Do zombies exist? A few years ago, I would have said, ‘No.’ Today, I would say, ‘Yes, zombies do exists.’ This post is not meant to scare anyone but just to inform what is out on the streets today. If you have teens at home, parents need to be aware.
There is a new drug loose on the streets and it is extremely destructive. Parents are losing their children, and children are losing their parents. In the United States, one person dies every 5 minutes from a drug-overdose. This is a silent epidemic because people die silently.
ZOMBIE DRUG:
Police have been warning people about a horrific new fentanyl mix called ‘tranq’ or ‘zombie drug.’ It’s a large-animal tranquilizer called Zylazine that’s now being mixed with fentanyl. It is literally eating peoples’ flesh. Addicts are hunched over and look and behave like zombies.
The horrifying thing is that this new flesh-eating drug is literally destroying the bodies of people. It is a trap that renders a person helpless and there is no cure.
The streets of every major city now resemble war zones. It isn’t because of homelessness. Homelessness is a symptom. The cause is drug addiction. Drugs can destroy a nation from within—one by one.
LEARN FROM HISTORY:
Opium weakened and destroyed China in the 1800s. China was always a nation filled with hard-working and motivated people. When opium became a stronghold in China, it didn’t know how to combat this crisis. The nation was helpless. People, young and old, were becoming demotivated and useless. Young healthy members of society became helpless and apathetic.
Over 100 years later, the United States, Canada and Europe could be on a road to disaster. If we do not pay attention and make a drastic turn-around to battle drug addiction, entire cross-sections of societies across North America and Europe could become a walking-dead.
WHAT CAN WE DO:
It is my hope and prayer that lawmakers take a stricter approach to combat drugs. We must not go down the dangerous road of decriminalization of drugs. States that have decriminalized drugs have taken a turn for the worse. Decriminalization is a deception that will torment our nations forever.
Drug traffickers don’t care about how many real people they destroy. They only care about money. We must elect lawmakers and politicians who will do the right thing to stop this tragedy that is silently killing our precious young people.
Rev. Eugene Peterson once asked Rev. Harry Fosdick what he thought was the most important thing he does in preparing to preach on Sunday. He said his answer to Peterson was,
“For two hours every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, I walk through the neighborhood and make home visits. There is no way that I can preach the gospel to these people if I don’t know how they are living, what they are thinking and talking about. Preaching is proclamation, God’s word revealed in Jesus, but only when it gets embedded in conversation, in a listening ear and responding tongue, does it become gospel.” (The Pastor, p.87)
This is simple but yet profound. The gospel ought to be related and identified with those we speak to. Preachers today have an inner struggle trying to relate with their people who attend their churches. It’s almost a feeling of insecurity. We hear it when pastors go too long in their sermon intros trying to relate with the common life.
In my line of work, I do ministry with those I work with. Many already know who I am. I walk the lines where they work. And they know where to find me. They know I can relate with their lives. I am not too different from them. I experience the same challenges they do. So when I listen to their stories, they know I understand.
Brother Thomas Merton describes the Christian community life:
“The community is an organism whose common life is pitched on a somewhat higher tone than the life of the individual member… In entering a community, the individual sets himself the task of living above his own ordinary level, and thus perfecting his own being, living more fully, by his efforts to live for the benefit of others besides himself.”
This “higher tone” and “living above” the ordinary level come from the expectation that the Christian has agreed with the community and has made a vow to God to live a holy life and pursue a higher calling to love Christ. It’s something our generation is lacking today. It is what young men and women are yearning deep inside. This choice for a holy lifestyle exists.
It’s a choice one makes into a way of life and leads to an extra ordinary life. It allows one to rise above the norm. It is not the easy path. It is a move away from collective society of the “crowd” into another society—a private and quiet one.
Although I am a Protestant evangelical, I can appreciate this silent life. There are many people who would appreciate such a life. Throughout the earliest centuries of the Christian Church, besides Monasteries and Convents, many other groups also lived as Christian communities—Mennonites, Hutterites, Amish, etc. Who knows what more will firm in the future? There will undoubtedly be more.
These various types of separate communities are Christian and can benefit one’s spiritual growth, if even for a season. It’s not for everyone but it certainly is attractive for some. It will become a greater attraction for many in the future because Generation Z is seeking and longing for mutual support in this dark and lonely world. The Christian Church will experience a re-awakening, revival of some sort. Prepare for it.
