Truth Unites - Revival at Asbury? A Theological Reflection

Episode Date: February 18, 2023

Here I share my thoughts about revival, responding to the recent events happening at Asbury University.    See Jonathan Edwards' work on revival: https://www.amazon.com/Distinguishing-Marks-Spirit-Vintage-Puritan-ebook/dp/B017KSC9JY/truthunites-20 Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

I'm recording this video on February 16th, 2003. There's been, for a little over a week now, what appears to be a revival happening at Asbury University. I haven't been there, so I won't be really covering all the details of what's been happening, play-by-play, kind of a thing. But instead, what I want to do is offer some more general theological principles for revival. I thought, thinking about this, I thought maybe that could be helpful. Just, you know,

I have a general tendency to not like talking about current events, but this topic is so important to me. Our church has been praying for revival fervently. We meet on the first Tuesday of every month, early in the morning to pray, but then it's just been a topic of conversation and focus and prayer, and the Lord's been doing a great work here, but we've been praying just throughout the world for that. So that's important to me. And then, theologically, I've thought a lot about revival, and as I've thought about this,

it seems to me that many people don't have a working theology of revival. It seems to me to be something that maybe people haven't always thought about, and so I thought maybe it could be helpful to throw out some historical and theological principles for how do we evaluate revival. So I want to do basically four things here. Number one, express my excitement for what is happening at Asbury. Number two, offer a definition of revival. Number three, offer some basic principles for how we should think about revival. And number four, share the story of three specific revivals in church history.

That last part will have a video clip of my grandparents talking about a revival. They were a part of at Wheaton College. it's such a cool story. So don't miss that at the end there. Even if you skip ahead to it, that's fine. First, I just want to share my excitement about what God is doing. I'm praying that it spreads. I'm praying that what is happening at Asbury becomes a beachhead for further work

of the Holy Spirit. I want to share a little bit about that because I think a lot of us, especially maybe if we've never seen it, you know, and I'll come back to that at the end. Once you've seen it, you can never be the same because you see, oh, this is weird. This isn't fanaticism. This is good. This is healthy. This is like oxygen. We'll come back to that. But I think there could be an over-disseurnment kind of cynicism that happens. We should be discerning. There are fake revivals. There are things we need to be discerning about. But sometimes we can be overly cautious to the point of being nitpicky and very quick to offer criticism and analysis. I have a great concern about this. I mean, I don't know. You hear lots of people saying, well, we don't know if it's a revival yet, very cautious. Sometimes you don't hear as much of people saying, yeah, but we don't know that it isn't. You know? So then you get to a state of, you know, what's our general sort of disposition as we're analyzing it?

One of my concerns, I had this thought as I was driving up here today to the church, and it just grieved me to think, are we even in the state as the church in America, just to focus there for now, where we are capable of receiving a revival? or our tendency is to fight and fracture about everything right now. And I don't have answers about this. I'm not trying to be judgmental with that. I just have a deep concern that it's almost like, you know, if God pours out the Holy Spirit,

well, we find a way to twist it and make it something that we're squabbling about, you know? And I'm burdened about that because I think one of the things we talk about here when we pray for, we did a revival conference a few years ago with all the other churches in the valley. we invited all of them, many of them came, most of them, and we just talked through revival. One of the themes we walked away with is that reconciliation among Christians is a key for revival. Knocking down those walls is, I don't even fully know why, but we talked about that, and I do believe that. And I have some idea why. That reconciliation is a huge piece of how the

Holy Spirit stirs among God's people. And so what I'm having to do, I'm not saying this in a spirit of judging someone out there or at there. From my own heart, I'm trying to shepherd my own heart away from cynicism to say, and my prayer is this, that God would pour out his spirit so much that it overwhelms our negativity. It overwhelms our cynicism and our squabbling, and it heals all the things that are so broken right now in the church. And so, you know, that's one thing that I'm grateful for.

