Tag: Revival

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Revitalization

Lord, invade us!

Best alien invasion movies of all time | Space

It seems the longer I live, the more talk I hear of aliens. Do aliens exist? Did God create extraterrestrial beings on a planet we have yet to discover on a galaxy far far away? Will we ever have contact with aliens or if they do exist, will they contact us first?

My best guess is that aliens do not exist. However, I don’t think any of us can rule them out of the equation. If aliens do exist, I believe they would exist for the glory of God. God created all things and all things are to bring him glory and honor. Unfortunately, we men, as best I can tell, are the only creatures on planet earth that don’t do what we were created to do.

God made man to worship him however God also made man with the freedom to choose. We theologians like to call this capacity human responsibility and some like to call it human freewill. Dogs bark, cats meow, and plants transform carbon dioxide into oxygen. Yet man, with all his freedom to choose, chose to rebel against his Creator (sin).

Some are more concerned with aliens than others. Some people fear aliens coming to our world and taking us over (think Independence Day). I think we need to be more concerned about us destroying ourselves. Especially, with the God-given capacity for some human to hit a big red button, causing a cataclysmic event. However, either way, what is being referenced to is what we call an invasion.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, chaos ensued. Some fear something like that or worse would occur if aliens invaded planet earth. To stay on the alien theme, think of movies like Space Jam and Men in Black. The way aliens in these movies attack is not so much by weapon but rather by taking over a human body or by channeling a human spirit.

What we most desperately need in our day and hour is an invasion. But not an invasion by aliens or foreign countries bent on a global takeover. The invasion we need most of all is for the Lord Jesus Christ to invade body, soul, and spirit.

From there, we need the Holy Spirit to invade our families, our churches, our cities, our nation, and our world. In short, we need a revival and a spiritual awakening and short of an invasion like this, our country’s citizens are going to look more like zombies and our church folks are going to remain in a spiritual slumber.

We need the Holy Spirit to wake us up and to shake us up. Some say China is the world’s sleeping giant. That may be true but so is the Church. Will we wake up or will it be too late?

There’s a funny/not so funny account in Acts 20:9–12 whereby Paul is preaching. Like all preachers, Paul goes “on and on” while preaching. The text literally says that. The text also says a young man named Eutychus was sitting by a window and fell into a deep sleep at the same time. Besides preaching falling on deaf ears, what happened to the man?

In those days, the window was wide open (there was no glass in the window). So Eutychus fell from the third floor and died upon impact when he hit the ground. Preacher-man Paul then leaves the room and wraps his arms around the lad and says to the group, “Don’t be alarmed. He’s alive!” Paul then goes back upstairs, has communion with the church, and keeps preaching until daylight

I’m not sure which is more amazing: the fact that God used Paul to do this resurrection miracle or whether its Paul going back inside and having church, like nothing ever happened. The focus was never on the young man. The focus remained on God throughout: God was being worshipped at night before the young man fell out and died and God was being worshipped at light long after the young man had been brought back to life.

When God invades our lives, our churches, our regions, and beyond, the focus will remain on Him. Our lives will be renewed and the walking dead will start walking alive. God will be found at the center of it all and will get all of the glory. If you would like to see a revival like this in our day, Would you pray with me, “Lord, invade us.”

God has often started revivals and or movements with the young. If you lead youth at your church, pray with your group for God to invade it. We need a holy takeover. We need to get back to the Word and prayer. When a revival comes, it may not come in the form we anticipate. Perhaps it comes online. Let’s not limit God. Let’s pray for an invasion and see how he comes down!

 

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Jesus

Great vs great

NOTE: My title above should really be “Great vs. great.” However, my current theme will not allow lowercase letters in the title. Below is my post:

There has been a lot of recent talk about revivals and spiritual awakenings. Revivals are for the church! They wake up sleeping saints and get us back to doing what we should have been doing all along. Spiritual awakenings are for the community. Cities change, cultures are impacted, and wide-scale repentance is involved. Though church members and others can get saved in a revival, spiritual awakenings are what occur when large segments of society find new life.

