Why It Can Happen Again

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     I imagine as true followers of Christ we would want to see God move on campus among students that need God’s salvation. 

     On one level we want this, but what does this mean? What will this require of us? What would it mean if young men and women and faculty and administrators began to turn to God on our campuses in significant numbers? What would it mean if the numbers attending your campus gatherings multiplied exponentially? You needed more space for your meetings to accommodate the swelling crowds. And if what if the meetings extended late into the night when maintenance wanted to close the building, and students were still crying out to God in repentance? What if the conversations in residence halls, the student center, and recreation complex, centered on how to know and follow Christ?  What if hundreds of students wanted to be baptized in water, and the university swimming pool was overrun with baptismal services? What if prayer meetings began occurring in every corner of the campus at all hours of the day and night? What if classes had to be suspended to accommodate the move of God on campus?

    In a 2018 book, Jesus Revolution, Greg Laurie and Ellen Vaughn, reminds us that the Jesus Movement of the 1960s and 1970s “was the largest public movement of the Holy Spirit in the United States since the celebrated revivals of the nineteenth century.” They confidently assert, “God can do it again.” In fact, they say, “He [God] can surprise us all with a new extraordinary, radical, spine-tingling hope, and a new flood of His Holy Spirit on a new generation.”

   The authors ask, “Are we really desperate to know God, to embrace the fresh, mysterious, powerful wind of the Spirit?” Would we like to see revival or spiritual stirrings on campus that result in numbers of students coming to faith in Jesus Christ?  Not something that relies on human plans, programs, campaigns or denominational initiatives. “It comes from the real revolution that only God can bring.”                           

   Laurie and Vaughn analyze the Jesus Movement, with the insight that this kind of phenomenon that happened fifty years ago can happen again. They believe “revival will be scary, exhilarating, messy, passionate, and surprising. We should not pray for revival unless we are ready to be turned upside down, our heads and our pockets and our lives shaken out.” 

   Are we ready?  

   Dawson Trotman founder of the Navigators said, “Don’t talk an inch beyond your experience . . . If you are not practicing it in your own life, don’t talk about it to others.” Maybe it’s time we get radical in our own lives in prayer and in the Word and abandon ourselves to God and His purposes like no time before, and allow Him to work through you in a fresh and powerful way right now on your campus.

In Jesus Revolution, Greg Laurie and Ellen Vaughn, analyze the Jesus Movement, with the insight that this kind of phenomenon that happened fifty years ago can happen again! The characteristics of the Jesus Movement that contributed to its phenomenon:

Spontaneous

Bible-based

Emphasized an experience w Jesus Christ

Emphasized the Holy Spirit

Converts had radical conversions

Emphasized discipleship

Emphasized evangelism

Emphasized the second coming of Christ

 Jesus Revolution: How God Transformed an Unlikely Generation and How He Can Do It Again Baker Books, 2018

 

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