If you’re on social media and/or have so-inclined Christian friends, you’ve probably heard about the Asbury revival in Wilmore, Kentucky.

If not, you can read a bit about it with great trepidation on Wikipedia, and also do some searches of your own. There’s no need for me to do a introductory scene-setting here, which I would no doubt taint with some kind of bias.

(In some circles, I was supposed to have written Asbury revival with skeptic quotes around it, so let me put that out there for those folks: “Asbury revival.”)

In church on February 19, my pastor briefly touched on the topic, not so much the revival itself, but the fact that everyone had to weigh in, dissect what they were seeing or hearing, determine if it was a false or true move of God, and I guess in some cases, judge them based on what Bible translation they used in the chapel. He ever so gently wished that people would just shutup.

Mea culpa.

Perhaps revival in the age of social media and the internet is just going to be this weird thing. We livestream it.

Everyone has to announce they’re going.

That they’re there.

That it’s real.

That they’re going back.

Who they sat by.

What they saw.

What they feel.

What songs they are (and aren’t) singing.

What shirt someone was wearing.

How they were personally moved.

They take photos up at the altar, and of people praying.

The podcaster has to weigh in: 10 Signs The Revival Is False, or Why Charles Spurgeon Would Never Have Approved.

Another one weighs in: Kill the Critical Spirit.

Ministries and platformed leaders plan to create revivals elsewhere.

The dime store prophets/prophetesses weigh in with their visions, proclamations, and declarations.

The citizen journalist floods his Facebook account: “Here is my story of how I slept in my car in the cold and waited hours just to get into the chapel. I’m going to tell you what it was like.”

The powerful word of testimony is paired with hashtags and SEO.

It becomes a strange mix of personal feelings, experiences, and emotions. There’s hype, there’s hope, there’s healing, there are open hearts, and there’s probably a little New Age mixed in, frankly.

Perhaps I’m too GenX but I don’t quite understand this new approach. It’s a worthy news point in this era of humanistic fear journalism to know that for several weeks, thousands of people have lined up to pray outside a chapel instead of a sports arena.

But did we go beyond? Are we gathering some kind of social proof?

I am reminded of the self-conscious era of being a high schooler at Bible camp altar, struggling with guilt over a heart that was sincere and also a heart that could flip a switch and wonder if that cute guy noticed my mascara was running from all the crying, before going back to prayer. Maybe we’re all like that, but now we carry cameras and publishing platforms in our pockets, and that’s the difference. It can easily become about the people’s experience, the people’s feelings, and the sensory around them. That’s social media’s curse, of course, that great sieve that puts all things through the first-person pronoun.

And of course, there are bloggers.

For bloggers—jerks like myself included—a wayward fart at the gas station produces at least a mention or even a major thematic brushstroke on the next blog post. You must produce the content, so everything becomes inspiration.

Everything becomes inane, mostly.

In a weird world where people pray less like the prayer Jesus modeled with humble petition, making thanks and requests to a good Father, and are instead marching around waving apostolic flags and naming and declaring things in Jesus’ name, trying to speak what they have determined must be God’s will into existence as if Genesis’ first chapters were a template for us, I understand the cautionary drive to write about such things like a move of God whether or not I always know what to make of it.

And it doesn’t matter what I make of it. God will accomplish his will.

Long think pieces and blogs have filled the internet. (See also: this one!) The enthusiasts, the hopeful, the ones wrapping purple prose around their vague spiritual feelings even though any other week they are preaching another Gospel, along with the usual band of naysayers, skeptics, mockers, squints, and people with revival punchcards who have been to Toronto, Pensacola, Brownsville, and Bethel, the ones touched by the gold dust and feathers and kicked in the face by Todd Bentley and lived to tell about it. How many moves of God does it take in a person’s life, before it takes?

I don’t know where the line is between hunger for God to move and bring people to repentance, and chasing after feelings and religious experiences for an emotional high, but it’s a fine one that gets crossed a lot and simply speaking gentle caution does not mean you have a critical spirit. When we’re hungry, we sometimes let the hunger drive us into something that isn’t good as long as it satiates; remember, not all spiritual experiences come from God. The enemy works miracles, too.

I don’t know much about revivals from first-hand experience, but I know that a move of God comes when people are sorrowful about their sin and truly want to repent. Revivals are spontaneous, out of the control and manipulation of people. It’s the outpouring of God’s spirit, not the genius of man. The aftermath of revival isn’t books or religious conferences or more praise and worship concerts with light shows and wonderful music that make people teary-eyed and high on dopamine, but godly repentance and obedience that changes the people and place the revival happens in because the people have been changed to their core. That sounds pretty good for this nation right now.

If that’s the Asbury revival, and what spreads from it, then that is wonderful.

Western culture was has been suspect for a long time, but from 2020 and onward, it has wrought pure destruction for a generation of young people in high school and college. It’s crushed their hopes, their souls, their minds, and their bodies, driving them to suicide in staggering numbers. It’s confused them about who they are and what to do with their bodies, making them unsure if they’re a boy or a girl. It’s made them guilty and terrified to use petroleum based products. It’s made them anxious and lonely and depressed and full of despair, lacking purpose as they watch the world around them collapse. And, just a few days before the Asbury revival first hit the news, our culture served up the most disgusting satanic penicillin-required Grammy award show ever seen.

I hope God does pour out on this younger generation. The devil certainly has been doing it long enough.

I don’t know what’s going on in Asbury and elsewhere, and I don’t know how long it will go. I would love it if, a year or two later, we’d hear the testimonies of those who went to Asbury (or related revivals) telling how true repentance, not intense emotional experience, led to faithful obedience to God in their daily lives from that time onward. That there would be reports of increased church attendance, of lowered crime rates, of less consumption of pornography, of restored marriages, of reduced addictions, of evangelistic outreach—all of the kinds of tangible results that come from repentant hearts.

We’ll have to wait and see.

But regardless, seeing people kneeling before God, for any length of time, gives me joy.

I could use some joy, couldn’t you?

I understand hunger for God, the kind that makes people buy plane tickets to fly to wherever someone is reporting a revival or apparent move of God. I know there’s a tricky balance between being hungry for God, and being hungry for exciting signs and wonders when life seems hopeless and dull.

I get it. I’m there with you on it. I’m human. There’s a whisper that tells me how much I’d like to be where people are reporting feeling the presence of God. I know God is with me, but I’d sure like to feel it.

But for the non-Kentucky bound believer, hearing about revival from afar—clicking and swiping on social media—don’t despair.

God is where you are, right now.

I’ve been working through a yearly Bible reading program, and as you may know if you’ve done such a thing, February and March are tough months. You’re spending your days in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. It’s not as sexy as other parts of the Bible. Sharing deep insight on the number of bulls and goats slaughtered at the weekly Bible study is tough to do. No one is lining up outside the door of my house hoping to get in on my Bible reading and subsequent prayer time. No one is reporting on my rather extensive all-day, multi-week prayer and discussion sessions with God about why so much blood.

I hunger after God too, I talk to God all day too, I bring my sin before him and ask him to turn my heart towards continued repentance too, but I’m not going to Asbury.

Tomorrow, I’m back in Deuteronomy, and God will still move. It might not be a mountain that is moved, just a grain of sand, but it’s always forward movement towards him.

Press on. The goal is still before you where you are at right now, whether or not you’re in Kentucky.