Revivals lead to spiritual awakenings. Until the church is revived, spiritual awakenings in communities cannot occur. Though both revivals and awakenings come from God, I think more often, God is waiting on us for them to get started. When we, His people, apply 2 Chronicles 7:14 to our lives and to our church, we will begin to see God move.

Historians and scholars differ as to how many Great Awakenings the United States of America has had. The First and the Second Great Awakening are undisputed. What some term as the Third and Fourth Great Awakenings are questionable. It is the “Fourth Great Awakening” that is the talk of the town today. The Jesus Revolution movie captured well “The Jesus Movement” that occurred in and around the year 1970. 

I, for one, don’t believe there has been a Third and Fourth Great Awakening. I believe the Jesus Movement was a spiritual awakening that had a great impact. God used the Movement to no doubt affect a nation and save many souls. Through the Movement, God also ushered in Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) and the acceptance of casual dress into the church house. Today, CCM is a mixed bag and casual dress is more often the rule than the exception. For decades now, not wearing one’s Sunday best has become the accepted practice in many churches. However you feel about these things, the reviews on the Jesus Movement itself remains mixed. 

For this reason, I do not classify the Jesus Movement as a Great Awakening. I am thankful for the Jesus Movement and readily admit that the Movement has affected me even though I didn’t live through it. I think so well of the Jesus Movement that I believe it may well contain the seeds that could sprout a Third Great Awakening in our nation.

I choose not to use the word “Great” lightly. Our country has seen two World Wars. These were “Great” Wars, and not “Great” in terms of having to have been fought. No war is great because in every war, people die. But in terms of sheer impact and comparison to other wars our nation has fought, WW I and WWII were Great. 

Many other wars have been fought since these 2 World War’s. The impact of those wars were great too, with a lowercase “g”. The First and Second Great Awakening were Great. Could it be that the Third Great Awakening comes at or around the same time as World War III? 

None of us know. God himself determines when and where a Great Awakening will occur. But like war, it’s usually a chain of events that sets things off. When it comes to a Great Awakening, only prayer will begin to set things ablaze. 

In order for a Third Great Awakening to occur, the church must first be revived and then spiritual awakenings must be observed in multiple regions on multiple fronts for a lengthy period of time. When a Third Great Awakening happens, there won’t be any question about it. The reviews won’t be mixed. Everyone will agree and who knows, at that time, the angels may be in the sky.

The Church is a sleeping giant that has slumbered for far too long. What are we waiting on? Let’s humble ourselves, pray, seek God’s face, and turn from our evil ways. Both God and the world are waiting on us . . .

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Articles

Who Was Asbury?

Revival starts with prayer. Someone somewhere was asking God to start a revival within the next generation long before students at Asbury University in Wilmore, KY decided to stay and praise God after a regularly scheduled chapel meeting. It’s interesting that about the same amount of people who frequented the campus during the two week revival–50,000 people–was about the same amount of people who died in a horrible earthquake in Northern Syria and Southern Turkey around the same time. As Jesus would say, the people in Kentucky weren’t any better than the people in Syria or Turkey–“Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Read Luke 13:1-5). “See, now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6:2).”

It’s not that revival isn’t for all ages. It’s that in the history of revivals and spiritual awakenings, God has often used the young to spark the flame. I think there is something some people are missing in this latest revival and bringing this out in the open is the reason for this post. Who was Francis Asbury, anyways? In his book Revival And Revivalism, Church historian Iain Murray says this,

“By 1778, with one exception, every Methodist preacher who had been sent across the Atlantic had returned to England. The exception was Francis Asbury who had arrived in 1771. For nearly half a century Asbury’s calm leadership in the work of evangelistic itinerary and church organization did more than any other figure to establish Methodism in North America. The opinion of Abel Stevens on Asbury is perhaps overstated but it bears repetition: ‘Neither Wesley nor Whitefield labored as energetically as this obscure man. He exceeded them in the extent of his annual travels, the frequency of his sermons, and the hardships of his daily life.’ . . . unlike the Church of England, Methodism was inherently a spiritual movement.”

