The Challenges and Opportunities of Second Generation Christians

Good morning again to each one. It's good to be here and I have one, just one other announcement before I go on with my message. There is, in the back of our building here, a mailbox with a lot of us having names there.

If you don't have a name and you would like one, you let us know, but most of us do have a mailbox and we put things in the mailbox and those are for you to take. One of the things that's been showing up in your mailbox, some of your mailboxes, if I have enough recently, or I should say not recently, but probably for the last five years at least, are these little prayer lines. So you get these prayer lines and maybe you wonder, what's that thing for? It keeps showing up and I don't know what to do with it and it probably ends up in the trash at some point, so I'm going to tell you what to do with it.

It's there for a reason. You see, this is, it comes from Christian Aid Mission. You've probably figured a lot of this out, so I'm telling you if you haven't done any exploring, but it's a prayer line and it's a daily guide, things to pray about, countries around the world at the top of each day.

So the Wednesday, let's see, this is February, Wednesday, February 1, it's time to pray for Ethiopia and it tells you about some of the needs there. Today is what, the 18th, Saturday, Sunday, the 19th, sorry, Eurasia, and it talks about a country over there in Eurasia that, you know, different things about it and it gives you things to pray about. So it's to help our prayer life.

Not only that, but there's opportunities down at the bottom, it says if you want to give to this need, here's the code, you fill out a paper, or you can just send it in with this code and say, hey, I'd like to donate, you know, so much money for this particular need. And you know, as you go through the month, my encouragement is to look at these needs. This is a ministry that doesn't send their own missionaries out, they support other missions around the world.

And these are missionaries that are there, they're already fluent in the language of the people that they're ministering to, they've already had a certain burden for what's going on, and so they're trying to help these different missions all around the world. And so that's the organization. So it's to help your prayer life become regular.

It's to help your giving life become regular. Those are both very important parts of our Christian life. A Christian, listen to this quote, a Christian who doesn't have a regular prayer life is basically saying, I don't need God's grace upon my life, I'm doing just fine without Him.

Let me say that again. A Christian who doesn't have a regular life of prayer is basically saying, I don't need God's grace on my life, I'm doing fine without Him. Also, listen to this one, a Christian who doesn't have a regular life of giving is saying, I don't need God's grace upon my finances, I'm doing just fine financially without Him.

Let me say that again. A Christian who doesn't have a regular life of giving is saying, I don't need God's grace upon my finances, I'm doing just fine financially without Him. So hopefully we're not saying either one of those two things.

Hopefully we're not saying, God, I don't need your grace upon my Christian life, I don't need your grace upon my finances. Hopefully we can say that. And again, this isn't necessarily my favorite charity.

It's not the only charity out there to give to. I would say it's not necessarily my favorite. I'd say it's one of my favorites, but maybe not the favorite.

There's things, probably doctrinally I would disagree with the people who organize it, and so forth. But it's just one more tool. So one more tool to help us become grace-filled Christians.

Filled with grace in our prayers. Filled with grace in our giving. Open up the door for God's grace to flow in.

So thank you for that. Just a little sideline before we go on with the message. I'd like to preach a message from a passage in the Old Testament.

So get your Bibles, open them up. The passage we're going to look at, this is not going to be the first time this passage was used as a basis for a sermon in this building. As far as I know, it was preached once before from this pulpit.

If there was a different time, I missed it. I forgot. Sorry about that.

But there was a sermon from this pulpit about 15 years ago from the passage that I would look at. And so it's been a while. Some of you were very young if you were here at all.

So we're going to look at this again. Turn to Joshua chapter 24. Actually, it's two passages, but they're very closely connected.

Joshua chapter 24, we're going to read one verse from there. And it's verse 31. Joshua 24, 31 says this, and Israel served God, served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders that overlived Joshua and which had known all the works of the Lord that he had done for Israel.

Turn forward to Judges chapter 2. Start reading in verse 6. Judges chapter 2, verse 6, and when Joshua had let all the people go, let the people go, the children of Israel went, every man, unto his inheritance to possess the land. And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders that outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great works of the Lord that he did for Israel. And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died, being 110 years old.