From everything I can tell, the good people at Asbury are stewarding, what is happening to keep the focus on Jesus. That's one of the dangers. We have to steward revival when God sends it. You know, we can affect what's happening. We can quench the spirit. That's a danger in the scripture of quenching the spirit. So we have to steward it to protect it from a bad agenda coming in

because lots of people want to come in and use what God is doing for their own purposes, whether it be a political agenda or a social agenda or a personal agenda or whatever it might be. So we have to work hard to protect it, you know, and keep it focused upon the Lord, I'll come back to that at the end. But boy, even the way we talk about this, even just if we're so quick to analyze it, part of me, that's why I was so hesitant to make this video. I thought, we don't want to talk about it too much in overly analyzing it. Sometimes it's okay to just say nothing at all and just to not comment,

especially on Twitter, where Twitter warps our conversation so much. So I guess just my burden is I don't want us to squabble about things so much that we end up quenching the spirit. Jesus said, blessed are the peacemakers. It's good to be to have a, you know, I talk about ironicism a lot of my channel, but it's because it's a value to me. I do think there's something of godliness in this disposition of being peaceable in the way we relate to others, and that very much is relevant in how we analyze something like this. In that uncertain terrain, do we err on the side of cynicism or enthusiasm?

I want us to be enthusiastic. I really am excited about what God's doing. Let me share why, and that is it is so many. manifestly the case that we need revival right now. The church and the world are in a pretty tough state. You know, just looking at all the statistics about in our culture here in America, those church attendants, the number of pastors who are discouraged, everything right now here in early 2023 feels like what you read about before the Second Great Awakening. And, you know, it's like we're kind of broken down. We need a fresh pouring out of the Holy Spirit. And I want to give my

life to what counts. I want to get to the end of my life and feel like I made a difference. And so that's why praying for revival is such a wonderful focus, I think, that I want to give myself to. And so that's why I'm so excited. One of the things about revival is that it can almost sort of make up for lost time, so to speak, Jonathan Edwards. And I know there's a lot of controversy about Jonathan Edwards, and I rightly so, you know, just for the sake of this video, I'm just going to engage some of his theology of revival because I do think he has some really insightful comments to make about revival. But I do so with a sense of being conflicted in engaging him because of the fact that he was a slave owner.

And that's being discussed right now. And I'm sensitive to that. And that I do feel grieved about how do you even engage someone like that. But the thing is, here's the thing about that. People talk about this lately, you know, Carl Bart, Jonathan Edwards, these other theologians, when there's a sin in their life that's unveiled and it's unrepentant, what do you do about that? I don't know, but I do worry if you get to the point where you say you can't ever even engage them anymore, I do worry about that for the simple reason that when does that stop?

Because then you're going to start throwing in a lot more theologians other than Edwards and Bart. But I'm not saying we should hold off in criticizing the sin. And I'm not saying it shouldn't affect us. So that's why I feel a little conflicted, but I'm just saying I don't think it's wrong to go this far, to at least to just engage their theology a bit and learn from it. So don't want that to be a distraction here, though, in the bigger point of this video. But anyway, Jonathan Edwards is one of the greatest theologians of revival in church history. He had so much insight about it. That's the thing that, you know, so he was reflecting upon at one point in several of his works he wrote about this,

how he had labored for many years and not seen as much fruit, and then all of a sudden in 1737, heaven, God poured out his spirit, and he said, when God in so remarkable a manner took the work in his own hands, there was as much done in a day or two as that ordinary times is done in a year. And it reminds me of that verse in Joel, where it says God can restore the years the locusts have eaten. That just really resonates with me and my prayers right now, because that's what we need in the church, because we're in a time of declension. So anyway, so I'm excited. Just everything I'm seeing seems like this is something really. wonderful and special and sacred that God is doing. That's why I'm so jealous to try to pray for it

to spread and to try to protect it and do whatever I can do to help, you know, keep the focus on Christ as it seems to be. So anyway, now let me talk a little bit about the theology behind that excitement. And, you know, I thought, this is where I thought it could be useful to just reflect upon the theology of revival a little bit. Some people might say, you know, Gavin, why are you so? I've had, I've had people express surprise that I'm more charismatic in my views because I also love, like really high scholastic theology and stuff like that. So let me share a little bit about why. One of my goals in my life is I want to be more known for than what I'm for than what I'm against. I want enthusiasm to come out of me more than alarm and negativity. I mean, you have to do both,