Could it be that God is still honoring this man and this movement amidst a university that has yet to bend the knee to its culture? If you’ve been keeping up at all with the Methodist church in America lately, you know there has been quite a divide amongst the churches over cultural issues such as LGBTQ+, etc. Read on,

In his book about “Defining Moments That Shaped Our Enduring Foundations of Faith,” Pastor Robert J. Morgan writes,

“The Cane Ridge Revival was started by Presbyterian Barton Stone, but its combustion fired up the Methodists, whose circuit riders tackled the frontier—Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Illinois, and points beyond. Two names top the list of those riders, and they were as different as lightning and thunder. Bishop Francis Asbury was lightning. John Wesley appointed him to oversee the Methodist work in America, and for nearly half a century Asbury traveled three hundred thousand miles by horse and carriage, preaching more than sixteen thousand sermons. He began his work in America in 1771, at age twenty-two, and he became part of the Second Great Awakening . . . When Francis Asbury arrived in America, there were fewer than six hundred Methodists in the country. By the time he died, the number had grown to two hundred thousand. But the middle of the 1800’s, one in every thirty-six Americans was Methodist.”

This post isn’t about putting in a plug for the Methodist church. It’s about recognizing a man who was aflame for God! God could use any man from any denomination if he so chose. He also could use a donkey and he has before (Numbers 22:21-39). Oh, that we would have more Asbury’s—itinerant evangelists—willing to travel this world over to save men’s and women’s souls from an everlasting hell.

The current Asbury revival touched many denominations and people around the world. As the revival spread to local colleges and universities, it’s interesting to note the circuitous path. The revival went to regions that Asbury himself would have been well familiar with. He traveled those same roads, albeit by horse. The current revival made its circuit primarily through the form of social media and word of mouth.

The thing I loved about this revival was how the school’s administrators handled it. In a school of only two thousand students, the campus itself didn’t have the infrastructure or capacity to sustain a large number of outsiders coming to campus. It got to a point where administrators would only allow those 26 and younger into chapel for the services. They emphasized the next generation because the next generation is our heritage (Psalm 127:3). We all need revival but church statistics will tell you our nation sorely needs a revival within the next generation. This revival gives The Church and America hope! God is not finished with our nation or the next generation! Let’s not give up on them or our country so soon. Jesus doesn’t, Asbury wouldn’t, and neither should we.

Our ultimate hope is in Christ! America isn’t going to last forever. Neither will this generation. The Bible tells us so. However, our attitude needs to be like the apostle Paul’s, “I have become all things to all people, so that I may by every possible means save some.” Now, we don’t save people. Jesus does. But if we don’t get on our horse and go, who is going to get saved? Asbury knew this and that’s why he rode like the dickens. Paul knew it too and that’s why he made three missionary journeys (kind of looks like a circle to me).

I’ve heard it said that the gospel is a movement to be advanced and the church is an institution to be maintained. We could quibble some over the statement but there is some truth in it. Maybe it would be better stated that we need a gospel movement today in our institutional churches. What God has done before, God can do again! This wasn’t the first revival Asbury University had experienced. They had also experienced a revival around the time of the Jesus Movement in 1970. We could use another revolution today. We need churches willing to accept those who are different from them and give them time to explore the faith. This doesn’t mean we allow, for ex., the LGBTQ+ community to become members in our church. It does, however mean that we invite their community in and make them feel welcome. And if you want to go the extra mile, pick them up and bring them with you.

