Dear People Who Keep Company With God,
This is a story about three barns.
The first barn was the birthplace of the Lord Jesus. There are questions as to the exact features or type of this barn, but we do know it was a place where livestock were housed and cared for.
The second barn was located on 306 Azusa St. in Los Angeles, California. In 1906, it was the birthplace of the Pentecostal Movement and of a spiritual renewal that went around the world. This barn had originally been used as an African Methodist Episcopal Church. It had fallen into disrepair and had become a stable to house hay and livestock. It was 40’ x 60’ with two levels. The bottom level where the revival was held had a dirt floor. It was called the tumble down shack.
The third barn is one I visited in a dream. A few days ago Becky and I were at South Park Mall, which is undoubtedly the most prestigious and upscale mall in the Charlotte area. I decided to take a nap in one of the sitting areas while Becky shopped. I dreamed I had been asked to come to a meeting that was being held in a barn. There was a very unusual move of God going on in this barn. There was a visible manifestation of the glory of God that would compare to the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2. I was asked to come and help facilitate the move of God.
Suddenly Becky woke me up. I was very disoriented going from the glory of God in a barn to South Park Mall. It was quite a contrast. I was so disoriented I could not remember what I was dreaming, but I knew it was profound and had not left my spirit.
That night I went back into the dream and picked up where I left off. Suddenly a round ball of fire that looked much like the sun came into the barn. It was visible, frightening and then it exploded and glowing fragments and rays of light went everywhere. One of the fragments hit me and woke me up. Then I remembered the entire dream.
Apart from the glory one other thing stands out to me, the people in the barn. It was people who did not make it in the church world mostly because of their own faults and issues. It was the rejects, social nobodies and the poor. It was those who loved the Lord, but rejected the church. Except for the poor, those would be the last people that I would think God would visit, but He did and He always will.
He visited this type of people when Jesus was born. It was the shepherds; rough, poor, blue-collar nobodies in a field that the angels told first about the Christ!
He visited this type of people at Azusa St. A one eyed child of former slaves named William Seymour led the revival. Its adherents came not from the ranks of the privileged, but from the powerless, mainly the poor, immigrants and prostitutes.
The first time Bob Jones walked into our church, he looked around and said, “This place is like a barn”. I had no clue what he was talking about and didn’t care for the analogy, but now I do. I just hope we have stayed like a barn.
The barns are a reminder to not become so blessed and successful or to put it in barn language, be so high and mighty that we stop being a barn in our heart.
Many Blessings, BW