Click here to read an abbreviated report on what’s happening at Asbury University.
Something is stirring in America, and we cannot afford to miss out.
This past week, a Christian college in Kentucky, Asbury University, has been in the news as its students prayed and worshiped nonstop for 10 days. Thousands flocked to the school of fewer than 1,700 students to participate in what many called a “revival.” Reportedly, the event was unplanned and birthed solely out of a few students’ earnest desire to keep praying after a regularly scheduled chapel service.
The event that followed was notably simple. As one attendee noted: “There were no celebrity praise leaders. There were no famous names giving addresses. There was nothing for people to go there to other than the presence of God and what they felt God was doing in this space.” Indeed, the around-the-clock prayer meeting was not about elevating any one person or ministry – only Jesus Christ.
“Lord, let the fame of Your name spread like wildfire,” one attendee declared on social media. “May the world know it was Christ and Christ alone. No other name gets the glory!!!!”
If this is indeed the beginning of a God-initiated revival, we must not just move on. We cannot let it get lost in our 24-hour news cycle.
First, we must compare the news out of Asbury with Scripture. As one Christian reporter who attended the event pointed out, “we’re called to make God’s Word the starting point for thinking about everything, including news of revivals.”
The biblical model for true revival necessitates a turning – a turning from anything that distracts or keeps us from God and back to Him.
This is precisely why revival is so needed in America right now.
Notice how many times the word “turn” is featured in the following passage of Scripture outlining God’s template for revival:
“So the posts went with the letters from the king and his princes throughout all Israel and Judah, and according to the commandment of the king, saying, Ye children of Israel, turn again unto the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, and he will return to the remnant of you, that are escaped out of the hand of the kings of Assyria. And be not ye like your fathers, and like your brethren, which trespassed against the Lord God of their fathers, who therefore gave them up to desolation, as ye see. Now be ye not stiffnecked, as your fathers were, but yield yourselves unto the Lord, and enter into his sanctuary, which he hath sanctified for ever: and serve the Lord your God, that the fierceness of his wrath may turn away from you. For if ye turn again unto the Lord, your brethren and your children shall find compassion before them that lead them captive, so that they shall come again into this land: for the Lord your God is gracious and merciful, and will not turn away his face from you, if ye return unto him.” (2 Chronicles 30:6-9)
Another revival-themed Scripture, 2 Chronicles 7:14, also mentions turning: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
Those of us interested in saving America should pay close attention to this promise. God says He will heal the land [nation] of His people. But what are the prerequisites?
We must first humble ourselves. Without humility, we will become, as Abraham Lincoln warned, “too proud to pray to the God that made us!”
Next, we must seek God’s face. Evidently, this has already begun in Asbury. Will it spread?
Throughout American history, many U.S. presidents have signaled their support for seeking God’s face in prayer. Lincoln went so far as to say that “it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord [emphasis added].”
Interestingly, the Hebrew word for “seek” used in 2 Chronicles, transliterated as bāqaš, means “to search out (by any method, specifically in worship or prayer); by implication, to strive after:—ask, beg, beseech, desire…” This would imply that revival takes more than just an occasional, obligatory prayer. Are we searching for God? Are we striving after Him? Do we desire Him? In Psalms 37:25, bāqaš is translated as “begging.” Does that describe the level of urgency we have for God and revival?
The next step, as outlined in 2 Chronicles, is that we must turn from our wicked ways. As already mentioned, this is key.
Wickedness is rampant in America. The innocent are being slaughtered. Our youth are pushed to surgically alter their God-created bodies. The Bible’s perfect plan for marriage, sex, and gender is laughed at. Lies and deception have become the norm in politics. Woke standards have replaced religious ones. Families are falling apart. Pornography, LGBTQ ideologies, and false teachings go uncorrected in education and even our churches. We have religious meeting places on nearly every street corner, and yet true, Christian living seems to be dying.
Truly, I share Thomas Jefferson’s dejected sentiment when he said, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever.”
We cannot possibly maintain such immorality and save America. We must turn.
“There has to be an about-face,” one pastor stated. “When it comes to a turning – which is so important with revival – it takes us turning from something to the Word, to the Lord, to His working, to His presence, what He has for us, and away from the things that would hinder us.”
This is what it means to have revival.
The good news is that if we do these things – if we confess our sins – we can trust that He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).
“[T]hen will I hear from heaven,” the Lord says, “and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
America is in desperate need of a healing. We are in desperate need of a cleansing. And this is our blueprint.
The same God who called his people to revival in the Bible can stir in the hearts of seekers nationwide and revive you personally right now, wherever you are.
God is not relegated to working just in Kentucky; don’t let revival stop at Asbury. This is what countless faithful prayer warriors have been seeking for – we must not let it go to waste.