but you think of like in the New Testament in the book of Jude, he starts off saying, I was eager to write about our common salvation, but I found it necessary to talk about false teaching and heresy. and that's an interesting emotional contrast. It is necessary to be discerning and talk about false teaching, but we shouldn't be more eager for that than we are eager to celebrate what is good. We want to be enthusiastic about the good more than we're cautious about the bad. So in that spirit, let me share why I think revival. Let's talk about revival.

What is revival? I think that term really can trigger people. We've seen it politicized. We've seen it done in a way that's forced and manipulative. We've maybe seen it done where the focus becomes all on the sensationalistic to the neglect of suffering and the ordinary Christian life. We've seen it maybe done in a way where the gospel loses focus or theology gets out of whack. Let me offer a definition of revival from my dad's book that I find really helpful. He says, revival is the season of the life of the church when God causes the normal ministry of the gospel to surge forward with extraordinary spirit.

power. It is the normal ministry of the gospel, not something eccentric or even different from when the church is always charged to do. What sets revival apart is simply that our usual efforts greatly accelerate in their spiritual effects. God hits the fast forward button. This is really helpful because what it reminds us is that revival is not some distraction from the gospel and from the normal things we're supposed to be doing. Loving Christ, evangelizing, focusing on the scripture, prayer, you know, just the normal things that go into a healthy worship service, a healthy Christian life. It's not like revival diverts our attention from them. Rather, it's just a matter of special intensification in the efficacy of those things as the Holy Spirit's at work. So,

and, you know, so that might help us a little bit if you've seen it define it another way. That's how I'm thinking of revival here. And here's the simple fact. If you're not pro-revival? Here's the simple fact, is that this happens a lot throughout church history and throughout the scripture. The kingdom of God does not advance evenly and at the same rate all the time. It's not like it goes this certain percentage every single year. Rather, the kingdom of God tends to go through periods of stasis or declension punctuated by these incredible breakthroughs. That's how a lot of progress is made in every part of our life. That's how my writing happens. when I'm writing, it's like, I'll go through like six months of writers' block, and then all of a sudden

it just like pours out of me, you know. But that's how a lot of progress is made in life. And the fact is, you see a lot of revival throughout the scripture. You think of, if we use the term revival for spiritual renewal, reformation for doctrinal renewal, we see a lot of reformation and revival throughout the Bible. Josiah, when the book of the law is found in 2nd Kings 22. Nehemiah in this season of covenant renewal after the exile. One of my favorite verses I'll put up is Habakkuk 3-2. And I've done a lot of work in the book of Habakkuk. I preached through it a few years ago. I've written on this book. I love the book of Habakkuk. But the little phrase there, in wrath, remember mercy, but also just that those little phrases in the midst of the

years. Habakkuk is saying, God, I've heard of what you did. Renew it now in the midst of the years. and in the context of Habakkuk 3, he's he's hearkening back to all these great deeds in Israel's history. And he's saying, Lord, I heard about what you did. I've heard about this. Now do it again. And that phrase of God, do it again is one of the ways here when we've done our revival conference and so forth. That's how we pray for revival. We're saying, Lord, do again in our day what we've seen you do in the past. That's why it's helpful to share stories of revival, as I'll do in a second. Okay, let's talk about three principles for revival. How do we think theologically about revival?

The first and most important thing I want to talk about is the importance of prayer. Martin Lloyd-Jones said, The inevitable and constant preliminary to revival has always been a thirst for God, a thirst, a living thirst for a knowledge of the living God, and a longing and a burning desire to see him acting, manifesting himself in his power, rising and scattering his enemies. Revival is never a human plan. It is never something that can be forced or manipulated.

it is always something to which we relate in a position of dependence and vulnerability. That's why when revival comes, don't think it will exalt you up into a status of comfort. It will not. It will feel very humbling. It will feel very vulnerable because at every moment we are leaning upon the Lord, looking to the Lord, it is something only he can do. In 1904, during the Welsh Revival, which I'll describe in a second, and G. Campbell Morgan closed one of his sermons by saying, basically, don't let anybody try to start.

