From Herald of His Coming -
By David Bryant
“As for you, because of the blood of My covenant with you, I will free your prisoners from the waterless pit. Return to your fortress, you prisoners of hope; even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you” (Zech. 9:11-12).
Turbulence…straight ahead! Political, economic, racial, moral, domestic, environmental, presidential, theological, ideological, international. You name it. Directly or indirectly, this year will be a year full of turbulence.
At such a moment as this, some may wonder, “How can the question you raise in your title even be relevant?” Actually, no issue could be more relevant! Unhesitatingly and unequivocally, I can say that for me the answer to the title question calls for one simple response. Is there hope for a Christ Awakening in America this year? Absolutely!
A God of Hope
From beginning to end, our God is a God of hope. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 15:13). We might say it like this: Our God holds lots of promises up His sleeves. And He has big sleeves!
In both Testaments, however, His promises focus primarily on a certain kind of hope. God offers His people the hope of new beginnings, including entire seasons of renewal, especially for those who feel as if they are merely surviving in “waterless pits” (to use Zechariah’s vivid metaphor in the opening Scripture above).
To such ones as these God promises restoration – in abundance. He intends to restore, the prophet says, “twice as much” of anything we may have forfeited.
The Great “Good” in the Good News
The “good” proclaimed in the truly good news about Christ flows not only from His incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection, but also from His ascension. The moment He took His place as supreme Son on the throne of His Father’s kingdom all the promises of God were inherited by the Son. Exclusively. Permanently. In other words, the promises all point to Him, are embodied in Him, and can be fulfilled only in Him – preeminently for the purpose of exalting Him.
But – and this is the source of great joy for all of Jesus’ followers – because we fully belong to Him, the Father pronounces a cosmic “Yes” over our lives and our churches regarding the most intimate as well as the most profound implications of every promise encompassed by our King (see Second Corinthians 1:19-20). They are His, but they have become ours, because we are His. Especially that vast array of God’s pledges regarding every facet of our reclamation in Christ is ours!
Thus, forever He remains the God of the hope of replenishment. Of revitalization. Of renovation. Of resurrection! But all of it is in and only in Christ Jesus.
The One Certainty in the Midst of Today’s Turbulences
Therefore, we can be absolutely certain that this year the Holy Spirit desires nothing higher than to take believers where we have never gone before with our Savior. He wants to transform us, individually and collectively, into (again borrowing from Zechariah 9) “prisoners of hope” – that is, into people so captivated and compelled by our hope in Christ that we are able to weather any turbulence ahead of us.
I am talking about a hope of God’s Spirit that invites us into a ministry in which He uses God’s Word to reintroduce us to God’s Son for ALL He is – which includes every promise in Jesus for which Jesus redeemed us. I am talking about the hope of a “Christ Awakening.”
Listen. Carefully. Do you not hear Him? At this hour all through the Body of Christ the Holy Spirit is amplifying one overarching prospect: “…And the secret is simply this: Christ in you! Yes, Christ is in you bringing with Him the hope of all glorious things to come” (Col. 1:27, Phillips). How can we respond to this reality by seeking God for anything less than a shaking and waking of the church to the supremacy of Christ and to the grand purposes before us in Him? Do we not realize that already such a spiritual revolution is impending? That it is bearing down on top of us? That currently there is nothing that the Father deserves, desires, designs, or decrees more than this? That, in fact, He is able, willing, and ready to do so?
Special Seasons of Awakening
After years of research comparing the promises of Scripture with annals of church history, the New England pastor and scholar Jonathan Edwards wrote in 1747 about what many of us today call a Christ Awakening: “God has had it much on His heart, from all eternity, to glorify His dear and only Son. Universal dominion is pledged to Christ. Even so, there are special seasons God appoints to that end, where He comes forth with omnipotent power to fulfill this promise and oath to His Son. These seasons are times of remarkable outpouring of His Spirit. They prove the reality of Christ’s kingdom to a skeptical world and serve to extend its bounds” [emphasis added].
Indeed, the universal testimony of Scripture is that waking up His people to more of His glory in His Son dominates the revealed purposes of God the Father. He wants to give this good grace to the church anytime, anywhere – including every individual follower of Jesus.
The Current Need for Such a Miracle
What do you think God sees when He looks at the American church today? Despite all the glitz and glamour, how much hollowness, barrenness, and spiritual exhaustion does He find inherent in our ways? Regardless of our published claims and flurry of commendable activities, when it comes to advancing the work of Christ’s kingdom, how often do you think He finds our ministries ineffective, paralyzed, stymied? Though outwardly we seem to be prospering in the workings of “churchianity,” would He not conclude that inwardly we are far too dull, too weak, too stagnant?
Remarking on evidence of the church’s current spiritual depletion, world-renowned British evangelical leader Dr. John Stott sometimes expressed it this way (paraphrased): When the nighttime overwhelms us we do not blame the darkness; it is only being what darkness is. We blame the tragic dimness of the light. If the hamburger spoils we do not blame the patty; that is what happens to dead meat. The problem is with the potency of the salt that should have retarded its decomposition.
Stott concludes: “We should not ask, ‘What is wrong with the world?’ for that diagnosis has already been given. Rather, we should ask, ‘What has happened to the salt and light?’” To that point, when research tells us there is little difference between the lifestyle of Christians inside the church and that of our society as a whole, it is not hard to understand why our influence for Christ (our salt and light) is so negligible in the life of our nation.