And they buried him in the border of his inheritance in Timnath-Hiras, in the Mount of Ephraim, on the north side of the hill Geash. And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers. And there arose another generation after them, which knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which he hath done for Israel.

And verse 11 says, and the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served Balaam, and they forsook the Lord God of their fathers. And then verse 13, and they forsook the Lord and served Baal and Ashtoreth. The message title that I have here today is called this, The Challenges and Opportunities of the Second Generation.

Keep your Bibles open there. But again, the title is The Challenges and Opportunities of Second Generation Christianity. Let's bow for prayer.

Father, we come to you in the name of Jesus, and we thank you for gathering us here. And I pray, God, that you would come and anoint, and you would come and lead and guide us and help us, Father. We are a needy group of people here, Father.

We are weak. We have challenges. We have disappointments.

We have sorrows. And we don't always respond properly to those. We have opportunities and pleasures and gifts that you've given us, and wonderful relationships, and we don't always respond right to those either.

And we pray that you would help us to do both. We pray, Lord, that you would help us to take and steward everything that you've given us, both the pain and the pleasures, for your glory. Help us, Lord, to learn from these passages and others, the things you would have us to learn.

In Jesus' name, amen. This passage lists three different groups of people that we could look at. It talks about Joshua, and it calls him the servant of the Lord.

And then it says he died. Well, what happened after that? Well, there were still elders that outlived Joshua. Now think about Joshua and the elders that outlived him.

How close in age do you think they were? You have an old man, Joshua, and all these elders. Do you think they were about the same age? Actually not. They were all 40 years younger than him, approximately.

Because, well, let's think about this. Actually, I don't know if we know exactly how old Joshua was, but we know he was over 20. He was a grown man.

He was probably 40, 50, 60 years old at the time of the conquest, or at the time of the rebellion, that there was a great separation. And God said, Joshua and Caleb, you were the righteous ones. You were the two spies that honored me.

Everyone else dishonored me. They're all going to die. So Joshua is now standing alone as an old man.

Probably Caleb is still alive, or having died just recently. But eventually Joshua died. But there were still the new elders that were coming on the scene.

And they had seen a lot of these things. When they saw them now, they were children. They were under age 20.

But they had seen the frogs. They had seen the lice. They had seen the water turn to blood.

They had seen the Red Sea part, and people walked through it. They had seen wonderful works. And as long as those guys were alive, people were faithful to God.

But then it says, finally, they died as well. And another generation, which knew not God, arose, and then they started into idolatry, into Baal worship. And so we're going to look at two of these three generations this morning.

We're going to look at the generation of Joshua. First generation, we're going to call him. We're going to look at the next generation, the people who outlived Joshua.

We're not going to look so much at generation number three. Why? Because it's a non-Christian generation. Generation three says they didn't know God.

They worship Baal. They're not, they're gone. They've given up the faith.

But these first two generations, we're going to call them first-generation Christianity, or you could say godliness in this case, and then second-generation Christianity. We're going to look at some characteristics of these two groups of people. And maybe you wonder, well, what group am I in? And maybe that's, there's going to be some of that.

You're probably going to see yourself in some of what we talk about here. But the fact is a lot of us have moved. We can't just define ourselves as just purely generation one, generation two.

We can say, were my parents Christians? Well, that would tell you, if not, and you're a Christian, probably generation one, at least you have some tendencies. If my parents were Christians, there's going to be at least some characteristics of generation two. It's not going to be cut and dried though.

Hopefully, you're going to see some things that'll help you walk in your Christian life. But we're going to compare these two groups of people. And I'm going to go to the board.

Hopefully, this isn't going to mess up too bad, people listening in, but I'll try to speak up. But let's just look at some of these groups. And maybe you have some things that you see that jump out at you, characteristics of these two groups of people.

So I'm going to put up here on the board. Let's get a choice of colors here, it looks like. Okay, we're going to just put up here first generation.

