Revival; Perhaps We, The Middle-Aged, Need To Look In The Mirror

Fellow Middle-Aged Folks—About These Revivals, Let’s Aim The Hermeneutic Of Suspicion At Ourselves. Beloved, there have been wonderful things going on around the country. At Asbury University in Tennessee a chapel service was held on February 8th that has, to date, not ended; moreover, Lee University, Samford and Baylor, as well as other schools have followed suit. That day at Asbury the preacher preached on Romans 12 and though he thought he did a terrible job, God uses the foolishness of preaching to save. We saw (via Zoom and in the flesh) young people (and old) confess and receive healing. We saw hour after hour of singing, singing sometimes without instrumentation. We saw young people camp out night and day in the various chapels hungry for the movement of the Holy Spirit and in my opinion and many others, receiving him, taking him in and being healed and saved. And yet, there are those who are suspicious. May I suggest, as a middle-aged pastor-lady, that we first need to be suspicious of ourselves? First, consider the singing. What was it that we silenced from 2020-2022? Yes, singing. I was taught by a professor in seminary that there are three essential items to worship. There is the sermon, but the assembly can do without a sermon in a pinch. There is scripture. But in an emergency even this can be skipped. There is one element however that cannot be dropped and that is singing. On the night that he was betrayed, on the night where he spoke beforehand of the new greater Exodus AT Jerusalem, Jesus sang hymns with his disciples (Matt. 26:30, Mk 14:26). Us middle-aged types gave into the delusion of the fearsomeness of man and disease and were caught in that trap (Prov. 29:25) and we brought down the young people and children with us. It is interesting that the Holy Spirit chooses to work through singing isn’t it? Is he not calling attention to our disobedience and the fact that we “held down the truth in unrighteousness”? (Romans 1:18) The young people at Asbury, Lee and Samford etc., have sung hymn after hymn. Is it not possible that Holy Spirit is restoring each song that we suppressed in those years? And as if that were not enough, us middle aged types closed the churches, disbanded congregations. Is it not likely that in gathering young people (and old) together in one room that the Holy Spirit is protesting against our scattering of the assembly? And my beloved aging peers, is it not the case that most all wounds are being healed at these revivals? I think we need to remember who created these wounds. As Nathan said to David, "thou art the man."