LOST IN THE COLLECTIVE:
“A crowd is a mere aggregation in which the collective life is as low as the standards of the lowest units in the aggregation. Descending into the crowd, the individual loses his personality and his character and perhaps loses his moral dignity as a human being. The crowd is below man. The crowd devours the human that is in us to make us the members of a many-headed beast.” (Thomas Merton, The Silent Life, FS&G (1957) Part I, ch. 4 , p.43)
If you’ve watched re-runs of Star Trek, remember the ‘collective’? In the collective, a person can lose one’s own personality and one’s moral bearings.
Who wants to lose oneself in a collective? I certainly do not. It creates sadness, despair and depression. Our society, youth and young adults is drowning in it. It feels like a deep pit of despair and hopelessness. Only Christ can pull us out of this despair.
Brother Merton continues describing the monastic community:
“That is why the monastery builds itself in the wilderness: cuts off communications with the world and with the press and the radio which too often are simply the voice of the vast aggregation that is something less than human. As a community must take care to form itself carefully in the atmosphere of solitude and detachment in which the seeds of faith and charity have a chance to sink deep roots and grow without being choked out by thorns, or crushed under the wheels of trucks and cars.”
ISLANDS OF DESPAIR:
As the contemporary church, each Christian needs to be part of a greater community—one that is bigger and better than him or her self. No one can survive as an island; and as the saying goes: “No man is an island.” This is so true. Many individuals live as ‘islands’ today, although one may attend church services or mass every single week. How many of us walk in and then out of the church feeling alone? You know the answer. We live like we are on our own—like individuals in a crowd.
Moreover, we easily lose our Christian identity and become submerged within ‘the Crowd’. We feel lost within the Crowd. This is why it has become so difficult for our generation of young people to live for Christ.
The voice of secular society is becoming ever louder. It can become a great distraction to the Christian life. The world will inevitably try to shape an individual into something ‘less than human.’ One’s faith then becomes choked out by thorns and crushed by the weight of society’s pressures. It then becomes impossible to live a satisfying life as a human being.
THE HOPE:
God still gives each Christian a choice to live for Christ, to identify as God’s son or daughter, and serve Jesus first. There is a holy desire that resides within each Christian person to live in some sort of spiritual-religious community or society. To achieve something greater than the individual self. It would be beneficial for you to pay attention to this inner desire you have calling from within.
I am taking the opportunity to have a six-day personal spiritual retreat at a retreat centre, a convent actually.
I spent time sitting down with a spiritual director, a wonderful lady in her senior years. I am truly blessed to have spent six-days in this setting (while remaining separate from the community).
It’s been a wonderful experience to get away during this Lenten season and reflect spiritually and be challenged through my spiritual director as to where my life is and where it can go.
I found a book in the library called The Silent Life, by Thomas Merton. I came across a paragraph that speaks on the Christian community. It would apply equally to any monastery, convent, or religious community.
Brother Merton writes:
“…the monastic life is a school of affection, fidelity and mercy. By sharing the prayers, labor and trials of our brothers, and knowing them as they are, we learn to respect them and to love them with a sober compassion that is too deep for sentimentality. We learn to be faithful to them, depending on them, we know that they have a right to depend on us. We try to learn how not to fail them. Finally we forgive others their faults and sins against us, as we ourselves would be forgiven by them and by God. In this school of charity and of peace a man learns not only to respect and to love others, but also, in the purest sense, to love and respect his own person for the sake of God. Without this supernatural self-respect, which comes from realizing himself to find it in himself to have true affection for his brothers. This deep mutual respect is nourished in the monastery. It is the exact opposite to worldly flattery because it is based on a true and intimate knowledge of others and of ourselves. Its fruit is a solid and lasting peace which does not end with the mere satisfaction of our need for companionship and for friends, but purifies our hearts of dependence on visible things and strengthens our faith in God.” (Part I, ch. 4, p.44)
The religious life is a sort of ‘school’ where one learns how to live in Christian community, shut away from the world and its worldliness. It is where one works together, prays together, live in community together where we face our individual challenges together. One learns to share in God’s graces and offer grace to others. One learns to love and respect one another.
The Christian community is a spiritual-religious bond of brotherhood and sisterhood. It is almost like a nuclear DNA family but without the bond of blood relations. As a general statement and in a way, it can be an even tighter-knit community than a nuclear family as it does not have the trappings of familiarity of a nuclear family. These friends, made in community, are the only close companions these members have.
