It’s amazing what is beginning to happen on our college campuses. With the Asbury University Revival more than a week in, other pockets of revival are beginning to break out around America, which is extremely encouraging for a country in desperate need of God.
There is another one that is beginning to take hold at Lee University—a private, Christian university in Cleveland, Tennessee—and it looks as if the Holy Spirit is moving mightily among the students and faculty there. I had the privilege or recently talking to Lee University’s president, Mark Walker, who says this move of God began Monday morning as an organic, spontaneous prayer vigil by a handful of students.
This all reminds me of the early days of Pentecost. There was a day when the Lord would move in a church and people would stay at the altars, usually after a Sunday night service, and pray through. Does anyone remember that expression? We don’t see that much anymore.
This is a beautiful, spontaneous, very Pentecostal thing to do. Mark told me that he knew many of the Lee students who began the revival, and that it quickly began to spread to the community in Cleveland who began to hear about it.
Mark says what is happening is what revival is all about.
“There was repentance taking place,” he says. “There was a foot washing that occurred, too. One of the faculty members that was in charge of leading at that particular time felt led to do a foot washing of one of the students, and it was a beautiful moment.
“There were students praying in tongues. We have students that are filled with the Holy Spirit. We had some that came forward to give their lives to Christ. So yes, we had the whole panorama of what you would consider to be what the Holy Spirit wants to do in all of us, in every church, and in every gathering of followers of Christ. Certainly, it’s the signs of revival.”
There are all kinds of revival. If somebody gets turned on to Jesus, there is a revival of one. But we haven’t seen anything like this since the Toronto Outpouring (1994-1996) or maybe what happened at Brownsville in Pensacola, Florida (1995-2000).
And with the direction this country has been heading, it’s almost like we need some kind of move of God to come against the onslaught we face in our culture from the secular community. And lately, it seems more and more that it’s infiltrating a lot of the Christian institutions. So, I’m just encouraged to hear that this is happening at Lee. Thankfully, they don’t have that reputation. It is a great Christian university that has been around for 100 years.
It’s this kind of repentance and praise and prayer and seeking God that He wants from us. And, thank God, it is happening to Gen Z—18 to 20-year-olds—which many have written off as lost from the kingdom of Christ.
“There’s so much confusion, confusion of identity, leadership, who can you trust. They have witnessed so much disunity and division within the church and within the political arena of our nation and the cancel culture. There has been so much abuse that this generation has witnessed. There are people that should be showing them the way that have let them down.
“This type of experience is something that is hugely needed by this generation. And this is the cry of their heart. This is a cry out of the depths of their soul. … This, I really believe, is a cry out of their soul to the only One they know that can truly satisfy.”
Very well said, indeed. There is a deep longing for this, and it’s beginning to happen for these young people. Our hope is that it will continue to spread to the rest of the nation.
Please watch the video of my interview with Lee University President Mark Walker or listen to my Strang Report podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network. And please be sure to share it with your social media followers. {eoa}
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