Asbury Reflections
Welcome to Peniel CrossRoads, where we embrace Jesus’s heart and together live out the call to biblical unity!
It was a tremendous blessing for me to be present at Asbury last week for Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. In my few hours at Asbury, I think I learned more about revival than I had ever learned before in fifty years of life and study!
Many people have said they felt a strong sense of the presence of the Lord there. I do not doubt that they experienced this, but I have felt God’s presence just as strongly in many other places. God’s glory did not seem to me to be the key ingredient of this particular revival. Likewise, this new revival was certainly not driven by a singular great leader or preacher like the Great Awakenings under Jonathan Edwards and Charles Finney.
But I do know enough about God’s ways and the history of awakenings and revivals to know that God never does things the same way twice. This is perhaps the core message of the book of Joshua. No two battles are fought the same way. The reason for this is very clear—God wants His people to rely upon Him alone every time! He does not want us in committee asking each other, “Well, what worked in the past?” He wants us on our knees asking Him, “How do You want to do things this time?”
Jesus Himself demonstrated this same reality that God never does the same thing twice by healing eyes, ears, vocal cords, and limbs differently every time. As we follow this biblical rule, we remain dependent upon Him alone, certain that He alone is the Victor. We must seek Him every time with no confidence in past “precedent.” Moment by moment, year by year, generation by generation, we seek His will, in His timing, in His way, in the power of His Spirit.
So, what was so different in this revival? What made it God's doing a new thing? I think the catalyst for this revival was hunger. But not simple hunger—instead, desperate, aching, famished soul hunger. It began with students crying out for God do what only He can do; and they would not be satisfied or leave the chapel until He answered—that kind of hunger.
Those few students are not alone in this desperation. Truly we all perceive the seriousness of our situation today. No believer can miss the context around us—we all recognize our perilous times and the descent of our culture. The older generations are desperate for their children and grandchildren—ready to do anything to save them from the quicksand and snakes all around them.
And the youth are desperate in their own souls! They want to experience God in a profound way—they want the stories that they have read in the Bible to become real for them. They want to see the God of the Exodus move a few million tons of water for them. They want to dance like David before the Lord or pour out expensive perfume on the feet of Jesus without Michal or Judas shaming them for it. And they want this because young people today are already facing more discrimination and rejection from the culture than their parents and grandparents can understand. They are crushed by deep emotional sorrow that they did not bring upon themselves. It is heaped upon them by an unprecedented cultural move toward shame. We study “shame cultures” in missions—it is tragic to think that America may be becoming a shame culture—a people who institutionalize emotional abuse to control the behavior of citizens. No wonder even unbelievers are fighting against cultural changes.
And our youth’s addictions are legion; they try to resist the talons of compulsion but will never wriggle free without a Savior.
So, after chapel one day, several Asbury students stayed to press God for answers that only He could give. And He answered them with a new glory that I would never have expected from my study of revivals—He gave them a glory of joy!! I suppose it is not altogether unprecedented. Paul and Silas had joy in chains! And they were simply following their Master, “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame…”
There was such joy at Asbury that students were ecstatic in the pleasure and love of God, pouring back their worship from full hearts for hours at a time.
Lasting fruit is the true test of real revival—when people’s lives are changed forever. It is my fervent prayer for the youth who have been touched by this expanding revival that the joy, freedom, and strength they received in the joy-glory of God will lift them above the muck and ick of their present situations and set them apart for love, joy, peace, freedom and the highest level of their calling.
For Jesus’ Sake,
Chris & Julie
“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”
Isaiah 43:18, 19