Embracing the Adventure of Spiritual Awakening
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God wants to use you and me. He wants to use our church to create wake. Over there, my favorite genre of reading is history. I just love history, history. I love biographies, autobiographies, especially American history. I find that fascinating. And then when you get into kingdom history, church history, that's even better for me. And so I've been consuming and learning all that I can, dusting off things I started to learn decades ago to get a fresh take on what happens when there is an awakening that comes to a region or a revival that comes to a region. Revival meaning, normally meaning, reviving the faith of people because it's basically when death, dead. I like the word awakening better because it's awakening you to a world of possibility, awakening you to the presence of God. Awakening happens when a wake boat of the presence of God passes over your life or in your region and people around feel it. [00:10:52] (68 seconds)
The reason why we have so many people deconstructing the faith, walking away from the faith, is because we have had so many weak, light Christians. People who haven't been having a regular conversation with God. People who don't do the spiritual disciplines. People who don't read their Bible. People who aren't on a mission, feeling like they're gifted by God to do something. People who don't say, I need God. Instead, I need money. I need insurance. I need America to be the way I want it. That's why people have been flocking from Christianity in droves. It hasn't been because there's a problem with Christianity. We have too many lightweights. Too many people who don't want an awakening. Too many people who aren't playing for bigger stakes. Too many people who play victim. And in an awakening, there's a weightiness. a weightiness to us. [00:15:09] (50 seconds)
I want more people at Crossroads to say, I love Jesus with all of my heart. When that happens, there's a spiritual weight that comes. And when one person feels that, it cascades to another and another and another. And before you know it, you're looking at an awakening. Tim Keller said this, revival is an avalanche. We have a few CP Christians waking up, a few nominal Christians getting converted, and a few really interesting dramatic conversions from the community. And there's a real support of extraordinary prayer. And those first little pebbles can turn into an avalanche. We don't even like to use the word converted anymore. Like the world is full of certain words that are core to my faith are evil words. Oh, you're just trying to get converts, converted, convert. That's what Jesus does. He comes to save us. [00:16:58] (54 seconds)
There's conversions when there is an awakening happening, when there's people of depth that happen. There's also, number two, there's cultural and societal impact. There's ripples and wakes that go across all of culture and society. Now, as I talk about this, I'm not here talking about philosophically. There's been a number of these. in the last couple thousand years. And when you look at those and stitch them together, it starts to make sense that the pieces start to come together. The first person who was a Christian and used advertising was a guy by the name of George Whitefield. He actually used drama in his preaching. He would, instead of preaching monotone from a script like some people did, like Jonathan Edwards, if you know that old name, George Whitefield would do these big gestures and he would command the stage and he would go into a town ahead of time and he would put advertising up on bulletin boards and all that kind of letting people know that he was coming. [00:18:14] (60 seconds)
For God to have his way in your life, for you to have a peace, the past is all understanding. For you to have a joy that can't be squelched with a bad economy. For you to have hope when someone you don't like gets elected. For you to have hope. For you to have a purpose in the future, even when you don't feel like you can last another day, it happens because Jesus has a hundred of you and you just love him with all your heart. All of it. And until we do, no one has any reason to look into our God because we're no different than anybody else. We just got a veneer of religiosity on us and a habit of going to church. Big freaking deal. God wants you. He wants all of you. Because he gave all of himself for us. The adventure's coming. He's worthy. He's worthy. He's worthy. [00:50:29] (64 seconds)
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The reason why we have so many people deconstructing the faith, walking away from the faith, is because we have had so many weak, light Christians. People who haven't been having a regular conversation with God. People who don't do the spiritual disciplines. People who don't read their Bible. People who aren't on a mission, feeling like they're gifted by God to do something. People who don't say, I need God. Instead, I need money. I need insurance. I need America to be the way I want it. That's why people have been flocking from Christianity in droves. It hasn't been because there's a problem with Christianity. We have too many lightweights. Too many people who don't want an awakening. Too many people who aren't playing for bigger stakes. Too many people who play victim. And in an awakening, there's a weightiness. a weightiness to us. [00:15:09] (50 seconds)
I want more people at Crossroads to say, I love Jesus with all of my heart. When that happens, there's a spiritual weight that comes. And when one person feels that, it cascades to another and another and another. And before you know it, you're looking at an awakening. Tim Keller said this, revival is an avalanche. We have a few CP Christians waking up, a few nominal Christians getting converted, and a few really interesting dramatic conversions from the community. And there's a real support of extraordinary prayer. And those first little pebbles can turn into an avalanche. We don't even like to use the word converted anymore. Like the world is full of certain words that are core to my faith are evil words. Oh, you're just trying to get converts, converted, convert. That's what Jesus does. He comes to save us. [00:16:58] (54 seconds)
There's conversions when there is an awakening happening, when there's people of depth that happen. There's also, number two, there's cultural and societal impact. There's ripples and wakes that go across all of culture and society. Now, as I talk about this, I'm not here talking about philosophically. There's been a number of these. in the last couple thousand years. And when you look at those and stitch them together, it starts to make sense that the pieces start to come together. The first person who was a Christian and used advertising was a guy by the name of George Whitefield. He actually used drama in his preaching. He would, instead of preaching monotone from a script like some people did, like Jonathan Edwards, if you know that old name, George Whitefield would do these big gestures and he would command the stage and he would go into a town ahead of time and he would put advertising up on bulletin boards and all that kind of letting people know that he was coming. [00:18:14] (60 seconds)
For God to have his way in your life, for you to have a peace, the past is all understanding. For you to have a joy that can't be squelched with a bad economy. For you to have hope when someone you don't like gets elected. For you to have hope. For you to have a purpose in the future, even when you don't feel like you can last another day, it happens because Jesus has a hundred of you and you just love him with all your heart. All of it. And until we do, no one has any reason to look into our God because we're no different than anybody else. We just got a veneer of religiosity on us and a habit of going to church. Big freaking deal. God wants you. He wants all of you. Because he gave all of himself for us. The adventure's coming. He's worthy. He's worthy. He's worthy. [00:50:29] (64 seconds)
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