And then we're going to put over here, second generation. All right, so what do we see about these two groups of people? First generation Christians, second generation Christians. How can we apply this to Christianity? This was obviously a group of people that come out of Egypt.

But we see this first group of people, they are the product of revival. I'll just put up here, product of revival. Amazing things happen.

What do we say about the second generation? Let's go ahead and put them up to compare this. They are the product of a godly upbringing. Let's just say upbringing.

Up-uh-bring-ing, there we go. Okay, product of godly upbringing. We see that today.

We see people who are products of revival. Something big happened in their life. Let's put also what the result is.

It's kind of the same thing, but it's the result of the extraordinary. What could be more extraordinary than the Red Sea parting and everybody walking through it on dry ground and the Egyptians being drowned behind them? What could be more extraordinary than 10 plagues that set them free from Egypt? These people, on the other hand, are the result primarily of the ordinary. They grew up in homes that were more or less stable.

They were grown up in homes that people, you know, their parents taught them about God. Now, let's stop here for just a moment. Before we go down the line and list a lot of other characteristics of these two groups, let me ask a question.

Which one of these is the will of God, the primary will of God? Think about that just for a little bit. In the book of Malachi, God says He hates divorce. He says, you have a man and a woman, and they divorce.

And God says, I hate that. I wanted them to be one. Why? So He could raise a godly seed, a godly generation.

So I look at that verse in Malachi, and I say, I think God's will is primarily focused on this. He only had one generation that saw the kind of things that they had coming out of Egypt. Only one generation witnessed the Red Sea crossing.

The rest of them never crossed the Red Sea anymore. It wasn't that these people over here could go back and say, you know what, guys? We're getting a little lukewarm. Let's go down there to the Red Sea and do another crossing.

That wasn't an option. They had one Red Sea crossing, and it was a tremendous time, and there was one generation that witnessed that, and it never happened again. And so God wants faithfulness.

His focus is bringing people through these kind of things to bring up a group of people over here in the second generation. But let's keep going, and let's see what happened here. What are the... So let's put up here another word, the unexpected.

Let's apply this to Christians today. They grow up in a Muslim background. They grow up in a heathen background.

They grow up with a family with addictions, with drugs, with alcohol, and they get saved. They turn their lives over to Jesus. That's not expected.

They're an exception to the rule. Chances are the rest of their siblings are not walking with the Lord. Maybe a few of them are, but a lot of them will not be.

It's the unexpected thing to do if you're a first-generation Christian. On the other hand, the expected thing, if we raise our children for God, is that they would follow in our footsteps, that they would do the... Chances are there'll be multiple families if you raise them for the Lord, multiple children within that family. Hopefully all of them will choose to serve the Lord.

And so that's the expected thing, is to be a Christian in the second generation. Okay, what are some other characteristics? Well, because of this unexpected background, a lot of times this generation will have a heart for the lost. I'll just put it here, a heart for the lost.

They can see people on bondages, addictions that they used to have, and say, I was once there. I have a heart for those people. And over here we have people in the second generation, I'll just put, not as sensitive to the lost.

I'll let you fill in the blanks, but that's not their primary focus because they've never been there, at least the tendency is. These are not cut and dried categories, but these are things that tend to go with these two groups of people. And so let's put another one on here.

Where's the focus of these two groups of people? Focus for this group of people. I'm talking about a man or a woman who has grown up in a very rough background, and maybe there were addictions that they just couldn't overcome, and along comes Jesus and sets them free. And their focus now is on Jesus for saving them.

What's the focus of a person over here in the second generation? A lot of times his focus is going to be on people around him. And I'll just put up here the church, but it might be church, it might be family, it might be peer group, but the focus is going to be, tend to have a little bit more on the people around them. And so what happens when someone who is a first generation Christian, well, let's put it this way.

What happens when someone who is a second generation Christian feels betrayed by his church? He may fall away. He likely will. He'll fall away from the church and maybe fall away from Christ altogether.

