The basis of revival is the work of the Holy Spirit supernaturally: He stirs the hearts and minds of men and women, to worship him to pray, and to read and study the word of God. Many people do not know the Spirit of God can do such a thing in our lives experientially; except that we can be grounded by the Word of God.  If ever, the testimonies and biographies of what happened for decades and centuries ago, remains far-fetched events that’s almost too remote for us to identify with, to long for, to pray for in our days, in our generation. Many have brushed them aside, but the time has come for us to arise and pursue that. Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones have preached 24 sermons series on revival, and written a book on it. This well-known renown reformed preacher of the Word of God who has exercised enormous influence over his generation and us today, will be continuing to be a major force to reckon with in the days to come. He preached for revival consistently. Wow many churches today hardly talk about revival or be completely silent about it.

By any definition, a revival is characterized by spontaneous long-lasting episodes of collective worship: extemporaneous prayer, stirring music and rousing preaching. The concept has a history stretching back to at least the First Great Awakening in 18th-century New England, when crowds of newly fervent Protestants gathered to hear vivid extemporaneous sermons by pastors like Jonathan Edwards. (NYT ‘Woodstock’ for Christians: Revival Draws Thousands to Kentucky Town)

Today we saw what seems to be a revival that broke out in Asbury university almost 2 weeks ago, and apparently they closed down the meeting hall as classes begin to commence again. What has happened over time, people seem to think that revival meetings have come to a grind ,to stop as reported with glee and simplistically in papers like liberal media that revivals has come to a stop. What they don’t know is what God has started, no man can stop. Hallelujah! And you know what? It has spread to other campuses nationwide even before the stopping, but now because of this stopping, the starting of the new revival works in other campuses, have taken on the new life. This is truly an exciting moment to live in. In fact New York Times today has reported the up springing of revival from Asbury again.

—————————-

‘Woodstock’ for Christians: Revival Draws Thousands to Kentucky Town

For two weeks, tens of thousands of people have made a pilgrimage to a tiny Christian college, about 30 minutes south of Lexington, for what some scholars and worshipers describe as the nation’s first major spiritual revival of the 21st century.The revival at Asbury began on Feb. 8, when a few dozen students lingered after an ordinary morning chapel service to continue singing and praying together. Word about the spontaneous gathering spread on campus, and by evening, students were dragging mattresses into the chapel to spend the night. Within days, their enthusiasm had exploded into a national event.The university estimates that the revival has drawn more than 50,000 people to Wilmore, a sleepy town of 6,000 people where the grocery store hosts a weekly Bible study and police cars read “In God We Trust.” The Asbury revival is “marked by overwhelming peace for a generation marked by anxiety,” said Madison Pierce, a student at the unaffiliated Asbury Theological Seminary across the street who volunteered to pray with visitors and help with logistics.—NYT ‘Woodstock’ for Christians: Revival Draws Thousands to Kentucky Town)

Our hearts’ longing for revival depends on how much you’ve experienced disappointment, trials, downs in life that you either give up with the Lord, or you long for a revival. Also how much you believed in the revival accounts like in Acts 2,  the Pentecost outpouring of the Spirit of God. If you say that it’s only for the Apostolic age, you’ve done a huge disservice to the body of Christ, and indeed to yourself.

“Never could I have imagined what we are experiencing now,” said Kevin Brown, who has been the university’s president since 2019, and spent several very late nights in the chapel. “There’s a deep hunger born of this trenchant dissatisfaction and disillusionment with what has been handed to the younger generation, and I think they’re just raising their gaze to higher things.”–NYT ‘Woodstock’ for Christians: Revival Draws Thousands to Kentucky Town)

Healing is a consistent theme in the modern history of revivals.

But if 20th-century revivals focused on healing physical pains and disabilities, accounts of healing at Asbury are overwhelmingly about mental health, trauma and disillusionment.

“You have a generation identifying that these are the problems of our generation that are intractable,” said Erica Ramirez, the director of research at Auburn Seminary, who has written often about revivals and charismatic theology. “So many of their friends are not well.” Healing is a consistent theme in the modern history of revivals. But if 20th-century revivals focused on healing physical pains and disabilities, accounts of healing at Asbury are overwhelmingly about mental health, trauma and disillusionment. NYT ‘Woodstock’ for Christians: Revival Draws Thousands to Kentucky Town)

