The Asbury Revival

The news cycles continue to cover the Asbury Revival, and reports are coming out of other places as well indicating that the Holy Spirit might be on the move. We need to approach this subject with respect, and learn what we need to learn, and follow. A prayerful approach knowing that God is always a surprise, we can approach this with thankful and wise hearts. 

Transcript

Hey, everyone. I wanted to take a few moments today to kind of speak from the heart a little bit. I don't have a script for this, so please bear with me. There may be more mistakes in this recording than usual, but I feel compelled to speak just a little bit regarding the revival that's taking place at Asbury. And now I have to say I'm excited.

There may be 100 reasons to be concerned, but I'm still excited. I see that I'm seeing things online where people are saying, Well, we're concerned about this. We're concerned about that. What I've learned over the years in studying various revivals from the Great Awakening to the revivals of the Hebrides Islands and and other places, and some of the moves of God that I've had the privilege and the absolute joy to be in and be a part of.

I've learned that revivals like Freedom are messy, that at the minute you get people and their agendas involved, you're going to have some mistakes. Jonathan Edwards preached his very well-known sermon, Sinners in the Hand Hands of an Angry God. He preached that sermon to try to curb what he saw as excesses and emotionalism, and he wanted to create a sense of reverence when people came in and they were considering, you know, how to respond to God, I guess God is the one who has to decide whether or not Mr. Edwards was doing the right thing when he made those decisions.

I expect that this Asbury revival and its spreading by the way it's going to other schools. And if it continues to spread, I want to suggest that it's definitely of the Lord. I would suggest that we just trust God's providence and sovereignty in this issue. But revivals are messy. But what's interesting about this is that in right around 1970, there was another revival at this school and I believe the Chiefs won the Super Bowl that year to have some friends online who are best way to describe them is they are witnesses to the Jesus people movement that took place on the West Coast.

Some of these musicians were also involved in Asbury Revival in the seventies. And it's interesting to me that Asbury is again the focus and apparently that the Chiefs again won the Super Bowl. It suggests that perhaps if this is a move of God, that perhaps God is saying something with the Chiefs having won and we need to let God, I believe, define what that is.

I find that it's very easy when a new move of God takes place because people are so hungry for the Lord and for his touch and for his relationship. And for more of his word, that we tend to want to put our human perspectives on what God is doing. I can't speak for everyone else, but I can say that I realize there are times in my life where I put my earthly perspective on what God was doing.

For some reason, I thought I had the ability to do so, and I was so wrong. I was blinded by my own ambition, my own need to be noticed or whatever you could probably pick. You could probably pick a sin and find it. That might have been at work in my life and led me to some pretty stupid things, to be perfectly frank.

Yet my heart is lifted when I consider the Asbury Revivals. Ladies and gentlemen, I expect excesses. That's been a mark of every genuine move of God that has occurred. Not that the Lord is not a God of order. He is, but the chaos that seems to ensue when the Holy Spirit presents himself to people who really, frankly, we are just caught off guard when the Lord shows up.

It's not as if we're very dignified. When He shows up, we tend to fall on the floor weeping or crying and crying out for more of his presence, or we fall on the floor. In some cases, there have been reports of just an unmitigated joy. And I've witnessed many of these things in some cases experience them myself. Maybe if we expect revivals to be dignified, maybe we're in the wrong place.

I don't expect this revival to be dignified. God willing, we'll have people coming in off the streets who simply need to get right with God. God willing, it'll be one of the first times in the modern age where prostitutes and drug users and bouncers and thugs and gang members come in off the streets because something is drawing them.

And maybe they don't know what it is and maybe they come in angry. Maybe they do some bad things, maybe they do stupid things, but maybe God gets them while they're there and they come to the Lord. Ladies and gentlemen. There's not a single one of us. Not a single one of us who has been drawn to the Lord without some type of a mess in our lives.

And in a move in a corporate move of God when he is he is showing his sovereignty. He's revealing his glory and power and drawing people to the extent that they want to spend 24, 24 hours a day on their knees in prayer. I find it hard to believe that that's purely the flesh. I suppose it's possible, but I'm pretty sure I don't know anybody with that much patience with this many people.