But what happens if someone who is in this first generation feels betrayed by the church? Remember his journey. He has come through a life of horrible sin. He has been delivered in a powerful way.

There's no question in his mind that Christ has done a work in his life. And then he realizes, yeah, I should probably be a part of a church, and so he joins a church. And then he gets disappointed with that church.

Is he going to fall away from Christ? Well, not so likely. He'll probably just say, well, I don't need the church. I'll go home and sit at home and I'll have my own home church.

And I'll be just fine. Me and the Lord, we have a relationship. Tried the church thing.

Didn't work out. No big deal. But a person in the second generation, it is a big deal because that's been their life.

They've grown up in church. They've had people all around them. Their peer group, their youth group, their whatever.

It's what they knew from little up. And so when that thing breaks down, it's a lot more likely to cause them to fall away and say, well, maybe Christ isn't everything he says he is either. If the church has let me down, maybe I need to give up on God altogether.

Now, does that mean people in this category don't fall away? No, they do. But what's the cause for it? It's not so much just because the church let them down, but maybe they feel Christ let them down. Maybe they feel God has allowed circumstances into my life that were beyond my control.

And it wasn't so much the church's fault. It's just Jesus. Look, he set me free one time, but now I'm not getting the same results I used to.

And things aren't going so well and they fall away. The last one I'd like to put up here, a characteristic is hunger. People who are first generation Christians, after seeing everything that God did, a lot of times they're going to have a hunger for God to do more of the radical things he has done in the past.

What about over here? They grew up in church. Everything is the same. This is the counterpart.

This is the bad and the good here. But the hunger over here, a lot of times it can be... Well, let's put up the positive first of all. It can be over here, it's hunger, but that could also lead to some negatives like, just always looking for something more, never satisfied, somewhat restless.

Whereas over here, the positive is, there's probably going to be more stability. Think about a child who grows up in a home that the father and the mother love each other. Everything is going good.

They're going to probably have some more stability than someone who grew up with constant upheaval, never knew what it was like to have a home life and so forth. But now let's go to the negatives. If hunger is a good thing, if stability is a good thing, what's the negatives? Restlessness, discontent perhaps.

I'll just list them down here. Over here, boredom. I'm sure I got that spelled right.

Hopefully you can read that. The word is boredom. Life has always been what life is.

I grew up in the church and it's all kind of been the same. Nothing exciting happening. Life is always what it's been like and they grow bored with their Christian life.

So as I list down some of these things, you're going to notice some of these are positive. Some of these are negative on both sides. My burden is primarily for the second generation because as I look at our church, I see largely a group of second generation Christians with second generation characteristics.

And I say that even for people who didn't grow up in a Christian home, even for people who at one point had a lot of characteristics of this, it's easy to move over into this category. And my question is, how can we move back and have the focus on Christ and the hunger and the heart for the lost? Those are the burdens. How do we move from one to the other in this? Here's a danger that you're going to probably look at.

You're going to look at people around you and say, oh yeah, I know that guy. He belongs in that category and this other person belongs in that category. And that's the thing I want to be careful about because I think, again, this movement between the two groups is very possible even within one generation, within one person.

You can move between those groups and my desire is that we would look at these things. Recently in our church, there was a conversation going on between an older brother and a younger brother. I'm not even sure I know, I don't even think I could tell you exactly who it was, at least not both of them.

But the question came up this way. The older brother asked the younger brother, would it be uncomfortable for you to ask another one of the youth how they're doing spiritually? Or it might've been phrased a little bit differently. Would it be uncomfortable for you to ask another one of the youth what God is showing them in their life? What do you think about that question? Well, the answer came back, yes, that would be uncomfortable.

That would be a difficult question to have the courage to ask. So I wonder how many of you can relate to that. Well, I'll tell you, I'll be honest with you.

You know, I'm a preacher, I can relate to that. I can see how that would be kind of uncomfortable. It's a little bit like, whoa, I'm putting somebody on the spot.

And that answer, that conversation told me something about myself. And that is my tendency to sort of settle into second generation Christianity, not only with the strength. Some of these I want.