Hear what happened in Wales and then try to start it in his own land. Because we didn't start it here. We cannot produce revival. It is something only God can do. And that's why prayer is the key. And I'll be bold and say this. I believe God wants to send revival. and I believe that if we commit ourselves to earnest, sincere prayer, God will answer those prayers.

I don't know how and when and exactly how, but I just think there's enough in the scripture that inclines us to think that we worship a God who longs to see, who longs to advance his glory, even more than we want to see that, and who's committed to answering the fervent prayers of his people. So that's why how we're talking at our church, or let's just really commit ourselves to a non-synical prayer of faith to ask the Lord to move again because prayer is the key. Second principle is that you test revival by spiritual fruit. This will come back to what I was saying a moment ago with Jonathan Edwards in his distinguishing marks. He's talking about basically it's a really insightful text about how you know what a revival is.

What are the criteria for evaluating a genuine revival and what aren't the critical? the criteria by which you know. So one of the things he talks about is emotion and basically, you know, lots of, lots of, you know, visible reactions among the people doesn't tell you that it is a true revival, but it also doesn't tell you that it isn't. The fact that people are responding with lots of emotion is not necessarily good or bad. It just doesn't tell you enough information yet to know. So that's really helpful because then you're saying, okay, so we're not just trying to get an emotional reaction, but we're also not against that if that does happen. It's not like that's bad, you know. But as we'll see with some of the revivals I talk about, sometimes it's very sort of subtle and it's not this big, noisy thing. Another test that he talks about is you can't tell that something isn't a revival just because there are errors and imperfections involved. during times of revival, Satan always comes in with counterfeits. And part of the strategy of that is then people will look to the counterfeit and dismiss the whole thing.

So you can't be a perfectionist and too nitpicky. That's why I feel uncomfortable with some of these early preliminary judgments that as though, you know, well, there was this thing that was a little off for that thing. And it's like, that doesn't seem right to me to be nitpicky. Here's Edwards, nor are many errors in judgment and some delusions of Satan interming. mixed with the work, any argument that the work in general is not of the Spirit of God. When you look at revivals in church history, every one of them had some weird stuff mixed in. That's always the case.

So you can't say, oh, there's this little problem over here, therefore dismiss the whole thing. Okay. So Edwards goes through lots of other things that are helpful. I'll put a link to that work in the video description. It's so helpful. He goes through so many other criteria that don't tell you, but then the things that do tell you are always come back to spiritual fruit. This is the principle of Matthew 7, 15 through 20. Here's what he says, when the operation is such as to raise their esteem of that Jesus

who was born of the Virgin and was crucified without the gates of Jerusalem and seems more to confirm and establish their minds in the truth of what the gospel declares to us of his being the son of God and the Savior of men, it is a sure sign that it is from the Spirit of God. So that's his first distinguishing mark where he's talking about basically if the if the revival is producing firm conviction of the truth of the gospel, that tells you something because Satan doesn't do that. He talks about other things when it works against the interests of Satan, when it increases our reverence for scripture, when it increases our love for God and for others.

That is a key. So the point is simply we test revival by spiritual fruit. The external noisy stuff doesn't really tell you. one way or the other. What tells you is, is this producing genuine love for God and the fruit of the gospel? The third principle I wanted to share that might be useful is we must steward revival to keep the focus on Jesus and to keep the focus on the gospel. It is easy for the spirit to come down, genuine work happen, and then it gets steered away over time, you know, and it becomes about the hype or we're trying to reproduce the same thing that happened last time, this time. It's really easy

for pride to get in the way, so we have to stay humble. And that's why I'm grateful for what's happening at Asbury because they seem to be really keeping it focused upon the gospel, so that's exciting. From everything I can tell, it just seems wonderful what's happening there. So when a revival comes, we pray, we keep the focus that the name of Christ would be central.

