in the Spirit has arrived. 

The Dispersed Ones

Between the Day of Pentecost mentioned in Acts 2 and the persecution noted in Acts 8, a span of 3-4 years had transpired. During those years, the Church gathered around Solomon’s Collonade. It was a beautiful time of sharing resources, feeding the poor, and seeing signs, wonders, and miracles taking place. The Church was being added to daily. In all that goodness, there was a problem. The Church was not dispersing into the cultures beyond the familiarity of Jerusalem. The fulfillment of the Great Commission mentioned in Matthew 28 was in jeopardy of being stalled. That all changed when the persecution of Acts 8 happened, and a scattering took place.

Every new season in Church history will experience a moment of dispersal, either physical or theological. We can struggle with the idea of being scattered away from what is familiar, especially when we might be experiencing a good season like the gathering of the first generation of believers around Solomon’s Collonade. 

We are in a moment of dispersal within the Church. This dispersal can appear confusing to some who do not understand the Great Commission and the ever-expanding nature of God’s Kingdom on Earth. It is too easy for us to remain in a good place at the expense of the best. If you are being dispersed, do not fear what is taking place. God could be repositioning your physical life or challenging a point of your theology to increase your effectiveness in God’s Kingdom. If you allow God to have His way, He will show you the way.

Engaging Multiple Targets in Prayer

I’ve had an aggressive and warlike kind of prayer on my mind for the last few days. This is the kind of prayer that that brings down spiritual strongholds and dark power structures like those described by Paul in Ephesians 6.

Forty years ago, SWAT teams were still a new idea. Large metropolitan police departments had teams, but the smaller departments were just considering the concept. At the time, I had left a large urban sheriff’s department in California, where I had trained for several years on a SWAT team. Each month, along with our in-house training, we also trained with FBI special operations teams. When I arrived in Oregon, I was done with that season in my life but offered to help my new smaller department set up what would become the foundation of their own SWAT team.

Part of that development process was getting to meet with arms dealers representing some of the most exotic weapon systems in the world. Many of the weapons were out of our budget and outside of the parameters of our concept. One system was a multi-rifle sniper weapon. The triggers on each of the sniper rifles were electronically linked together. The rifles were designed to fire at the same time when all targets were engaged and all triggers pressed. This enabled a SWAT team to take out multiple terrorists at the same instant.  A sniper might press his personal trigger many times throughout a hostage incident before his weapon finally fired in unison with the other snipers connected to the same weapon system. When the moment to fire finally came, all the targets would be eliminated at the same time.  It took patience, but the results were dramatic and devastating.

Some of you who are part of prayer networks are functioning in prayer like the weapon system I just described. You have been praying and “pressing the trigger” in prayer for a long time wondering why certain cultural scenarios have not changed or why some strongholds still remain in place. What you don’t realize is that you are part of a global strategy of prayer. There are other networks of prayer around the world praying with you working in concert to bring down evil forces that are the equivalent of a group cultural hostage-takers. 

Continue to press your assigned prayer trigger. Be patient and faithful. Keep your assigned target in view and follow its movements making sure it remains in the crosshairs of your prayer effort. God has commissioned you to take part in a moment of history when the world will be amazed at how rapidly righteous change will take place on the world stage. Those who benefit from your expertise and faithfulness in prayer will most likely never see you or even know you were there behind the scene because you were deployed in a secret place known only to those whose calling is intercession.

Louisiana - The Fire of God is Coming

Jan and I take communion every day. We pray for our family, friends, and our marriage. During communion, we remember God’s faithfulness in all things. We use a small thimble-sized brass goblet from Israel to serve the wine and matzo crackers for our bread. When we receive communion, we break the matzo crackers and serve each other.

After breaking the cracker today, it came out resembling the shape of Louisiana. I know to some that might be a reach, but the Lord drew my attention to the shape of the cracker to tell me something. As I held the Louisiana-shaped cracker, I noticed the top was burned as were several spots moving from top to bottom. The Lord began to speak to me about the fire of His presence being released in the state of Louisiana moving from the north to the south. 

I pulled up a map of Louisiana and the surrounding states. Looking at the map, I saw this fire of God coming to the northern border of Louisiana as a converging point from fires already burning in adjoining states and cities. These fires were all burning toward the northern border of Louisiana to then turn and begin a journey south.

I saw the fire of God coming from the Dallas/Fort Worth area to the west, from Memphis and a small town in Arkansas that is experiencing the beginning of a visitation of God’s presence. Mississippi to the east will add flames to the fire. Once the fire arrives, it will cross the border and move south inflaming Shreveport, Alexandria, Baton Rouge, and finally New Orleans. The surrounding cities of these metropolitan areas will also ignite for the glory of God. 

Louisiana, keep your spiritual tinder dry. The fire of God's presence is coming. Your dry tinder will allow something new to ignite and burn in your state. This will not be like anything in the past.  This is a new fire, so new it might cause some of you to ask God if it really is a work of His Spirit. Expecting something familiar will limit how God will steer this burning. It could actually stall the fire and turn it in another direction. Only expect God, nothing else. God is coming to burn up religious spirits, pride, and fear-based theologies. 

Louisiana, look to the north. The approaching fires of revival and reformation are staging at your northern border. The fire is coming. Prepare your tinder.