Our nation has changed and is changing. A Jesus Revolution will look different in the USA than it did in the 1970’s. In the 70’s, hippies by the scores were being saved by Jesus and allowed in his church. Sinners come in all different shapes and sizes. If we can’t be hospitable to sinners in the form that they come in today, why should we expect God to save anybody? Our job is simple. GO! Preach and live out the gospel regardless of the person standing in front of you. And don’t forget to pray. God will take care of the rest. If you need an evangelistic tool to help you along the way, give The 3 Circles a try.

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Articles

Letter To A Christian Student

I don’t believe I have ever used an entire post on my blog to address students. After all, most people who read this blog are either leaders, parents, or educators of the next generation. However, I feel that time has come. If you happen to be a ministry leader, parent, or Christian educator, don’t stop reading now. You may just find some material for your next lesson, lecture, or sit-down.

Dear Christian Student,

You are living in unprecedented times. Culture in the form of media, technology, and even education teach you sex education and gender ideology from kindergarten on. You are taught through social media and public school that gender is fluid, not connected to biological sex, and that you can choose to be whatever you feel like being. Many of you lost your childhood when you were given computers and or smartphones and saw things on them you should never have seen. Covid and subsequent government mandates that followed have only helped to delay your holistic growth and development. You feel like you are behind in home, school, and church because you are. You have been discriminated against in society at-large and are continuing to be discriminated against today.

Yet, know this—there is hope! Though you may feel like you are the least of the least, God says that with him, you’re the best of the best!

In Judges chapter 6, the Midianites are oppressing Israel when God chooses to raise up an unlikely hero:

14The LORD turned to him [Gideon] and said, “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?” 15″But Lord , “Gideon asked, “how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.” 16The LORD answered, “I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites together.”

You may feel just like Gideon: How could God use me? I am only a youth. I am weak and puny. This sounds like the excuse the prophet Jeremiah came up with when God first told him he had been appointed as a prophet unto the nations:

6 “Ah, Sovereign Lord ,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am only a child.” 7 But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a child.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. 8 Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the Lord . –Jeremiah 1

You need to understand that God often chooses the most unlikely to pull off God-sized feats. In 1 Corinthians 1, we find these words penned by the apostle Paul who himself claimed to be timid in action and ineloquent in speech:

26 Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things–and the things that are not–to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God–that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31Therefore, as it is written: “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”

You may feel like God doesn’t want to use you or that God can’t use your generation, but oh contraire! As the story of Gideon continues in Judges 7, you will find God raising up an army for Gideon to lead into battle. However, God isn’t looking for a large number in this army, but rather a faithful few. Left to our flesh and human reasoning, God’s wisdom doesn’t make any sense. First, God allows 22,000 soldiers to take off. They were afraid to fight and God allowed them to leave. Then in verse 4, God says, “There are still too many men.” So Gideon follows God’s further instructions and the army is reduced from 10,000 down to 300. Verse 2 tells us why God chose to use only 300 Israelites to defeat 135,000 Midianites: “In order that Israel may not boast against me that her own strength has saved her.”

God chooses to uses the least, the weakest, the inferior so that through less, he can gain more glory. A big God deserves glory for himself! May we not boast in our strength, but only in Christ’s. We are saved through the strength his grace provides and not our own (Ephesians 2:8).

You may look around and see less people in your generation following the Lord. You are no doubt experiencing more peer pressure to conform to the world’s standards than the generations that came before you. But again, what you need to understand is that God often chooses to do more with less. His thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8). Throughout the history of revivals and great awakenings, God has often used the young to spark the fires.

Just like the Hall of Faith mentioned in Hebrews 11, I don’t have time to mention all of the examples in the Bible where God used ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary feats. Goliath looked down on David when he was a youth but you know the end of that story. Paul told young Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:12: Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity. The suffering and persecution you and your generation of Christ-followers have endured today has only served to make you stronger in the Lord. Though there may be less of you out there, your fortitude and resilience has increased.

In the words of the band Unspoken: “Keep fighting the good fight, Keep letting your light shine, ‘Cause I’m never gonna leave you
Always gonna see you through to the other side”

Run the race God has for you and never look back!

In Christ,