Are we really going to suggest that this revival is not of the Lord, as some people seem to be suggesting? When you've got people it's been going on for 11 days now and people's lives are apparently being changed. I would suggest that we need to prayerfully consider our response to this. As mentioned in Scripture, Gamaliel, one of the wise teachers in ancient Israel, cautioned the Sanhedrin one time, and he said, if this is not a move of God, it will fail.

But if it is a move of God and we resist it, we find ourselves in the position of resisting God. Now, I'm paraphrasing a bit of what Gamaliel said and, you know, God forgive me if I've mispronounced his name; it certainly wasn't intentional. Yet I think that God is moving in our day in time and if it's messy, it's just going to have to be messy.

We've got to learn how to come back to the Lord in humility with childlikeness. And we have to learn how to leave our sophistication at the door, because when you get right down to it, I don't care if you're a president or a pauper. None of us are really that sophisticated and we're all stumbling our way. We're all stumbling in our walk down here on planet Earth.

And we don't have we don't have our stuff together nearly as much as we think we do. Or if I was to use a word from the Apostle Paul, we don't have our rubbish together nearly like we think we do. And we are in a day in time in our country where we need a powerful expression of a holy God, a God of love, whose kindness leads us to repentance, whose mercy triumphs over judgment, the same God who will reach out to powerbrokers who have given themselves over to evil and then gently draw them.

And they repent of their evil. They repent of what they've done and they come in and get their lives right before the Lord. And then they become powerful forces for change in the world. That's what I'm looking for. I see a lot of Christians out there today, and at one time in my life I would have been one of them calling for God's judgment for the sin of America.

But one thing I've learned from the Lord in the past few months is that his judgment, I've taken it to be a thing of destruction, because that's typically how it's referred to when people say they want God to judge America. They say, Lord, judge America. And then they go online and they say, God is going to judge us for our sins.

Don't be surprised if the economy collapses or if we're attacked or blah, blah, blah. Well, I don't know if those things are true. I'm pretty convinced that the people that are saying those things don't know if they're true either. And I'm pretty convinced that God's judgment is a form of his benevolent, joyful method of bringing freedom to our lives.

Judgment is not here to scare us, although I think it's fully okay to be absolutely terrified of the living God just because we're terrified of him and his extreme magnificence does not. The terror that we feel is not a reflection of his heart for us. His heart for us is good. Are we surprised or should we be surprised that a sovereign God would delight in coming down to Earth and revealing himself to people in such a way that they worship and praise for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, going on a week and a half now, and lives are getting saved.

People are coming to the Lord. They're repenting of sin. I don't have the answers. The only thing I suggest that I want to provide here today is that we need a high view of God. And we have operated with a low view of God in our lives for many, many years. We find it easier to believe in His judgment than we do his grace.

We find it easier to believe that he would judge us and destroy us. And he would redeem us, save us, deliver us, washes clean and make us fit. Tools in his service and employ. We find it so much easier to believe the things about God that we think are tough than the things about God that are good and frankly, easy.

Not that grace is easy. It certainly is not. But it's freeing. It's fulfilling. It takes. It just gives us everything. God's grace gives us everything. Why wouldn't he come down and get in the mud with us and get a little bit dirty? He and he in and of himself is perfectly pure. So whatever he touches, he purifies. And there may be there will be excesses in this revival.

This has happened before. But I would urge caution and restraint before we determine that it is or is not a move of God, and that we should that if we if we come to a place where we feel the spirit of the Lord is speaking, that we must have a high view of God and be willing to believe what is in the text about Him, about his goodness and love, which knows no bounds, because God is crazy about the people of the Earth and He loves every single one of us from the homeless opium addict under a bridge in San Francisco to the Oval Office and the man and his staff who inhabit it today

at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. God is no respecter of persons, but he comes, He comes to heal, He comes to save, he comes to deliver. And his judgment is meant for freedom. It is meant to wash us clean of the sin that has so easily entangled us because God is good and God is not marked and the rise of evil in our society.

We may see at some point an angry God, but at that point his anger won't be expressed at us for our destruction. His anger will be at the evil that has come against those in his human family whom he loves and those in his human family who do not know they are a part of his family. Yet God will have what God wants and He will have it in this nation.

