It’s Saturday afternoon, and I’m at the café down the way, seated among a throng of younger people, some alone and brooding, and others smiling in conversation.  I’ve just tuned into the live feed of the revival going on at Asbury College, now for the past week and a half.  I’m participating from a vantage point high and rears of the stage. I have full view of a room packed with students and others worshiping the Lord.  It doesn’t feel much different than a church service, but then again as I ponder what’s going on, I realize that a prayer meeting has been going on for 10 plus days!  Remarkable in this day of schedules, tight programming and ‘on to the next’ mentality that is ours in this day and age. 

What do I observe?  Simple worship. I hear the sound of students singing songs I’ve sung many times in church and at conferences, but these are older, a kind of holy cloak of awe hangs upon them.  The mood is different, not an overcomer mentality, but a going under.  Humility can mean to burrow under a mountain.  These students are standing before the Lord, but they are not shouting out exaltation, it feels more like waiting for execution.  What I mean is, that anyone serious about coming into the real presence of Jesus, has to admit that they are there only because He paid the price of admission. Death.  Yes, Jesus has our ticket to the greatest show on earth, audience with the King of Kings.  How often I pass up the chance for a front row seat at transformation because I don’t get it.  Don’t get it? Yes, I’m caught up with the most current news blurbs, the most current hot potato topics for Christian apologetics, the most current strategies for reaching this generation, and I’m out of hearing range from the Holy Spirit’s pleadings.  Pleading for what?  For what I’m seeing come to life! He wants me to build a personal altar, to come, to bring my weary soul to that altar, and spend enough time and focus there for God Himself to visit, and to take my hand and lead me to where His son did all the work of redemption, to be crucified with Christ. 

When I first heard about the revival, I shook my head in wonder.  Can lightning strike the same place three times?  In the case of God, and his pinpoint accuracy, absolutely!  The last great movement of God in this country began in the same chapel, early 70’s.   How odd, that God would decide to revisit this place again with the fire, with the lightning strike that would ignite hearts to plead in repentance, to plead for living water that only He provides. 

Why are bus loads arriving every day from far flung places?  Why has this revival continued when others sputtered and stopped in exhaustion?  Why now, and what will God do with the prayers and repentance of those involved?  How could this single spark upon the earth, spill into the churches of our nation, churches from all stripe and standard, ethnic, and denominational?  What will God do, now that He’s alerted a band of fire seeds, and they are waiting upon him, welcoming one and all to the altar? 

On this Saturday afternoon, please take a moment to pray.  Pray for the students who have been transformed by the love of God.  Pray for those who will be.  Pray that their voices will not be stopped or coerced into silence by unbelief.  Pray for your own heart, look deeply into it, and ask God for that fresh fire to fall right there, right in the center of your will, so that whatever he says to do, you would be so captured by love, that nothing on this earth could stop you.

If you feel led, please pass this post along. Perhaps someone out there needs a dose of hope!!