I want to have a focus on the church. I want to have stability. But I don't want to be bored.

I don't want to let boredom and stability become gods that result in an apathy for the lost and a lack of a relationship with Christ. So I wonder how many of you can relate to some of those thoughts. And so how can we get that same passion and the zeal that those people who crossed out of Egypt had without losing the benefits that God has handed to us? Remember, what's God's heart? He wants second generation Christians.

That's his heart. He knows that the likelihood of you have a family of 10 children growing up on the streets of New York City with drugs all around them, the odds of how many of those 10 getting saved, it's low, it's far greater to raise those 10 children in a godly home. And so that's what he wants.

But along with that, there's something about that revival and those extraordinary things that are happening that can quickly be lost. I would especially like to point out one of these characteristics that I think is maybe the top. And that's this one right here, the hunger.

Now, I wonder if you could go to a pole sometime, go to one of these restaurants that has an all-you-can-eat buffet and you'd stand outside that restaurant and you'd see two groups of people streaming through, popular restaurant, lots of things going on, heading in and heading out. And you look at the faces of the people that are heading into the restaurant and then look at the faces of the people that are coming out of the restaurant. Which do you expect would be the happier group of people? Well, I have a hunch you'd have a lot more joy on the faces going in than the people coming out.

And there's something about this emotion or this feeling of hunger, hunger with a possibility of satisfaction that's exciting. It's, it brings joy. It brings, well, let me ask you another question.

If you were to describe a book, write an article, write a book about this young man, he had stars in his eyes. This young woman with stars in her eyes. Would you describe a person one day before their wedding? Or two years after? I think most of the time it's the person one day, I'm getting married tomorrow.

Wow, congratulations. This is exciting. They haven't experienced all the joys of married life.

Two years later, people don't usually describe them. Now they're facing different things, you know, in life and, but the desire for the future, that's the, those desires are good, unfulfilled desires. Those people going in the restaurant, it hasn't been fulfilled.

They got an expectation. I'm going to have a meal. It's coming up.

I'm looking forward to this meal, but it hasn't happened yet. And yet they're joy filled as they do. How can you read? How can we restore that hunger moving from this side to that side? That hunger, that first generation has a little bit more naturally than the second generation.

Um, think of a boy growing up in a home. They, dad has a good job, got money. And when he's a baby, every time he wants fed, he gets a bottle immediately.

First cry, here's a bottle. And as he grows up two years old, I'm hungry. Oh, quickly hand him a cracker, hand him a bag of chips, something.

And at age four and six and eight, every time he's hungry, you give him food immediately. Don't let that hunger, um, don't let that, don't let him starve to death. And of course he's not starving to death.

He's, he's got more than he should have to eat probably. But you know, when he gets up into his teen years again, every time there's the slightest little bit of hunger quickly, pump some food down his throat and pretty soon he's just sick of food. I mean, you think food makes a person healthy, right? I've got cows out in my pasture and you know, I try to give them food, especially when they're getting close to butcher time and plenty of food.

But so if they stop eating, I'd be concerned if a little baby calf, all of a sudden, hey, everything's fine. But he's just not eating anything. I'd say that very fact he's not eating anything is a bad thing.

But we respond to that by pumping them full of food or pumping a child full of food. Eventually you're going to say something is wrong. He's his health isn't what it ought to be because he doesn't have that emotion or that feeling of hunger.

Instead, how much better he comes in from the field. He hasn't eaten since breakfast. He's been out trimming trees or, you know, shoveling manure or whatever it is.

And now he's hungry. Now that's a good sign. That hunger is a good thing.

So my question is, are you hungry? Are you hungry with a hope of fulfillment? Psalm 42, one says, as the deer pants for the waterbrook, so pants my soul for you, oh God. Do you have that hunger this morning? Jesus said, blessed are those who are hungry and thirsty for righteousness, for they will be filled. Matthew 5 verse 6. And, you know, I remember times in my own life.