The truth is that grievous manifestations of moral and spiritual disintegration rampant in the culture at large can be found all through our churches as well. Racism. Hypocrisy. Hero worship. Materialism. Busyness. Lack of social conscience. Road rage. Dysfunctional families. Addiction to pornography. Status quo mediocrity. Self-indulgent abundance. These leave America (including our local communities) to fend for itself in the face of persistent fears of terrorism, stunting political gridlock, the drumbeat of ethical scandals, urban poverty and violence, unresolved economic and racial injustices, as well as confusion over our nation’s proper role in a world also in turmoil.
Loss of Passion for Christ
The sad part is that when these crises (inside and outside the church) are combined they create for us a multitude of distractions that end up, for all intents and purposes, marginalizing the living Christ among us. Spiritually exhausted, most of us are unable to retain the kind of passion for Him He deserves as Supreme Lord of All.
As American evangelicals, can we read Revelation chapters two and three (the letters to the seven churches) and not wonder if our Lord may be speaking equally penetrating analyses of much of contemporary Christianity? I think you would agree, for example, that modern day believers frequently “have forsaken [our] first love” (Rev. 2:4), leaving us with “a reputation of being alive, but [we] are dead” (Rev. 3:1).
In many churches, the counsel of Jesus two millennia ago to a lukewarm congregation in Asia Minor needs to be repeated over and over to believers in our day: “I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see” (Rev. 3:18).
Open Wide the Gates! Let the King of Glory Enter In!
If the American church became more intentional about gaining a better diagnoses of our true need, discovering how we too have become “wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked” (Rev. 3:17), surely we would run – no, we would race – to Christ. Together we would fall before Him begging the King of Glory to once again burst through the doors of our hearts and the doors of our congregations, manifesting Himself among us in the fullness and power of His reign.
Thankfully, there is nothing the Father is more able, willing and ready to do by the Spirit than to have His Son invade His followers afresh, conquer us anew, and retake us captive to Himself and to all He embodies as Savior and Sovereign. That is what Jonathan Edwards concluded.
That is also what Dr. Ebenezer Porter, president of Andover Theological Seminary on the East Coast, reported in 1830 to his student body. In a series of seven lectures, he shared firsthand observations of the essence of what happened in churches throughout the decades historians define as the “Second Great Awakening” in America, including:
“When the Redeemer comes in the triumphs of His grace to visit His churches, then His true followers are seen waking from their apathy, and going forth to welcome the King of Zion with an energy and earnestness and ardor of affection greatly surpassing their first love” [emphasis added].
Could another such radical “visitation” of our Redeemer come upon our people today? Could another such “waking from apathy” into “ardor of affection” toward Christ unfold among us before the close of this year?
Confident Expectation
God intends for His Son to be the focus of everything – at the end of history as well as every step along the way. He has no greater desire. In whatever He does, His ultimate purpose is to sum up all of heaven and earth under Jesus as Lord (Eph. 1:10). Every Christ Awakening is meant to accelerate, intensify, and expand this process. In such seasons God dramatically intervenes to restore Christ’s rightful role as Redeemer King among His people and to more fully advance His kingdom among the nations. God loves the world and longs to see His Son exalted among all of earth’s peoples.
We need not doubt that God is able, willing, and ready to grant such an awakening. He is faithful and consistent in all of His ways. He has been pleased to grant times of significant renewal and revitalization to many generations of His people, from Genesis to the present. One day He will culminate all revivals in the Final Revival – the consummation of everything in Christ. Since historically He has granted innumerable Christ Awakenings, and since God is no respecter of persons, we can be assured that what He has done for others He will do for us.
Press On in Joyful Prayer
In unprecedented fashion, God is stirring up His people worldwide to pray unitedly, specifically, increasingly, and persistently for a Christ Awakening in every part of the body of Christ. He is doing so by giving believers all over the globe a common vision for the need for radical revival. There is a broad-based, biblical agreement on what a genuine Christ Awakening looks like. There is a growing conviction that such a move of the Holy Spirit is near as we commit to intercede for it together. Since God is stirring up the church to pray with a distinctive Christ-exalting focus and consensus, then surely He does not intend for us to pray in vain. These are requests He promises to satisfy fully. Press on! The answers to our prayers are not far behind! These are the kinds of prayer the Father longs to fulfill.
So here is my appeal to serious-minded Christians everywhere who long for such a gracious move of God as this: It is time for us to wake up to more of Christ, to rise up with fresh hope in Him, to reach up in prayer for this God-given reformation, to speak up to foster Christ Awakenings wherever we live. That means it is also time for us to link up – to rally fellow believers to join an army captivated by Jesus and ready to serve Him in realizing the hope for a nationwide Christ Awakening movement – nothing less!
David Bryant is the founder and president of Proclaim Hope! – a ministry whose goal is to serve a nationwide Christ Awakening. David is the author of many books including Christ Is ALL! (www.ChristIsAllBook.com). The preceding message and the accompanying two articles by David Bryant are adapted from his four-part series “Is There Hope for a Christ Awakening in America in 2016?” from the website www.ChristNow.com.
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Mike
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