When one offends another, one must have the humility to apologize for one’s own ill behavior; otherwise, that friendship can be lost. In reality, friendships can be lost in any community–religious or nuclear families.
This is just one aspect of religious community life.
In Jesus’ third temptation in Matthew 4:1-11, the devil took him to the peak of a high mountain and showed him all the glorious kingdoms of the world. And the devil says: 9 “All these I will give you,” he said, “if you will fall down and worship me.” What was Jesus’ response? 10 “Away from me, Satan. For it is written, Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.’”
POWER ITSELF:
This temptation is about power. Nothing wrong with power in and of itself. We want good people to have authority to effect good positive change in society and in the world. But when we make power the highest good in our lives, it can also be detrimental in our own lives, in other people and detrimental to people we love. Seeking power for the sake of having power can be the cause of our own downfall.
There is a famous phrase written by Lord Acton to Bishop Creighton, “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.
RATIONALIZING POWER FOR OURSELF:
Have you watched the Star Wars trilogy? If you have, recall Anakin Skywalker (who eventually became Darth Vadar)? Eventually he moved over to the darkside as he was gaining power. He was thinking that with more power, he could overcome the evil that destroyed his own family on his planet. As he toyed with idea of power and battled with anger and revenge, he slowly turned himself over to the power of the darkside. He justified why he should be powerful. He rationalized and reasoned his way toward the darkside until he was unable to perceive how evil had grown within himself. As he became more evil, thought more evil and behaved more evil, he could not see this change within himself. What happened after that? As he became Darth Vadar (the diabolical man in black). He eventually destroyed countless more lives beyond his own world.
Adam and Eve also rationalized this by wanting to be like God. They reasoned their way to idolize the knowledge of God—and rationalized eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
CONSEQUENCE OF ABSOLUTE POWER:
When power becomes our driving force and we reason to make this our ultimate goal, we can inevitably hurt ourselves and others. Look at Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin. When we allow power to dominate our desires and make it our highest good, our sensuous desires and the devil can use it to harm us and other people. We no longer own it; it owns us. When it becomes our idol, it is driven and owned by evil. It draws us away from the goodness of God.
The danger in power is when we seek power for the sake of power, and in order to control others, it can corrupt us. With power comes much responsibility. We do well to remind ourselves of this. So, when temptation comes to us in similar fashion: “I will give it all to you if you will kneel down and worship me.” May we be reminded by what Jesus said, “You must worship the Lord your God and serve only him.”
In the Gospel of Matthew 4, Jesus was tempted three times. In Jesus’ second temptation, the devil tempted Jesus again. He took Jesus to the holy city, Jerusalem, to the highest point of the Temple, and said, “If you are the Son of God, jump off! For the Scriptures say, ‘He will order his angels to protect you. And they will hold you up with their hands so you won’t even hurt your foot on a stone.” (Ref. Psalm 91:11-12).
This temptation was a test of Jesus’ emotions. It was a test of Jesus’ trust in his heavenly Father’s love for him. It was like saying to Jesus: “If you are truly the Son of God, then I dare you, do something crazy to prove God’s great love, God will surely come and rescue you. If God truly loves you, God won’t let you die. Jump off and prove that you trust in God’s faithfulness. After all, you are God’s Son aren’t you?”
It’s kind of like the devil’s request of God to test his servant Job. If you took away Job’s health and all he has, he will forsake you. What the devil wanted was to prematurely cause Jesus to lose his life even before he got his earthly ministry going.
GOD TRULY LOVES YOU:
Jesus and the devil both already knew the Father loved his Son. At Jesus’ baptism, the Father’s voice spoke from heaven and said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” The devil is good at trying to make a fool out of God’s children.
The devil doesn’t care about life and would prefer if humanity would all die. Death is where Satan his angels are already destined and he is trying, as hard as he can, to separate as many people away from God. He makes light of our faith in God and would love it if we forsook our faith and denied God.
The devil doesn’t know our future, but he does know what our future holds is good… eternal life in Christ Jesus and that we would live in heavenly paradise with God forever.
As Christians, many of us might doubt God’s love at some point or another. We might doubt God every month. Some doubt every week. Some even doubt every day. What was Jesus’ response to the devil? He quotes from Deut. 6:16, “The Scriptures also say, ‘You must not test the Lord your God.’
As children of God, we can rely on God’s love, on his word that he has spoken into our lives. May God give every child of God faith to believe in his word that we are loved by God forever and that God’s love for us never wanes and will stand unwavering forever. If our faith remains in God’s love, mercy and grace, there is nothing to fear and everything to gain.
