How to Fuel This Third Great Awakening

Don’t be afraid of detours God ordains.

It’s worth saying again the best way to live the fearless life is to live it dead. We need a return of the living dead, a rave at the grave, a dawn of the dead. Sounds morbid, so let me explain.

While planting a church, God has brought us amazing leaders, ones who stick around. The only thing I can see different in them from the rest of the congregation is that they are dead to themselves. Because of our lack of maturity, church has become a “bless me” club. People who come to church ask questions such as, “Will this church work for me?” “Do they have the right programs for my family?” “Does the pastor preach like I want them to preach?” “Do you believe in the things I want to believe in and see the Bible the way I see the Bible?” These are all great questions that demand an answer. These are normal questions to have when looking for a church. However, because these have become our main focus, we have forgotten what it means to be the Church. We simply go to church. The first church did not live for programs or seating arrangements. They became living sacrifices. Their lives were laid on the altar.

When you look at it this way, the Upper Room looks more like an altar with fire than just a church service. From that moment on, they were like the walking dead, continually bringing their lives back to the altar. They had one heart and mind and shared everything they owned. There were no needy people among them (Acts 4:32–35). Wow, what a church. What a movement! Jesus said that this kind of death brings much fruit, fruit that remains. We need to take to heart what John the Baptist said, “He must become greater; I must become less” (John 3:30).

Here in America, we have to understand that Jesus didn’t die to make us comfortable; He died to set us free. Many churches are missing the altar. The problem with no altars is that few are altered. Paul did not preach with wise or persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power. How are we demonstrating the Spirit’s power unless we get out of the way? As a kid, I don’t remember my pastor’s sermons, but I do remember the moments when God touched my life at an altar. If we use wise and persuasive words alone, we become more like salesmen than shepherds. What are we selling? What Jesus offers is not for sale. It’s not up for auction to the highest bidder. It’s a free gift to all who believe.

At times, my focus has been off trying to keep up with the latest church craze. The best way to have a bad Monday is to look at Instagram on Sunday night. You see the highlight reels of every church, but you never see the struggles. In contrast, you see your struggles every day, but you easily forget the highlights. It can make you feel alone and like a failure. However, God is in the struggles and the victories. The greatest victory is to remain obedient to the call. In all of this, I’ve had to remind myself that while Jesus was alive, He spent the majority of His life with 12 men. Out of the 12, only one was still there at the cross. Success can’t be found in numbers alone, in how many new campuses you have, or how fast it grows. It’s only found in obedience.

Jesus would say the most radical things to His disciples. Picture the disciples in the moment when Jesus had a massive crowd before Him. Things were finally working out the way the disciples wanted them to. Then, Jesus looked at the crowd and said, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53). After that, He dropped the mic and walked off. He didn’t explain it with, “This is what I really meant…” He just walked off. I can picture that Peter prob- ably looked at the other disciples after that moment, confused. I picture the disciples jumping up as people started leaving by the thousands, trying to get them to stay. Jesus looked at the disciples and said, “You do not want to leave too, do you?” (John 6:67).

Jesus wasn’t into gathering crowds; He was into making disciples. Visiting many churches, I have noticed that there are very few places that still have altar moments when people have an opportunity to respond to the message. We often do this because we believe people want safe, clean, comfortable encounters with Jesus. If we want a 21st-century Jesus who makes us comfortable, we may not want who Jesus really is.

There is one thing that my Jesus has never made me, and that’s comfortable. He’s given me grace, He’s given me comfort, He’s given me hope as an anchor in many storms, and He’s given me peace in chaos. But He is not trying to make me comfortable.

In the Bible, the altar was a place of death. New Testament death equals repentance, brokenness, sacrifice, and humility. As broken clouds bring rain, it’s a broken seed that brings forth a crop. As the Church, we are always believing for revival in our cities. I don’t believe revival is simply God moving, because, to revive something means to “restore to life or consciousness.” God is not dead; He’s always alive. God is not boring, we are. God is not being revived, we’re being revived, so revival is not God moving. Number one, how can God move if He is omnipresent? How could He move from one place to another? That would be as if we were saying that God is not somewhere and we’re waiting for Him to show up there. The Bible says, “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof” (Ps. 24:1 KJV). God is everywhere all the time. The issue is not about God moving; the issue is about us moving from unbelief to belief, from flesh to spirit. It is about us being revived, not Him. The focus changes from us trying to wake God up, to God waking us up. God’s not asleep, we are. Really what’s happened is that we’ve removed the blanket of flesh from our eyes and from our spirit, and for the first time we see the God who was always there. Why do we need to see God? Because seeing is believing. We know that fire doesn’t fall on empty altars. If we want the fire of God, we might just have to be the fuel on His altar. John Wesley was once asked how such great crowds showed up during the Great Awakening. He said, “I set myself on fire and people come to watch me burn.”