Fanning the Asbury Revival Flame: ‘There Must Be Brokenness and Repentance’
Pastor Todd Smith knows a little bit about how God can keep a revival going. This month, Christ Fellowship Church in Dawsonville, Georgia, will celebrate its fifth year of the North Georgia Revival, a move of God that has been going strong since 2018.
Mike Felhlauer is also familiar with God’s presence in his church. The pastor at New Life Church in Corpus Christi, Texas, has witnessed a powerful move of the spirit in his church since 2018.
And both Smith and Fehlauer have some encouraging advice for the people at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky, who have seen an incredible outpouring of the Holy Spirit happening in their chapel since last Wednesday. The school’s newspaper, The Asbury Collegian, reported that on opening night, at least 100 people fell to their knees and bowed at the altar.
And the move of God hasn’t stopped.
“It’s a beautiful thing that is happening at Asbury,” says Smith, whose church has seen 30,000 baptisms during its Sunday night services since 2018 and will celebrate its fifth anniversary on Feb. 19. “There has to be brokenness and contrition and repentance for such a move of God to come. That looks like what has been demonstrated there and it’s continuing right now. But the moment prayer and brokenness is no longer a priority, then the fire diminishes and He pulls out. We must keep seeking after the face of God.
“We all must stay and remain broken before the Lord. The presence of the Lord increases the glory of the Lord and it continues to intensify. The power of the Lord is in our baptismal waters, and it has created miracles.”
Prayer, he added, is “what fuels revival—that and brokenness.”
“Those elements are the oxygen for revival,” he says.
Fehlauer agrees with Smith’s assessment 100%. As a student at Nazarene University in the 1980s, he remembers hearing about and reading about revival at Asbury University in 1970.
“It was amazing what happened back then and it’s amazing what is going on right now,” Fehlauer said.
Smith says individuals have been healed of cancers, tumors have disappeared and legally blind eyes have been opened in the baptismal waters at Christ Fellowship. In addition, Smith says people have been freed from lifelong addictions to drugs, alcohol, pornography and homosexuality.
“These bondages are being drowned in the waters on our altar, but it has nothing to do with any of us,” Smith says. “Everyone who goes in is encountering the Lord in the water. He just suffocates, obliterates these strongholds and evicts the trespasser.
“And this is not your typical revival led by a personality. God’s presence is driven by a move of the Spirit, and it’s been that way for five years. In all honesty, we want to remain nameless and faceless. We’re not attaching this to any ministry. This is all led by local pastors and nobody else is getting the glory except for God.”
Fehlauer says New Life Church in Corpus Christi saw 837 baptisms last year and that he himself was involved in only three. In fact, he says, the Holy Spirit has empowered other members of the staff and the church to be God’s hands in the miracles that they are witnessing.
Fehlauer says that the revival that is happening right now at Asbury University just is “part of God’s plan” and that we’re about to see it accelerate.
“God is starting revival fires all around the country,” Fehlauer says. “The pockets of revival become a big wave. It’s awesome. As far as when these special meetings are over, students need to continue to walk in that humility and that place of complete surrender.
“If the finished work of the cross will continue to be central for every part of their lives, if they will take the revival fires they have and not let those fires go out, that will only fan the flame of revival,” Fehlauer says. “They need to share with others what they have seen and experienced. That will keep it going for a long, long time.” {eoa}
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Shawn A. Akers is the online editor at Charisma Media.