It's not about any person, it's about Jesus. We pray that it would strengthen local churches. We pray that it would, that marriages would be healed, that reconciliation would occur, addictions would be overcome, the knowledge of the gospel would advance. Good doctrine would increase. Love of Scripture would increase. The kingdom of Satan would be pushed back. Lost people would be evangelized. People would come to Christ. Sin would be confessed. You know, you get a sense of what a genuine work of revival is by these

spiritual fruits. So that's exciting. And yeah, it's exciting to see that what that looks like that happening at Asbury. So I'm just so eager that we steward this and we keep pushing forward and we keep saying, let's just pray for this to keep the focus on Christ and let it keep going forward. All right, here's the last thing I want to talk about is just to share some examples from church history. One of the things that often happens is the fact is hearing about how God has worked often encourages that in other areas and in other times. So studying about revivals in church history, that's been my focus. I read that and it's just amazing. So let me just, so it's helpful to kind of, so in other words, what I'm trying to do in this video is kind of give some historical and theological

context that might just help some of us as we're thinking about this whole topic with what's happening right now. So here's some historical context. I just share about three in particular real quick. First, let's talk a little bit about the second Great Awakening. So you've got the first great awakening. That's what we associate more with people like George Whitfield and Jonathan Edwards. We're thinking back earlier in the 18th century, 1730s, 1740s, times like that. The second great awakening is like late 18th century, 1790s, up into the 1840s, sometime in that span of time. So we're thinking real roughly between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, this long period of time, you know, think of like, if you remember history classes, think of like Thomas

Jefferson as the president, the Louisiana Purchase, the westward expansion, you know, early 19th century. Sometimes we forget or do not know that church attendance was not good during that time. things were spiritually very bad during that time. People forget about that. This is when there was a visitor from France who visited the United States and famously talked about how secular the United States was. Drunkenness, gambling, brawling, all big problems. You know, we sometimes think that, like, the spiritual and theological decline of the United States has just been this sort of perennial thing, but it's not.

It's been up and down throughout our history. It's really been since the 1950s, which was the peak of church attendance in our country that it's been going down. But prior to that, we've had some dark times. Again, it's that kind of cyclical pattern of declension and renewal, declinche in renewal that we see throughout church history. And basically, God did this extraordinary work. I won't cover everything in my notes here, but just to share a few of the things, you're thinking it toward the late 1790s, these. outdoor camp meetings start being had and it wasn't fancy. It was the simple preaching of the gospel,

but it would spread from town to town. So a large crowd would gather, there'd be a presentation of the gospel, there'd be this, the Holy Spirit would do something and then people would go share about it and it would spread. I guess I could read, I'll read this. This is a count of one of these events in Massachusetts where I think this is Alvin Hyde describing this. He says, a marvelous work was begun, and it bore the most decisive marks of being God's work. So great was the excitement, though not yet known abroad, that into whatever section of the town I now went, the people in that immediate neighborhood would leave their worldly employments at any hour of the day and soon fill a large room. All our religious meetings were very much thronged, and yet never noisy or irregular.

They were characterized with a stillness and solemnity, which I believe has rarely been witnessed. and then it spread to Yale College. By the way, what he's talking about about how it wasn't noisy and irregular, it was just still and solemn, I'm going to come back, that's going to be a theme of this. Revival is not weird. It's not this thing where everything spirals out of control into crazy emotionalism. A lot of times revivals have a feeling of peacefulness to them. I'll come back to that.

I might be counterintuitive, but I'll come back to that at the end. But at Yale at this time, it was a very spiritual. the dark place. Very few students professed Christ and lots of the typical, I mean, almost like the typical things you'd think of at like a party school today, except just in that culture at that time. But several students began to meet to pray, and there was a well-known senior who came to Christ and shared his testimony and this affected others. And over the course of one of the school years, 58 people professed their faith in Christ. About 30 of those eventually entered ministry. the whole atmosphere of the school slowly changed, and that kept going.

