Why Is an American CHRIST Awakening
the Only Hope for Our Nation in 2024?
the Only Hope for Our Nation in 2024?
Second of a Four-Part Series
David Bryant
Sometimes, a thoughtful look at the past can give us fresh inspiration about the future. A few years back, this happened for me through a voice from three centuries ago. It sounded forth an extraordinary hope that is equally ours today.
After years of research comparing the promises of Scripture with the writings of various Christian leaders throughout Church history, I finally came to the writings of the New England clergyman and scholar Jonathan Edwards—pastor of the second-largest congregation in New England at that time.
In 1747, Edwards defined in his book on prayer and revival, An Humble Attempt, what many of us are praying for in 2024—what we call an American CHRIST Awakening. He wrote:
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 outpourings of His Spirit. They prove the reality of Christ’s Kingdom to a skeptical world and serve to extend its bounds.
What joy this brought to my heart! It reinforced my faith to seek God’s face for nothing less in this critical hour for our nation.
Let me tell you why this same joyful hope can be yours in these coming months when so many Americans are living with despair.
Two Frequently Asked Questions
I’ve been teaching on the strong possibility of a “remarkable outpouring of His Spirit” across our nation for the past 40 years. During that time, I’ve unpacked for fellow Jesus followers the biblical hope for, significant impact from, and impending nature of any God-given, nationwide Christ-exalting revival in our own generation. Frequently, not a few people in my audiences have asked me these two questions in one form or another:
(1) How much does our nation really need for the American Church to experience such a Christ Awakening right now?
(2) In light of so many other pressing crises our generation faces, what practical, lasting difference could such a phenomenon possibly make?
In the first part of this series, I discussed how 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.
As we found, the Father wants to give this glorious grace to the Church anytime, anywhere—to every individual believer and to God’s people together.
In this second part of the blog post series, I want to address these two persistent follow-up questions. Let’s look at the first one.
(1) How much does our nation really need for the American Church to experience such a Christ Awakening right now?
My initial response is to respond with this question: 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,” is it possible that our Father would 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 (to paraphrase him):
When the nighttime overwhelms us, we don’t blame the darkness; it’s only being what darkness is. We blame the tragic dimness of the light. If the hamburger spoils, we don’t blame the patty; that’s what happens to dead meat. The problem is with the potency of the salt that should have retarded its decomposition.
Stott’s point: We should not ask, “What is wrong with the world?” for that diagnosis has already been given—“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3). Instead, we should ask, “What has happened to the salt and light?”
To that point, current research tells us there’s little difference between the lifestyles of Christians inside the Church and that of our society as a whole. Therefore, it’s 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 are woven all through many churches as well. Racism. Hypocrisy. Hero worship. Materialism. Busyness. Lack of social conscience. Road rage. Dysfunctional families. Pornography addiction. Status quo mediocrity. Self-indulgent abundance.
These leave America (including our local communities) to fend for itself spiritually 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.
Look What We’ve Done to Our Lord Jesus Christ!
Above is the front cover of the current issue of Christianity Today, the world’s leading evangelical publication. It pictures a battle raging between elephants (the Republican icon) and donkeys (the Democratic icon)—carried out inside a church sanctuary, up and down the pews, with parishioners fleeing for their lives!
If a picture is worth a thousand words, this one graphic says it all about how politicized and polarized a huge number of congregations across our land have become in recent years—completely overshadowing our witness to the good news about Jesus. And in the process, countless members have fled. Literally, tens of millions have permanently left our churches in the past twenty years!
The sad part is that when these crises (inside and outside the Church) are combined, they create a multitude of distractions that end up marginalizing the living Christ among us. Spiritually exhausted, most of us cannot retain the kind of passion for him and his Kingdom purposes he deserves as supreme Lord of All.
Unconsciously, many Christians settle for regarding the exalted Son of God as little more than a divine additive available to embellish the schedules of our churches, enhance the reputation of our ministries, and possibly help America reclaim her divine mission in the world. Sadly, he is treated more as our mascot than our monarch.
As American evangelicals, how can we read Revelation 2-3 and not wonder if our Lord may be speaking an equally penetrating rebuke to much of contemporary Christianity? I think you would agree, for example, that modern-day believers frequently “have forsaken [our] first love” (Revelation 2:4), leaving us with “a reputation of being alive, but behold [we] are dead” (Revelation 3:1).
In many churches, this counsel of Jesus two millennia ago to a lukewarm congregation in Asia Minor needs to be repeated over and over to believers in 2024:
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 (Revelation 3:18, NIV).
Now, let’s look at the second question asked so frequently by my audiences.
(2) In light of so many other pressing crises our generation is facing, what practical, lasting difference could such a phenomenon possibly make?
Psalm 24 cries out, “Open Wide the Gates! Let the King of Glory Enter In!” That’s precisely the cure for our “crisis of Christology” plaguing the American Church today, as we’ve just seen.
If the American Church became more intentional about gaining a better diagnosis of our true need, discovering how we too have become “wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked” (Revelation 3:17), surely, we would run—no, we would race—to Christ for mercy and forgiveness, seeking a fresh start with our Savior.
Together, would we not find ourselves falling before him, as it were, 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 redeeming reign so active throughout the earth?
Thankfully, as we saw in part one, there is nothing the Father is more able, willing, and ready to do by the Spirit than to have his Son invade his followers here and now, overflowing with grace and renewal, conquering us more fully than ever, and retaking us captive to himself and all he embodies as our Savior and Sovereign.
That’s what Jonathan Edwards concluded in 1747. You can’t top his observation quoted at the start of this blog post!
That’s 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 his firsthand, eyewitness report of the essence of what happened in churches throughout the decades that historians define as the “Second Great Awakening” in American life. He defined it like this (emphasis added):
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.
Could another such radical “visitation” of our Redeemer come upon God’s people in our nation today—even in 2024?
Could another such awakening from apathy into an ardor of affection toward Christ, surpassing anything we’ve known before, unfold among us before the close of this year?
Why not?
We’ll explore those questions in the third of this four-part series.
Learn more about what a Christ Awakening is HERE.
About the Author
Over the past 50 years, David Bryant has been defined by many as a “messenger of hope” and a “Christ proclaimer” to the Church throughout the world. Formerly a minister-at-large with the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, president of Concerts of Prayer International (COPI), and chairman of America’s National Prayer Committee, David now provides leadership to ChristNow.com and Proclaim Hope!, whose mission is to foster and serve Christ Awakening movements. Download his widely read ebooks at ChristNow.com. Enjoy hundreds of podcast episodes. Watch his weekly vlogs at David Bryant REPORTS. Meet with David through Zoom or in-person events through David Bryant LIVE!
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