The Asbury Revival currently ongoing on the campus at Asbury University in Kentucky is more than a taste of heaven. Not only are young people discovering that God’s presence was never a figment of a Christian parent’s or grandparent’s imagination but that a personal relationship with our Creator and Savior is very real on a level of fellowship and communion before unimagined. They are receiving from Him something that cannot be argued away. The voices of a thousand philosophers and ideologues eternally silenced because at last God has spoken.
“My sheep hear my voice and they follow me.” Jesus affirmed, [John 10:27] and we, the elderly who have spent our lives in God’s Word, are beyond words overjoyed (even to tears) that the grandchildren of a nation growing up in a world, ever slipping farther from God, have heard from heaven. We know what they are experiencing and that at last many are learning to identify the call of God to worship—worship Him—in Spirit and in Truth [John 4:24].
They are not playing at church. No man has choreographed a move of the Spirit of God—nor could they. Pastors and church leaders have in a most literal way stepped aside and have given these young hearts over to God. Habakkuk’s prayer is being answered. Habakkuk 1:5 “Look on and pay attention, all nations, awestruck with astonishment, because I am doing something in your time that if it were only reported (and you had not witnessed it for yourself) you would never believe it.”
But believe it! What always seems to go unsaid is God wants this generation more than they want Him! Our Lord must be tired of being objectified in ritual and prayer, of hearing us always crying for the next this or that, all the while others fault Him for every woe this poor planet has endured. At last here is a generation gathered to simply enjoy His presence and declare their love for Him. This does not suggest that He will not answer requests. He most assuredly will …and is! But oh to launch out a thousand miles into the deeper waters of God’s presence and be lost to all my own concerns wrapped up in only His and Him.
Stay as long as you want. Stay forever! But my prayer also is that this sweeping move of the Spirit of God will reach the high schoolers in the churches as well, that catechism classes and youth meetings will cease their programs, put them only on hold, while God turns each recreation center and gathering into an “upper room.” There is nothing scary about weeping repentantly before Him Who gave Himself on a cross to rescue you from all the evil around you. There is nothing frightening about “joy.”
I invite all young folk to come and see.
Come and see what God has done, his awesome deeds for mankind! Psalm 66:5 NIV