This inner temptation was a distraction where we can learn about our own human weakness. In the first testing, the devil tempts Jesus to turn stone into bread. The devil says to him: “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread.” But Jesus told him, “No! The Scriptures say, ‘People do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Deut. 8:2). The temptation was to rationalize and justify this. What’s wrong with breaking a fast? In and of itself? Nothing. It’s good to get a break from this hard lonely path. But Jesus was in the desert for a reason; he had set out to fast and pray. During these 40 days, he was tempted to prematurely break this fast.
As human beings, we also rationalize like Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden. The devil questioned Eve saying, “Did God really say you could not eat from any tree in the garden?…and if you eat it you will certainly not die.” “It’s all just semantics, right?” As human beings, we modify God’s commands to justify taking the easier path. We began learning how to rationalize from the time we were kids; and by the time we reach adulthood, we’ve become very good at it.
IDOLATRY – ELEVATING EARTHLY THINGS:
So this first temptation is to make our basic sensual desires the highest good in life. Some of these things include food, drink, clothes, shelter, sex. Is there anything wrong with these things? No. These are some of the basic things we as human beings need to survive. God wants to provide us with all these things. But when we elevate these things to the highest level and make them our primary need above the primacy of God, they become our idols.
When we look at photos, television, films, we see the glorification of these things…lots of money, fancy cars, huge mansions, exorbitant vacations and just “living it up.” Isn’t it tempting to want some of these things? It definitely is. All of us have fallen into this trap at some level. It’s common to all of us. It’s easy to want more than just a basic vehicle, or a small dwelling. Once you have a little, it’s very tempting to want more than just the basic needs. Anything wrong with having these basic needs? No not at all. God wants each person to have their basic needs met so that we can live and survive in this world.
Where we can go sideways is when we elevate these things as our primary goal where these become greater than the Lord our God in our lives. We make these things our idols and worship them. It’s a violation of the First Commandment. It can lead us into big troubles–reaping consequences in life. We can end up hurting not only ourselves but other people—even those we love who are close to us.
FALSE BELIEF:
There’s nothing wrong with meeting our most basic primary needs. We work hard to provide them to our kids. But when we give them too much without setting boundaries, there could be repercussions. As parents, we’d actually be setting up our children to believe that everything is a ‘must have’. We fail to teach them that denying oneself of some things can also be a good thing. In turn, as they become adults, they will want everything and believe that physical and sensual things can satisfy them.
We become so preoccupied with wanting all these things that we don’t think about other things that bring us closer to the spiritual good and even of God. Our preoccupation with the most basic human needs can become a distraction to what is truly good and better. This is why Jesus responded to the devil by saying: ‘People do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ Jesus knows that we need bread to survive.
Jesus was also human, he got hungry and thirsty. But he also knew he needed to deny himself of some things in order to be spiritually connected to the higher calling of his heavenly Father. Same goes for us. There is more than just ‘the things’ of this earthly life. We are called to a higher spiritual calling.
The season of Lent can be a time when we as Christians can strengthen our personal faith. During Lent, some Christians practice fasting and prayer for 40 days. Denying yourself of food or other things you likewell, is not easy.
Fasting and prayer has been used by Christians to move closer to God. In the Gospel of Matthew 4:1-11, Jesus had set out to fast and pray in the desert. He wanted to seek out the voice of his heavenly Father. But he faced three distractions and temptations from the devil.
Trials and testings of worldly power and desires can distract us from the highest good and from making God the main object of our affections.
When we face testings, we might see them as bad, but God can use them for our good in order to build up our faith in God.
FREE FROM SIN IN CHRIST
When we fail in our testings, it might feel like we’ve made a deal with the devil. Some people have made many deals. Some are luckier and don’t have as many deals as others (depending on what you consider lucky).
With God, however, there is always a way out of the shame and guilt of our sin. Jesus showed that the word of God is more powerful than any sleight of hand the devil might deal out to us.
We can remind ourselves that we are baptized Children of God and that as God’s children, God has provided us a way out in Christ Jesus.
The Apostle Paul said in Romans 5: “You who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.”
We as the church on earth have been given an opportunity to live in the joy and delight in God’s will and to walk in His ways. By confessing daily, “[God] is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
Let us move forward because Christ has already died for us and has already justified us and are saved through Christ from the wrath of God. There is always a way out and that is good news.
