Asbury Students Find Renewed Purpose Amidst Revival
With the embers of revival fire spreading to more college campuses, students at Asbury University are filled with the renewing power of the Holy Spirit and sharing what the Lord has taught them.
In a world that batters people in a seemingly endless cycle of despair, hopelessness and fear, these young believers are invigorated with a hope and joy that only the Lord could pour out upon them.
This is causing other students to recognize what is going on in the hearts of those filled with Christ and making them want it as well.
“They’re seeing joyful people, they’re seeing fulfilled people and they’re going, I don’t know what they have, but I’m interested in that,” said Asbury senior Isaiah Friedeman in an interview with Fox News.
Friedeman, like many of his generation, has searched for answers to the issues they see plaguing the world today.
How do they fix it? What is the answer to life’s problems?
“Something that everyone can agree on whether you’re a Christian or not is that the world is messed up. We look around; we see brokenness and poverty. We see hurt and pain. So, the question is, what is the remedy to that?” Friedeman says. “I think we’re starting to see that politics isn’t the remedy to that. There aren’t human leaders that can be the remedy to that. Every time we put our faith in those things, they fall down.”
The amazing outpouring of God’s Spirit brought with it the healing love that mends relationships between quarreling parties.
Asbury Student Body President Alison Perfater shared about the unity that came with the presence of the Holy Spirit and how it healed division among her fellow students.
“The amount of people that are in Hughes who I know that hated each other for decisions they made are now praying together, worshipping together and laughing together. However, I can, in little human words, express the opposite of pain; that’s what it is,” she said.
Graduate assistant Mia Lush joined her fellow students in pointing back to the remedy for all of these issues confronting these young adults in today’s society.
“It’s not social media, it’s not sports, it’s not academics, it’s not self-identity, it’s Jesus,” she said. “We’re in this place where we don’t know what’s happening to the world, and it’s hard being a Christian today. I think it’s something we’ve needed so bad, and I don’t even think we knew we needed it.”
As revival for the Asbury students enters into a new season, God is far from finished moving within America.
Reports of revival, and prayers for revival, have sprouted up across the country at places like Lee University, Cedarville University, Baylor, LSU and Bakersfield, California, just to name a few.
God is looking for repentant hearts that are willing to die to themselves and allow Him to mold them and shape them into His righteousness.
America does have a chance at being great again, to being a united country filled with love and hope instead of division, anxiety and depression. And it all begins with putting Jesus Christ, the hope and salvation for all of humanity, front and center. {eoa}
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James Lasher is Staff Writer for Charisma Media.