His will will reign supreme. And whether we live or die, God will not be moved. He hasn't changed. And ladies and gentlemen, our God is so very good. And Father, I pray that this move that we're seeing at Asbury, I pray that it is a genuine work of the Holy Spirit, a revival that will teach people about who they are in Christ Jesus and how they are saved, sanctified, sealed and delivered through Christ Jesus.

How the Lord Jesus came to Earth and took all forms of judgment against humanity unto Himself and delivered the human race. You, Oh, God, are incredible. You. Oh, God. Tell the truth. You. Oh, God. Lie. May every man be a liar. But let it be known that you tell the truth. And your word teaches us that your mercy triumphs over your judgment.

And that that answers the call to holiness. That your character exudes. And while I poorly frame the issues and while I poorly frame my understanding of your nature when I experience you, I know the truth in all things come to you and all things flow through you and all goodness is held in your hand and all truth and justice and light that is yours and yours alone.

No one is like you or God, and I know that you will not be mocked. You are a good God, you are a good king. You are a gracious and wonderfully redemptive father and Jesus. I am so thankful for you in ways I don't know how to describe. I don't know if I would be here. Apart from you and Dear Spirit.

I don't know how to operate without you speaking into our lives, into my life, and leading me away from my sin and leading me deeper into the inner recesses of your presence coming from the outer court, so to speak, into the holy of holies. Or I can learn to be quiet and Lord, give us before we run out there speaking from our own areas of expertise on the quality of your work at Asbury.

I pray that if this is your work, I just ask that you stamp it somehow that we might know just speak to us and teach us and help us to reverentially follow as you lead. And may this revival go from school to school to school. May it sweep the nation. May this not be the last revival or great awakening that we see?

We are starving and thirsty and hungry for your presence. The Lord is a song says This is the air that I breathe, Your holy presence living in me. And this is my daily bread. You're very words spoken to me and I've become desperate for you. Oh, God. Our nation is desperate for you. Your people are desperate for you.

It feels like we've been through a long, dry, hot desert. And we need the very spirit of the Lord to refresh our souls, bring times of refreshing to our hearts, redeem and restore. I pray you would root out the evil that has come to roost in our nation, even in some of the highest places of power. Throw down those altars of God.

Give and give the people of this nation and of the nations around the world a just verdict against the evil that is currently moving around the world. You will Lord, are not mocked. So bring your truth as your Word says that when the enemy comes in, then you, like a flood, will raise up a standard against him. We need to re we need to rethink that verse.

Lord, we've always held that It means that when the enemy comes in like a flood, then you show up. But what the word actually says in the original tone, in its original context, is that when the enemy comes in like a flood, the Lord will raise a standard against him and, Oh God, show us your glory. Let your glory shine upon America once again.

And all of us and Lord, I pray you glorify your name in this work at Asbury. As it spreads, teach us that you are our God and our hope that you're our keeper, our healer, that you are confident that you are the mighty warrior of old. You are the ancient of days. Nothing is hidden from your sight. Help me to bow in your presence.

Help us all to bow in your presence And Lord, you determine what is yours and what is not. Let us follow. I pray in the name of Jesus that there be a revival in every major city in this nation, from Atlanta to Dallas to San Francisco, L.A., Detroit. Portland, Washington, DC. Boston. I pray, Father, for a great move of God and Silicon Valley, and I pray for a great move of God in the halls of Congress.

I pray that you would answer the prayers of people who have been gathering in that tiny room in the Capitol building for years. I think every Tuesday, hundreds in some cases gathering in a tiny room that's not big enough to hold more than 20 people gather outside seeking your face. Lord, let those prayers ascend before you and be the seeds of revival in the halls of power in this nation.

Oh, God. Come show yourself. We thank you. And praise you for being just who you are. We welcome you. Forgive us our sins and lift us up out of the mire and the places of despair where we fallen. Lord, there's no one like you. There's just. There's no one like the living God. How great you are. We love you.

Thank you for being who you are. God bless you, everybody. In the name of Jesus, he's the way Walk in him. Amen.