May this season of Lent remind us of whose we are, and of our calling.
My next several posts will deal with the three temptations of Christ from Matthew 4:1-11.
Since the spiritual revival was sovereignly kicked-off at Asbury University these past few weeks, people have been blogging and vlogging about it all over the Internet. There is definitely a greater awareness of the Church’s need for congregational and personal spiritual revival. This event has caused me to reflect on my own need for a spiritual awakening. The Holy Spirit is moving in such a way that this renewal might spread a renewed hunger and thirst for more of God, in and outside the institutional Church. Many of us Christians today are at a “stand-still.” By “stand-still,” I mean stagnant and not growing in our faith.
One knows it when one is in need of a spiritual reawakening. We know it when we are feeling spiritually empty and completely dry. I have been there. I know it when I am feeling like a dried up spiritual raisin.
Actually, we all need spiritual revival/renewal. It does not matter whether you are Evangelical, Protestant, or Catholic… Pentecostal, Presbyterian or Lutheran…a faithful church-goer or an infrequent church goer… or even a lapsed Christian who hasn’t stepped foot inside a church for countless decades. Maybe you’ve lost track of how many years since you’ve last talked with God. Maybe you feel like you’ve traveled countless miles away from God and from Christ’s Church, and confession and forgiveness seems like decades ago. We all need spiritual renewal. Our spirit needs to be reawakened by God’s Holy Spirit.
LACK OF SPIRITUAL FRUITS:
There are symptoms of having traveled far away from God. Some of these symptoms might be:
-Anger, impatience, hatred, contempt for godliness; -Ungodly desires for the things of this world; -Selfishness, jealousy, envy, greed; -Carnality, and desire to fulfil one’s fleshly desires.
Galatians 5:22-23 says: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”
Basically, the lack of the fruits of the Spirit are signs that one needs spiritual revival, renewal or reawakening.
I know it when I need to be refreshed by God’s Holy Spirit. When I am away from God’s presence, I feel weak and I rely on my own human strength to get by.
When we are weak and rely on ourselves, we rely mostly on our carnal human nature. Our spiritual “gas tank” is nearly empty. Rather than seeking first the kingdom of God, we seek the things of this world to fulfill our human-fleshly needs. Where the Holy Spirit once filled that empty void, we look for ways in this world to fill that emptiness.
When we allow this to happen to ourselves, we actually become even more carnal. Sin breeds more sin. Darkness only finds more darkness. There is a sense of hopelessness and a sinking feeling that you cannot escape from it.
Symptoms might be a loss of patience. We lose our cool and take our frustrations out on our friends and family.
We might do unkind things to the people we love. We do even more unkind things and might inflict pain and brutality toward people we dislike or hate. It might play-out as violence, slander, lies, corruption, and even murder.
We might eventually find ourselves addicted to drugs, alcohol, sex, porn or some other vice.
We become unfaithful to God and to our family members, or even to our spouse.
We might find that we no longer have peace in our hearts. We might notice a total lack of joy and love toward people we used to enjoy and love.
These symptoms are like a sickness in our human spirit. Can anyone out there relate to this?
UNGODLINESS AND DISTANCE FROM GOD:
If we have been a Christian for a number of years, or even decades, we might have experienced a time when we have felt distant from God.
One might have stopped attending church and perhaps no longer pray or read Scripture like we once used to.
Our spiritual dryness is like the hot Sahara desert with no water in sight–only mirages that result in self-deception. When we seek out mirages and never find waters of refreshment, we end up feeling even more distant from God and the Church. We might feel like we’ve traveled a long ways away from God.
One day, when we look back, we wonder to ourselves, “How in the world did I stray so far away from God, from God’s holiness, and from Christ’s holy Church?” It happened so gradually that we did not notice the distance we created between ourself and God.
When we become aware of this, it’s a sure sign of our need for spiritual revival, renewal, or awakening. It’s one step closer to true renewal. We are one step closer to realizing our need to repent authentically before a holy God.
I’ve been a Christian most of my life and I have found myself in such a situation. Our spiritual decline can be very subtle, slow and gradual–almost totally unnoticable. By the time we look back and notice how distant we have traveled away from God, God seems so far away. Time may have passed and months seem like years, and years seem like decades.