There were some other revivals following that. But what was interesting about those is they weren't particularly emotional. They didn't have. Some of the outdoor meetings had people yelling and falling on the ground and that kind of thing. This really didn't have that. And that's, again, that'll be a theme throughout this video. It's not about the emotional response. It's fine if there is a big emotional response.

But it doesn't have to be there. That's not really the focus. The focus is on what the spirit is doing. By the way, another interesting thing about the Second Great Awakening is the social impact. So many movements, the temperance movement, efforts at prison reform, women's rights, abolition efforts. So many social movements were profoundly influenced by the Second Great Awakening. We'll come back and talk about that at the end too. Okay, let me share a little bit about the Welsh revival of 1905.

for whatever reason, Wales has had a lot of revivals. That's fascinating. Maybe there was some godly person in Wales like a millennium ago who prayed or something. I don't know, you know. But there's been so many. In the early 1900s, with the preaching of a man named Evan Roberts, there began to be a revival that would spread from one church to another. When we did a revival conference, I kind of went through the whole narrative.

But here, I just want to talk about G. Campbell Morgan, who was the pastor of Westminster Chapel in London for many years. He also taught a biola, by the way, and he went to explore what was happening. And one of the themes that you see in this revival that he talked about and others is that it was not planned, it was not schemed, these are not humanly engineered things. There are things the Spirit of God does, and you can't explain it in human terms. But one of the things he said, he gave a testimony of his experience, he said, I personally stood for three, hours wedged so that I could not lift my hands at all. I left that evening after having been in the meeting three hours at 10.30 and it swept on, packed as it was, until an early hour next morning,

song and prayer and testimony and conversion and confession of sin by leading church members publicly and the putting of it away. And all the while, no human leader, no one indicating the next thing to do, no one checking the spontaneous movement. Some of the Puritans used to talk to about the presidency of the Holy Spirit for this, the sense of, you know, when you have this sense of it's the Holy Spirit who's leading right now. No one human being is in charge of this. One of the things you see also in these Welsh revivals like this one is the social impact, how much it dramatically changed the country. And there's these awesome stories of, you know, places where the police had nothing to do because crime had been so reduced.

you know, or bars that were just completely empty because the churches were so full. It's the opposite of what you see in Western Europe and some places in our country right now of churches being converted into bars. It's kind of amazing. There's a great story of a police officer hearing what's going on, going, and getting converted, things like this. It's just amazing. But here's what Campbell Morgan said when he says, what is the cause?

How is this happening? He says, it is a divine visitation in which God, let me say this reverently, in which God is saying to us, see what I can do, without the things you are depending on. See what I can do in answer to a praying people. If I could say one thing to the church in our context in the United States, and maybe this applies elsewhere too.

Right now, it's just, what a wonderful thing if that would start to be our focus more is to focus upon prayer for what only God can do. Because there's so much pain right now. There's so much disintegration right now in the world. There's so much hopelessness. And what a wonderful thing for all that to drive us to look to the Lord for what he can do.

All right, here's the part I'm most, excited about about this video. The third revival I want to talk about a video clip I will share from my grandparents talking about their experience at Wheaton College in, I think, don't hold me to this. I think it was 1970. My grandfather was the pastor of Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena for 20 years, 1959 and 1979. I've heard so many stories of that because I served on staff at a church that was kind of a sister church to that church. And so he was a real hero of mine. You'll see their personality, and I love my grandparents how they kind of finish each other's sentences in this video clip. But both of them were just such amazing people of God. My grandfather's such a

wonderful, humble servant of Christ. I aspire to follow in his steps, and those of my dad and mom and others that I've known every day. It's kind of a humbling thing to have these people in your own family that you admire and look up to so much. But I want to show about six minutes of this video clip. Well, no, I don't know if I'll see. That's what I initially had. I might narrow it down. you'll see, but I want you to hear them describe what God did. And then I want to make two comments about it. Two things that stand out to me about that. Number one is when he talks about how it wasn't weird.

