What do we learn from the Asbury Revival
Six lessons to be learned from this latest outpouring of God's Spirit
Have you Heard About The Asbury Revival? What does it mean?
On February 8 Zach Meerkreebs, an assistant soccer coach at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky, spoke at a Wednesday morning chapel service at the school. At the end of his message a handful of students stayed around to pray and sing. And they just never left. They texted their classmates, “You have to come back to chapel. Something is happening here.” It became a continuous chapel service. Soon they were joined by other students, then other students. By the next day 500 people were waiting outside to get into the chapel and join in the praying and singing. The word got out and within days thousands were coming from surrounding communities and all around the world to sing, pray, testify, and experience this moving of the Holy Spirit, taking place inside the chapel.
A young woman, a student at Asbury who by her own admission had lost her faith,
said, “last Sunday, something changed.” She says she woke up and spontaneously blurted an idea to her roommate: “What if, instead of doing homework, we went to chapel today?”
They went to the chapel building. The same chapel that had never spoken to her before suddenly seemed alive. The pews were packed with more than a thousand people—including many of her classmates—weeping and swaying with their eyes closed to nothing but an acoustic guitar and each other’s voices.
According to this young woman, “I just slumped down….It was the first time in a long time where I could finally just rest because I felt like I was at peace, and I was protected. I felt like it was God telling me, this is what you’ve been missing.”
Her life was changed. Her faith was restored.
The revival has continued for the past two weeks and now the administration is trying to figure out how to wind it down. Life will eventually return to some sense of normalcy. But as a historian who has studied these kinds of events let me say this. The results will be enormous, permanent, powerful, and eternal.
What is the meaning of the remarkable Asbury revival? What should we learn from it? Let me offer six lessons not to be missed in this latest outbreak of the Holy Spirit.
1. First, this happens a lot. While researching for this video I noticed that there are already revivals breaking out in other locations. There was a large response at Cedarville University in Ohio. This happens routinely in local churches and communities. Early in my teaching career I experienced a revival in the secular, public school I taught in. In the space of about a year more than half the student body received Christ as Savior. Then there are the great revivals of history. The most important event in colonial history was the First Great Awakening. The most important event in our young nation’s history was the Second Great Awakening. Some of you have heard of the Fulton Street revival in New York City in 1857. Martin Lloyd-Jones speaks often of the Welsh revival of 1905. In the past two generations there have been spectacular revivals in China, Korea, and Africa; I could go on and on.
2. Revival almost always starts with believers. Christianity is the one religion that sees spectacular, large conversions of faith among people who previously were not Christian in any way. But usually an awakening of this kind begins with nominal or even born-again Christians ratcheting up their faith and commitment several notches. Vance Havner used to advise that If you want to see a revival in your church begin with the most serious Christians in the congregation. Want to see revival in your family? Start with yourself.
3. The Asbury revival shows God can change the course of history any time He wants. Just when all seems lost He swoops down and history goes a different direction. And do not be deceived; the results of revival are permanent. I know there will be some souls that will fall away but what I am interested in are those that are permanently changed. Fifty years from now there will be thousands who point to this revival as the moment their lives took a new direction. And millions will be impacted by those thousands. For example, most historians agree that the First Great Awakening was the most important event in colonial America. It produced the United States of America. Wouldn’t you agree that the formation of the United States was a significant long term event?
4. Revival is hard to explain. The Babylon Bee had a headline saying tongue-in-cheek that the revival began the night before a huge group project was due. Sociologists will trot out their theories on why this happens. I have read scores of them. But they are never adequate. You may nibble around the edges of an event like this giving human explanations for the phenomenon but they are hopelessly inadequate. If this was a human project then you could produce one any time you wanted. Just put together the right ingredients and voila! You have a revival. But everyone knows it doesn’t work like that. Revivals are spontaneous and humanly inexplicable. As Donald Sweeting correctly observes, “Christianity is a religion of surprising reversals.”
5. Revival could happen at any time and to any one of us; I know what critics say; every revival in history has been accompanied by excess, emotion, counterfeits, false teaching. That’s not what is most important. What matters is what is legitimate. My relationship with Jesus Christ was caused by one of the great revivals in American history. I shared this story with a church in Cambodia. In the early 1800s the Appalachian mountains of eastern America were inhabited by some of the most vile and savage people who ever lived. Those mountain people were violent, debauched, and just plain evil. And those were my ancestors. Then a group of heroic men rode their horses across those mountains and into the valleys and communities of Appalachia. The Holy Spirit used them to produce the Second Great Awakening. My great, great, great grandfather James Mitchell came to Christ during that awakening and the subsequent history of his family was radically altered. I am personally thankful for revival, particularly that revival.
6. Revival is what happens routinely thousands of times a day in individual hearts; MLJ—revival is something that happens at times to a whole group collectively that happens in individual hearts all the time.
Many of you are fearful for the future of our nation and our civilization. Be of good cheer. Our God is in the habit of swooping in and changing everything in the twinkle of an eye.
May the God who brings revival bless you this day in a mighty way.
More: The chapel that launched the Asbury revival: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGvvGbgUmMU
Excellent column by Donald Sweeting on the widespread nature of revivals, “Do It Again, Lord.” https://wng.org/opinions/do-it-again-lord-1677242861?mkt_tok=NzEwLVFSUi0yMDkAAAGKJNnD2E1HP2mUDSR84FgoN1cH-TcFIunKFwWQVZRdF6L3boHb-_gFxmtU4J6fIEsdCRhbUcHa0ulbsWX53TFjuJ9k04zl4lDVxB9Sq1zBo6U
A secular column that is surprisingly positive: https://www.thefp.com/p/why-students-in-kentucky-have-been
Vance Havner’s classic sermon on how revivals begin: https://www.sermonindex.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=56282&forum=34
News from World magazine on the revival: https://wng.org/roundups/asbury-university-outpouring-stretches-to-second-week-1676554260?mkt_tok=NzEwLVFSUi0yMDkAAAGKD97JVq6-v7bets8Llbxdi54VFxu6pLRvUDkWzjRtjipEfmjBIT5eo6J0vyK-cEQ2UxC_r4iEbJ7xQyzNRBd8IxvS556j-RXjmJhR7IgkcQc
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