COFFEE TALK WITH GOD: Walking in unity, sing praises

Published 6:00 am Friday, April 6, 2018

By week’s end, like many of you, I have expended all the energy I can muster to make it through the week. One Saturday morning after breakfast and coffee I decided to stay in bed on a rainy day and read. The book beckoning me was by John Dawson, “Taking Our Cities for God.” Dawson was a guest of my church in Nashville in the early 1990s. It was an active spirit-filled, Bible teaching church with many internationally known Contemporary Christian singers, worship leaders and missionaries.

Belmont Church was very actively engaged in Christian arts and global evangelism. While I attended there I participated in four annual Jesus Parades, a worldwide same-day event where believers joined together on the streets of their own towns and sang praises while walking and praying for the city.

The originator of the event was a worship leader named Graham Kendrick. He started the practice in England where brothels and perversions were rampant. To carry the gospel to the lost, he led his worship team into the darkness of the city. Their joyous praise to the Lord brought God’s anointing so powerful it broke yokes of sin. The women flocked to the windows. Others, too, lined the streets and the whole section of town found revival and the saving grace of God.

Graham continued to take praise to the streets and God gave the increase. Last I knew, before moving back to Louisiana, the Jesus Parade was happening simultaneously in more than 125 U.S. cities and a major number of countries around the world.

Reading Dawson’s book reminded me of my friend Joseph Watson. 

Watson had brought The WAVE, a project of Youth With A Mission, to Louisiana and visited New Iberia in 2004. He wandered off from the group one day and found himself sitting on the roots of a Live Oak tree here in City Park. Have I told this story before? I’ve shared it with several local people but it’s always worth repeating — I can’t forget it.

What the Lord said to him that day as he prayed was that “like the oak trees whose roots grow deep and wide, so is the faith of the people of New Iberia.”

I had a similar experience in 2015 when the Lord confirmed to me that he had chosen New Iberia to be my place of residence. He revealed through my interviews great faith and numbers of His children living in the Teche Area. That was important for the completion of a mission God placed in my heart early in my intimate walk with him.

Seeing community leaders reading Dawson’s book now is another confirmation. The book reads, “I (Dawson) believe that God has participated in the creation of our cities both in forming their personality and in stationing high-ranking guardian angels over each one. … Determining your city’s redemptive gift is even more important than discerning the nature of evil principalities. … God anticipated the development of your city. He marked out a place for it. When we acknowledge the placement of our cities as a function of God’s sovereignty, we begin to see things we have never seen before. … God is always up to something. What is He planning for your city?”

Have you been watching the last months as spiritual, political and business leaders gather to pray for New Iberia and walk the streets by voting districts? The District 4 walk is next weekend. Can you feel or see the change? And now we’re reading the Bible together in a public square. What can be next?

“How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity,” Psalm 133:1, New International Version.

It will be glorious to see the changes God will give us as we receive His bounty in this season of change — and at minimum, growing of our faith.  

By the way, Happy Birthday Joseph Watson — I thought this was published two months ago. God hid it until this week as you celebrate turning 60. Welcome to the club, and thanks for your devotion to the Father. It’s contagious.

Vicky Branton is the Teche Life editor at The Daily Iberian.