Behold I Do a New Thing
Welcome to Peniel CrossRoads, where we embrace Jesus’s heart and together live out the call to biblical unity!
It is a simple biblical reality that God never does the same thing twice. After attending the Asbury revival last spring, I wrote in an earlier blog that God was (and still is) doing a New Thing in our day.
As many of you know, Julie and I were speakers for a revival this week in Little Rock, Arkansas. We felt that the theme should be “God’s New Thing is a Revival of Joy.” So, in our second service, we challenged the church to consider just how difficult it is to be a young person these days…
It is a fact that the youth of today are facing a barrage of pressure from the culture to conform. And it is not mere “peer pressure” like when I was young in the ‘80s and ‘90s. The youth today face scowls, strong rejection, and even emotional manipulation and abuse if they do not conform to the new “truths” that our declining culture accepts.
This is not peer pressure! This is—and I used the term at the revival—persecution. It is not physical persecution, being thrown into jail or having your house or church destroyed. But emotional abuse is perhaps more scarring than physical because it scratches and burns the deepest part of the person.
If the word “persecution” still seems too strong for you, consider the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.” (Matthew 5:11) Insults, slander, and persecution belong in the same sentence for Jesus—they are simply synonyms for mistreatment by unbelievers.
Young people today are facing persecution that has not been felt in our culture since the 1840s and 1850s when the church went to war against slavery.
So, it seems fitting that God would do a New Thing for the needs of this generation. God is SO good! He knows better than we do what they will need. What God is doing is a Revival of JOY!
If this seems too emotions-centered for you, try to imagine how manipulated, scratched, and wounded their emotions are…Just when they reach the developmental stage of worrying the most about what other people think (ages thirteen to twenty), the enemy stirs up emotional abuse as his key weapon. Not everyone in the culture is cruel or mean or abusive. But if only ten percent are, it is enough for all of us to feel mistrust. “Who can I trust?” “Who will spew poison all over me like a spitting cobra if I speak the truth?” “Is there any place left where I am safe?”
Our churches need to be places of emotional safety, encouragement, health, and healing for the youth who are holding onto God’s Word. They need to be places where God’s New Thing is embraced for their sake and the sake of Jesus’s mission to reach the lost.
We felt that revival JOY this week! It was powerful and healing. In the last minutes of our last service, the pastor passed around the microphone for testimonies. I was amazed when an older woman took the mic and shared how God had miraculously delivered her from fear some decades ago, but recently it had returned. I have no idea what she was facing or what she was fearing. All I know is Wednesday night she began to testify loudly and firmly that in the middle of the night, God came to her, and He broke her fear once again! “God took them all away,” she shouted with her fists pounding the air!
God’s joy can be ours in the midst of persecution! Paul and Silas experienced this. The story is recorded in Acts 16. After they were beaten with rods, they were thrown into jail. But, in the middle of the same night, they prayed and sang God’s praises! How is this possible? As difficult as it is to imagine, when we are persecuted, JOY can be ours. And this is because God’s Spirit comes to us in our songs of praise. He ministers to us and strengthens us!
May our youth today feel that same encouragement, healing, and strengthening as we stand with those who hold onto their faith and the Scriptures in difficult days. And may their JOY become contagious for the whole church!
“You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures as your right hand.” Psalm 16:11
~Chris