I told you that I feel in my own self that I'm sliding into second generation Christianity in some unhealthy ways. I think, again, there's some healthy things about it, but there's maybe some unhealthy things about it. I remember the time when, you know, God was showing us new things.

And now, technically, if you just want to look at the raw facts, mathematical, you know, facts, I'm a second generation Christian. My parents were Christians. And so that makes me a second generation Christian.

But that doesn't mean that just because your parents professed faith in Jesus, that you're all in this category. There were times in my life that God started showing me things I had never seen before in the Bible. And I got excited about those things.

I got hungry for those things. I remember some of us when we were, we were, you know, discovered the tape ministry and handing out sermon tapes and listening to these sermons. And we just were hungry for the next one.

And we would pass those things out. And I felt like, I think a lot of us have experienced that, that we've had times in our lives of first generation Christianity, even though maybe we're technically a second generation Christian. And I remember those times and I remember the hunger.

I remember the desire. And it wasn't discipline that was making me listen to those sermons. It wasn't, you know what, I should probably listen to the sermon today.

That wasn't it. It was, I wanted to. Things are different now.

I still listen to sermons, but sometimes I have to push myself to listen to the sermons. And I think God wants us to do that. He wants discipline in our life.

He wants these times of revival to create discipline. But how can we restore the hunger? I, my desire for the next generation, the generation next lower than me, is that it would, that you would have discipline. You would have this desire to serve God in the long haul of the marathon.

You get on the straight stretch and you just keep going. But I also long for you to experience that hunger that comes from first-generation Christianity. How can we get both? That's my question to you.

How can we get both? There's a parable Jesus told about the treasure hidden in the field. Matthew 13 verse 44. It's just, I think it's only one verse, a whole parable.

He took only one verse to tell it. He said he was out in the field, looking around and he found this treasure. He didn't own this field.

It's somebody else's field. But he said, this is a wonderful treasure. He went home, sold everything he had to go buy that field and get that treasure.

That's first-generation Christianity. That's this hunger that we're talking about. What can we do to regain this hunger? We've talked about revival.

And sometimes we hear stories about revivals that are happening around the world. We hear stories about the second great, the first great awakening back in the 1700s, the second great awakening in the 1800s. And it's so powerful, a powerful move of God.

There is hunger. There is seeking after God. There's a whole boatload of first-generation Christians that come in.

They come in off the street. They come in from their drugs and immorality and they give their hearts to Jesus and lives are changed. Do all of them stay faithful? No, not all of them stay faithful, but there are some of them do.

And there's the revivals even in the Anabaptist circles. You have the brunk revivals. And I've heard of people talking about those revivals and how many preachers say, you know, I got saved during those revivals back in the 50s.

That was when God did a work in my heart. And I've never been the same since. And obviously there's been a lot of people that made commitments during that time that did fall away.

So this whole idea of revival is interesting. The second great awakening in the 1800s, people say, you know, that probably had a big impact on the abolition of slavery. If that second great awakening, when people were turning to God by the thousands, had not happened, we might still have slavery here today.

I don't know. I don't know what it would be like today. Maybe we wouldn't even have a country today.

But they think that there's a definite connection between the consciences that were awakened during that time. People have been praying for revival since. It's interesting.

This last week and a half has been remarkable here in America. And I don't know how many of you have looked at this, but if you would just go in and type into Google one word, Asbury, A-S-B-U-R-Y. So the only word you'd have to type in, you'd get a whole list of articles, news articles.

And it all started a week and a half ago today, Wednesday the 8th, I guess. I think that's when it was. There was a Christian college back in Kentucky called Asbury College.

And they have chapel. They have, it's required once a week or maybe it's daily, I'm not sure. But anyway, there's required chapel times that these students have to go into.

And so they go in and they fulfill their duty. And 45 minutes later, they come out and they go to their classes. This time, some of them stayed.

Somehow they just felt a desire to stay in this chapel. And they've been praying and they've been worshiping and they've been, things are changing. And again, I don't know what to make of all this.

I'm not putting a stamp of approval on it. I'm just saying, hey, here's what everybody is saying. And it's the consistent answer that something really, really strange and powerful is going on.