It was relief and release. That is what, this is one of the reasons I think well-meaning Christians don't pray for revival. We think it's weird and spooky and, you know, we're afraid of it. It feels alarming, you know. And the opposite is true. revival returns us to health. The other thing that he said that's interesting is, I think it was my grandma who said,

once you've seen that, you can never be the same, because it gives you something else to aim for. It helps you see like, oh, that's what it can be like. It can be that wonderful. And that's my prayer for the American church right now and for the church throughout the world, that God would do a new work, a powerful work of renewal that we'd say, wow, I didn't know it could be like this. By the way, Tom McCall, who's someone I know and respect who teaches at Asbury, wrote a Christianity today about this. What he described there, sounded me so much of what my grandparents were just saying in the spirit

of this not being weird or emotionalism. He basically, he writes these words, many people say that in the chapel they hardly even realize how much time has elapsed. It is almost as though time and eternity blur together as heaven and earth meet. Anyone who has witnessed it can agree that something unusual and unsurbed. scripted is happening. There is no pressure or hype. There is no manipulation. There is no high-pitched emotional fervor. To the contrary, it has so far been mostly calm and serene. The mix of hope and joy and peace is indescribably strong and almost, indeed almost palpable, a vivid and

incredibly powerful sense of shalom. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is undeniably powerful, but also so gentle. I relate to that just from little times I've seen. seen where the Lord works like that. It's almost like if I could do any, my hope is anything in this video, it's that it helps us, helps the average Christian out there who's kind of wondering, I don't know what to think about revival, push through from feeling a little bit on our guard and like, is this a good thing or not? To say, it's kind of like anything good in life that you might be a little bit wary of until you've experienced it. Like, even something simple like falling in love or having fun, going out and dancing or enjoying good music. You know, these simple

things can be, until you've experienced the good side of it, you might be a little bit, you know, because you've seen how people react or something, or might be feel a little threatening or something. But then once you've seen the good side of it, it's like, oh, this is wonderful. Revival is good. Revival is a good thing. We should long for revival. It's not weird. It's a wonderful, good thing.

So anyway, I hope that this video will kind of help us think, theoretically, about revival in a way that is enthusiastic and positive about it. Final quote. This is from a great book by Colin Hanson and John Woodbridge called The God-Sized Vision, Revival Stories that Stretch and Stir. They say, though God alone can instigate revival, the church need not wait idly. We can confess our sins, known and unknown, and forsake them.

Above all else, we can pray. Is it possible that we do not see God working in mighty ways because we don't ask him to work in mighty ways? That last sentence, huh? me? What if we came together and said, you know, let's ask for the Lord to do a new work in our day? As we go forward into the 21st century, and we see so much strain and stress in the world around us, so much pain and darkness, there's no better time for the Holy Spirit to pour out something new and wonderful. And what if the church came together to pray for the church.

that? What if we stopped fighting so much? What if we stopped attacking each other so much? What if we kind of called a timeout for a little bit to stop tearing each other apart? It doesn't mean we don't deal with problems when we need to, but you know, the tilt and the emphasis right now is so much disintegration and destruction. We're just, everything is just sort of melting around us, it feels like sometimes. What if we kind of redirected our focus and we let this good thing that God appears to be doing at Asbury become a new focal point to say, Lord, do it again, Habakkuk 3-2. Do a new work of pouring out your spirit in a way that is so desperately needed right now.

That's what I'd like to give my life to. I want to get to the end of my life and feel like I gave it to what really matters, you know. So who's with me? You know? I think we've got to overcome our fear of, I don't know, how people react. and our cynicism and just sort of say, rise. It takes a little bit of courage to just give yourself to something, but to say, you know, I want to give my life for the things that matter and the things of

Christ. So anyway, let's keep praying. And is it possible we don't see God working in mighty ways because we don't ask him to? Well, let's ask him to. Let's pray. Let's fight with each other less and pray more. Let's offer our commentaries and our brilliant interpretations less and pray more. I think that would be a good thing.

All right, thanks for watching, everybody. Let me know what you think in the comments. If you want more coverage on stuff like this, let me know if you think this is helpful. I hope it is just to encourage. Sometimes a video on a constructive topic like this can hopefully meet some different kinds of needs than the stuff I normally do.

All right, God bless you. Thanks for watching.