Don’t box God in, and restrain him only operating miracles and signs in the apostolic age.  That’s simply inconceivable, and indeed, preposterous. Why would anybody do that? That somehow the gift of the Spirit and God’s promise to pour out the spirit of God, is looked at and perceived  with great suspicion in this day and age, especially in the reformed world. With all due respect, the reform teachings which I love most dearly, and I’m holding on and passionately preaching  myself, has some truly questionable doctrine opposition towards the gift of the Spirit, unfortunately (Gaffin—he wrote on the cessation of the gifts). To continue for all in this path of Doctrinal Theological understanding, it will box God in, correction, you won’t go box God in, you would just box yourself in. But I got to say that not all reformed folks believe this cessation of gift, and I know for a fact that when I took my worship class with Dr Ligon Duncan, he clearly articulated the prophetic gift as long as it is exercised in order in church service. I also know for a fact that John piper believes in the gift of speaking tongues though he himself does not get it because he believes God has called him to preach with prophetic word. That I love to be able to prophesy in preaching at a more grander scale that are short 2 minutes of prophecy. It’s important for reformed theology to accept continuation of gift to be a continuous in a proper order. God can never be boxed in by humans or any force. There is no return. The will of God must be done. And it will be done.

Pentecost has arrived. This is so significant because there are millions of millions of people who are in dire need of a refreshing touch of God in their feeble Christian walk.  Many have walked away from their faith in Christ, reduced that to a nominalism or a cultural Christ devoid of the power thereof. They perceivably has already left the Lord, and no amount intellectual, apologetic, argument or preservation will bring them back. They are gone. The only way to bring them back to Christ is by the Spirit of God and the revival. You better pray for the revival to come to your town today and keep praying. Because your hope is in the outpouring of the Spirit of God, like Pentecost. Don’t let the issue of speaking in tongues block you down or bind you. Like many thrown out the gift of the Spirit like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. This is an unacceptable theology. Admittedly, Pentecostal excess has happened, but just because it has happened, we must not discredit the genuine move of the Spirit of God and the gift of the Spirit. We have to move on and continue to pray for revival like Martin Lloyd Jones has been teaching and urging us to do.

The entire conversation of revival is so important and significant, because we humanly have no solutions to a lot of brokenness in our society, to a lot of sicknesses in our society in our churches in our community, in a lot of backsliding, a lot of confusion on sexuality and abortion in our church, and our society today in America. We need to pray for God to pour out the Spirit of God in the transformation of our lives, and the renewing of the mind so that we can be transformed. However, we’ll never have a chance to be transformed if my mind is not renewed. So you can argue that we are providing justification sanctification etc, and all these are good teachings and why are the peoples’ minds experience no renewal? Well, the simple answer is you can push all you want, however, if they don’t want to come to church, they’ll never hear. Even if they come, they may not receive it into the hearts. That’s why we need the Spirit of God, moving in a supernatural way. We need this supernatural move the Spirit of God.

And of course, the other problem of many charismatic churches is the love for the move in the Spirit of God, but they don’t have the doctrine of teachings the word of God for transform renewing of the mind sufficiently. Either way, we’re gonna miss the revival, we’re going to miss the move of God from that perspective. So the question is how much do we want the revival?

If you really want the revival, yeah, stop criticizing the move of the Spirit of God, and dwell in the presence of God and dive into the sovereignty of God, the beautiful bigness of God and the doctrine of teaching as well!

Trying to understand why would thousands of college students will flock into an auditorium, worshiping, singing, praying and listening to the word of God for 24 hours a day nonstop and for days and days. This is something truly phenomenal unheard of. What draws them there in the first place? When thousands and thousands of college are not interested to even to come to church. We have difficulty to fill 50 person room Space on Sunday morning let alone 5000 people flocking here and not wanting to leave! Not wanting to leave. There’s something to it. It’s called Spirit of God, working in the lives and is called revival.

While we study apologetics, study culture and philosophy, and systematic and biblical theology, they’re all good, however, without the move of the Spirit of God, this remains as a head knowledge and we bring no revival. Let’s be honest and real about this, the previous revivals of happened first with the Methodist Holiness, then, the Pentecostal, then really the college students now. You know it is really strategic for God to choose to revive to break out to college students, because it is precisely the same domain, demographic group that the devil has worked, penetrated it into their thinking through the professors and preaching the heresy on sexuality, heresy on abortions, heresy on Creation and Redemption substituting that by evolution. It’s hard to be a conservative, godly Christian in college campuses in America today, you have to face a whole lot of woke teachings that major on social justice (which is important) , and to the extent that, they paint themselves as the victim card and trying to get everything out of it in the name of emancipation in the picture of the Exodus narrative. However, Exodus narrative has come with the purpose of worshipping the Lord as God told Moses delivered Israel from Egypt and bring them out so that they can worship Him. Modern-day emancipation stories fight for racism, for sexuality, for anything major on emancipation and deliverance, but absolutely silent on to worship God. It is reductionistic and a heresy. Precisely they take God out of the equation they going to pay for it. No one mess around with the God.

We need and pray for the Revival. Gloria Yesus.