One, it started, they said, when a fellow student decided to openly confess some of his sins to the small group. And when that happened, the atmosphere changed. The revival has been described as calm.

Some commentators noted that the absence of many of the features of contemporary worship. And this is from Wikipedia. I mean, it's nothing, it's not a godly, you know, even says the Washington Post has, you know, these are secular news plays, news organizations.

They're talking about the miracles and healings. And there's a whole timeline of events. And so what happened on what day? February 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.

Let's see all the way up until today. And it's just around the clock. It's been 24 hours.

There's been people moving. There's been people involved there. I'm just, I'll just read one professor.

He was a Christian professor at this college. And he says this, just his testimony. He says, most Wednesday mornings at Asbury universities are like any other.

A few minutes before 10, students begin to gather at Hughes Auditorium. Students are required to attend a certain number of chapels each semester. So they tend to show up in a matter of routine.

This past Wednesday was different. After the benediction, the gospel choir began to sing a final chorus. And then something began to happen that defies easy description.

Students did not leave. They were struck what seemed to be a quiet but powerful sense of transcendence. And they did not want to go.

They stayed and continued to worship. They are still there. They were praising and praying earnestly for themselves and their neighbors and their world, expressing repentance, contrition for sin and asking for healing, wholeness, peace and justice.

Some were reading and reciting scripture. Others were standing with arms raised. Some were clustered in small groups praying together.

A few were kneeling at the altar in front of the auditorium. Some were lying prostrate while others were talking to one another, their faces bright with joy. Some students chose to stay in the chapel and prayed through the night.

And as of Sunday morning, there was no sign that the momentum was slowing down. Some are calling this a revival. And I know that in recent years, that term has become associated with political activism and Christian nationalism.

But let me be clear. No one at Asbury has that agenda. I'm just skipping through some of this.

Many say that many people say that in the chapel, they hardly even realize how much time has elapsed. It's almost as though time and eternity blur together as heaven and earth meet. Anyone who has witnessed it can agree that something unusual and unscripted is happening.

He says I'm a he's an analytical theologian. He says, I come from a background in a and he says, where I've seen efforts to manufacture revivals and movements of the spirits that were sometimes only hollow, but also not only hollow, but also harmful. He says, I don't want anything to do with that.

And truth be told, this is nothing like that. There is no pressure or hype. There's no manipulation.

There's no high pitched emotional fervor. To the contrary, it's been so far. It's so far been mostly calm and serene.

The mix of hope and joy and peace is indescribably strong and indeed almost palpable. A vivid, incredibly powerful sense of shalom. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is undeniably powerful, but also so gentle.

The love of the triune God is apparent, and there's an expressible and innate attractiveness to it. It's immediately obvious why no one wants to leave and why those who must leave want to come back as soon as they can. He says, I know these are the that these extraordinary acts of God are no replacement for the ordinary ministry of the Holy Spirit through the word and sacrament sacrament.

Likewise, the surprising works of God are not a substitute for the long road of discipleship. And that's that's important as we look at these two groups, these two groups, the first generation and second generation. This is he calls it a surprising work of God, a revival, something God does that's powerful.

And no one was expecting it. Saving this man out of that family with all its sin and, you know, drugs and everything. Nobody expected him to get saved, but he did.

Those are some of the surprising works of God. But he says we also need to move on to that long term discipleship that is in that second generation, that is 10 years after I've been saved. That is, you know, as I move on to that, that long haul, the marathon, it may have begun with a sprint, but then he wants us to walk that long road of discipleship.

But sometimes we grow stale. Sometimes we develop boredom. Sometimes we lose some of these focuses that God wants us to have.

How can we get those back again? This man says, I also believe we should be willing to recognize and celebrate these and astounding encounters with the Holy Spirit. Our Lord promises that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled. Anyone who spent time in the Hughes Auditorium over the past few days can testify this promise comforter is present and powerful.