Many Christians today have wandered and traveled a long ways away from home. The good news is that God is like that good father of the prodigal son. God, the Good Father, is not concerned about how far we may have traveled from home. He only cares that we return home. There is no distance too far, and no mountains or valleys too steep. All prodigals may, and can, return home to God’s loving heart, who is full of grace and mercy. I also consider myself a prodigal son. God and His word has promised that a return to God is possible. It is always possible. Do not believe the lies of the devil.
When we accept God’s grace and mercy in our lives and actually experience God’s amazing love, it is like a spiritual reawakening or spiritual revival. We truly understand God’s grace and mercy because we have experienced God’s everlasting love.
Most Christians have experienced a need for renewal and revival. If one is truly honest about one’s own need for spiritual reawakening, we will also want this for others. We become empathetic and understanding of others rather than judgemental of others. We rejoice when other prodigals return home to the Good Father. We personally welcome prodigals into our own lives because we have come to realize that we were once prodigals too. I have been a prodigal many times over.
CONCLUSION:
Spiritually, when we find ourselves in survival mode and barely getting-by, we might eventually falter and lose our way. What is worse is when we know we are in this situation and no longer care. I hope we don’t find ourselves in this situation. It’s worse than feeling guilty or ashamed. God cares. He loves you. He loves all of us who are God’s children. If you are reading this, most likely you are a child of God, or God is calling you into His kingdom today.
When society is feeling like it is fatally lost and sees no way out, God in His sovereignty, will move in our lives. I have been in a place where I have felt extremely dry and don’t have the personal initiative to do anything about it. That’s when God surprises me with His Presence and tells me He still loves me. I need these holy moments.
You, as a reader, might be feeling this, or have felt this in the past. We need to pay personal attention to our own situation and spend time to rejuvenate our human spirit with God’s Holy Spirit. I need it too–even now.
Next month, I will be going on a personal spiritual retreat in personal seclusion so that I can seek spiritual direction without distraction.
May we seek more of God and of his Holy Spirit so that our spirit may be refreshed by His living water. We cannot be a blessing to others if we have not experienced God’s love. We cannot go one day without living in God’s love. Even a day of God’s love is not enough. Living in God’s love needs to be on a daily basis. His love and Presence is our food and sustenance for eternal life.
May you be blessed by God’s love and tender care each day.
God is not dead. God is moving, and the Holy Spirit is at work.
Spiritual revival started happening at the university chapel at Asbury University. It’s been about 12 days since it started on 8 February 2023. Unless you’ve been ignoring Christian news sources, Christians have recently been talking about this revival all over the internet.
Amongst all the bad news in the world, this was a spark of good news that we desperately needed to hear. Jesus is alive and is still working in the lives of young people. Sad thing is the university is limiting its chapel service to only students now. Students need to study for mid-term exams, and the small town of Wilmore can’t handle the inundation and logistics of all the traffic and visitors.
When I first heard about this a week ago, I was thinking to myself, “I hope this won’t be isolated to just Asbury University (Wilmore, Kentucky). Within my heart, I was kind of hoping this thing could spread to other university campuses including my alma mater. God knows that millions of young people still need God.
Most recently, news has it that this spiritual revival or awakening has begun to spread to other Christian universities and campuses, including:
Lee University (Cleveland, TN), Samford University (Birmingham, AL) Cedarville University (Cedarville, OH)
These past several years have truly been depressing. I don’t know about you but many of us have been experiencing a spiritual dryness these past several years that we wish would just go away. The covid pandemic separated friends and relatives and pitted people and even families against one another. And yes, it has been depressing for me too.
To hear about this spiritual awakening, gives me a brighter sense of hope. Just knowing that young people are hungering for a deeper sense of God’s presence means that God is not dead. Young people have been experiencing a deep sense of repentance and a hunger and thirst for God’s holiness.
The world has been so dark and has been in a decline so stark that God has sovereignly broken out of the boundaries that we have imposed on Him. God’s Holy Spirit has been moving in people’s hearts and minds. God’s grace, mercy, and holiness has compelled people to call out to the Lord God and seek after the things of His Spirit.
Perhaps this spiritual revival will be a sort of trigger for greater spiritual renewal within the bleakness of our society. Perhaps this will bring a bright candle of light to penetrate the darkness that has infiltrated our culture. We desperately need a spiritual awakening.
I do hope and pray that this spiritual revival-awakening (or whatever you want to call it) spreads further across the nations of America and Canada, and would spill onto many universities and campuses (including my previous alma maters).
Even better, let God’s blessing spread outside to churches so that young people outside the school can carry it forward to more people in other spaces and locations.
New Epistles 