Last Wednesday, there was a routine morning chapel service at Asbury University in Kentucky. Afterwards, some students stuck around to pray, and the band kept playing music, and what started out as a 1-hour service has lasted into today, Sunday. 

I spent some time today watching videos of what people are calling “revival,” and it’s giving me goosebumps.

I used to pray for “revival” quite often. Throughout high school and college in particular, I would regularly ask God to shake up our country, shake up our church, and shake up my heart, to make his presence known, to bring about healing and transformation, to bring heaven down to earth, and so on. And there were certainly moments, here and there, when it felt like God was on the move. But most of the time, my hopes and expectations wouldn’t be met.

It would seem that my friends and I would get hyped up during prayer meetings and worship sessions, and then we would go back to normal life the next day. 

“Shouldn’t a true revival have a lasting effect?” I often thought. “And if so, was that really a revival we experienced last night, or was that just emotionalism and sensationalism, generated by good musicians and good orators?” I could never be sure.

The thing is, though—nobody openly questioned these “revivals.” Doing so would signify a lack of faith, and the Gospels made it clear that signs and wonders didn’t occur when people lacked faith.

And so it often became a show of who had the most faith. Every time we would hear of someone who “testified” to feeling the Spirit, I would feel the pressure to want to say the same thing. It seemed like we were capitalizing on our innate fear of missing out to convince one another that it truly was the Spirit showing up at all of these Christian events. 

But then a similar thing would happen at secular music concerts. And I would realize that this thump in my chest is not the Spirit—that’s just what happens when the bass is loud and the speakers are good. And this tingly out-of-body feeling just happens in any good song when you have a bridge that leads into the final chorus really well.

One day, when I was reading about the showdown between Elijah and the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18, I wondered, “How come I don’t experience what Elijah experienced? Why do I relate more with the prophets of Baal than with Elijah?” I sometimes felt that I was praying and shouting and dancing all day long to get God’s attention, but with no response. Why didn’t revival come?

I would wonder who was to blame. Maybe we didn’t hit a “critical mass” of people of prayer yet. Maybe there was too much sin and not even holiness in our hearts. The worst fear was that maybe I was the cause—that I was the Achan (from Joshua 7) that was responsible for the failure of the church. Whatever the reason, over time I prayed for revival less and less often.

Of course, I still believed (and I still do) in the reality of revival. There are way too many testimonies throughout history to deny the fact that God has, at times, transformed whole communities and cities with a snap of his fingers. But I came to internalize this fatalist idea that maybe today is not God’s timing.

I would have theological justifications for this approach as well. “Faith is based in facts, not feelings,” I would say. Or, “The real test of faith is whether we trust in God in the barren times as well as the abundant times.” Or, “God doesn’t always show up in very public showy ways. Sometimes he is in the quiet and ordinary routines of life.” I came to see the emotional experiences that characterized my early years in the faith as something that I needed back then, but I’m at a different place now. 

But with these videos and testimonies at Asbury coming out, I am simultaneously experiencing both excitement as well as skepticism. There’s excitement, obviously, because perhaps this is the answer to so many prayers of so many saints over so many years. Maybe God is doing a thing, and if he is, the last thing I want to do is be stuck being a critic on the sidelines. 

But there’s also skepticism, because I worry that this is just youth group emotionalism and sensationalism all over again. I fear being disappointed. And I fear the harm done to our church’s witness if this hype sputters out in a few weeks. 

So is this thing of God or not?

The words of Gamaliel in Acts 5:38-39 seem relevant. The Sanhedrin was evaluating the early apostles, and Gamaliel said to them, “Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.”

My genuine hope is that there is a true revival going on right now at Asbury University, and this is the start of something that will sweep the nation, bringing about redemption, peace, justice, and righteousness. I will remain cautiously hopeful, and for my part, the least I can do is to start praying for revival again.