I cannot analyze or even adequately describe all that's happening, but there is no doubt in my mind that God is present and active. Several current students and recent alumni telling me for several years they've been praying together for a move of God and they are thrilled beyond words to see what's happening. In previous revivals, there's always been a fruit that has both blessed the church and society.

And that's where they acknowledge that even the even secular historians acknowledge the second great awakening was pivotal, bringing the end of slavery in our country. Likewise, I look forward to seeing what fruit God will bring from such a revival in our generation. So is this does this qualify as revival? One man said he says he said, well, he says, maybe it's too soon to call it a revival.

But he says it certainly isn't outpouring. Let's watch and see what happens. Let's see what the long term fruit is or even the short term fruit.

And another man said this. He says, I'm watching this. And he says, I'm amazed.

He said, I'm tempted to be maybe skeptical because there's been so many other things like this that have happened and been trying to happen. But he said this. He said, I'd rather I err on the side of gullible rather than cynical.

Now, gullible means you're believing things that you surely shouldn't be believing. But he said, I'd rather take that risk. Rather than become cynical and say, I don't believe anything is a revival ever.

Anything it's a time. It's extraordinary. I'm going to write it off.

Now, that's that's not God. Faith would have us believe God can and will and wants to do some of these things. And maybe this is exactly that.

So I'd rather err on the side of gullible rather than cynical. In the meantime, people are confessing they're repenting of sin. They're getting free from drugs.

They're getting set. They're getting healed both physically and spiritually. Somebody else said this about this particular movement.

He said, it's not focused on a big speaker or a famous band or lights. The pastor wrote. But it's focused on repentance, testimonies and the manifest presence of God.

I don't know where this is going to go. Today might be the last day of that revival. It'll die down.

And people still remember it. There's so many news articles. They can't forget it.

Maybe it won't end today. I don't know. Maybe it'll go on.

Maybe it'll spread. They're saying it's already spread to other campuses. People are are showing up to have, you know, similar events and talk about that.

What's going on over there at Asbury. Let's do the same thing. Maybe there will be revival in our country.

It's hard to believe with the current. Conditions in our country, that God could ever revival revive such a thing. But, you know, sometimes those revivals that happened happened at the darkest time in history.

It was the lowest point when it seemed absolutely impossible. It was too far gone. And that's when God moved.

And what about back to us? Do you feel like a need for revival in your own heart? Do you feel a need for that wake up? And are you are you willing? If God doesn't send that extraordinary move to keep walking in faithful discipleship, are you? You're not going to depend on that. You're going to say, God, I'd love to see that. I'd love to see a deep hunger in my own heart.

I have a hunger for the hunger. Can you at least say that if you don't have a hunger in your heart? Do you have a hunger for the hunger? How what are we going to do to get that hunger? And what if God doesn't send the type of hunger that you're hungering for? Are you going to be faithful anyway? Those are some good questions. I think we ought to be asking ourselves.

Let's stand for prayer. Father, here we are as a group of people who have. Been around your words for many months, many years.

And Lord, we just confess that it's tempting that these things grow old. We grow bored with it. We don't take it and use it and pass it on to others.

Lord, like we should. We're not as passionate and as hungry for you as we should be. And we we want you to move, Lord.

And we hear about what's going on at this. Asbury is even a it's a Lord. I don't know what all their doctrine is.

I know it's different in many ways than what we teach. And yet, Lord, if you're moving, we want you to be. We want you to move on us, Lord.

And we want you to help us be faithful, not be ashamed of the words of Jesus in this adulterous and sinful generation. And to be honest about, Lord, what you are doing in other parts of the world that's different from us. But we also, Lord, want to be hungry for you to move in our hearts.

And, Lord, we want to today make that commitment. Lord, we will be faithful, even if that means walking through some drudgery and boredom. But, Lord, we really do want that hunger that David wrote about when he says, my heart pants for the living God.

And we we want just like a deer pants for water, Lord. We want that hunger that you fill. We want that fresh breath of revival.

And I pray that you would do it in us. We commit ourselves to you in Jesus name. Amen.