Dear Friend,

Uncannily, yet just as God would have it, the 1970 Asbury College awakening and this 2023 Asbury awakening started exactly the same way. During an ordinary morning chapel service, the extraordinary spontaneously broke out.

In 1970, Custer Reynolds, the Asbury Seminary Academic Dean, began the meeting by giving his testimony. Then he asked students to step forward and share some of their Christian experiences. After several students did so, without warning, as one source put it, "all heaven broke loose." God's presence fell heavily upon everyone present. Students rushed forward under strong conviction to pray, weep, sing, and be reconciled - and remain in God's sensed presence the rest of the day. And that night. The meeting was scheduled to last 50 minutes. Instead, it continued for 185 consecutive hours, day and night!

When Asbury College president, Dennis Kinlaw, away on a trip, was informed, his initial reaction was one of skepticism. But this instantly changed when he arrived on scene and experienced firsthand what the Holy Spirit was doing in the school's chapel. When later asked about it by a reporter, Kinlaw responded, "Jesus walked into Hughes auditorium . . . and he’s been there ever since."

Indeed, Jesus did enter the chapel - by His Holy Spirit - and conduct an extended period of supernatural ministry. How did He minister to those penitent youth? Just as He did 2,000 years ago in Israel: He dealt with whatever was separating them from Him. And because He is the same today (Hebrew 13:8), He does the same today.

For instance, if we have active sin in our life - behaviors or attitudes which God's Word tells us God, who is holy, detests and will not accept - Jesus convicts us of it. After chatting awhile with the woman by Jacob's well, Jesus addressed her sinful lifestyle. Similarly, in His Presence, we instantly and intuitively know our sin, and that it must go from our life if He is to come in. Therefore, under the weighty sense of awe imparted by His sensed presence, we decisively cease and desist from everything we sense is offensive to God. And thereafter we choose only those things that please Him.

If we have wronged others and not asked their forgiveness, and offered to make restitution, Jesus' Holy Spirit reminds us of this sinful negligence. When Zacchaeus lunched with Jesus, before Jesus even spoke to him about his wrongdoing, Zacchaeus was so overwhelmed with conviction that he volunteered to return all he had stolen. Similarly, we intuitively know the wrongs we must make right - or remain wrong with Jesus and forfeit His life-giving Presence, approval, and blessing. So, under the power of the "fear [holy awe] of God," we make a beeline to be reconciled with whoever for whatever, wherever they are! And never again let our wrongdoing remain unaddressed.

If we have doubted God's existence, the enveloping sense of His powerful glory - the same Shekinah that dwelt among the Hebrews as they exited Egypt almost 4,000 years ago - will cause us to know, again, intuitively, without any apologist arguing ardently for God's existence, that He is real, He is present, and He wants my life for Himself and His purposes. Now! When Jesus appeared in blinding, radiant glory to Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus Road, His Presence instantly ended all Saul's carefully crafted arguments against His Messiahship. Similarly, His presence vaporizes skepticism and, delivered, we believe on Him and His sacrifice for us on the cross, and humbly ask Him to forgive and cleanse us of unbelief and give us a new spiritual birth. Then, having received life from The Life, we live a new life the rest of our life.

If we have resisted God's call to Christian ministry or missions, and gone our own way in life, as Jonah did, we will immediately sense an invisible net being drawn around us as we suddenly find ourselves in the presence of the One whose call we have rejected. Under holy pressure (though not coercion) we will confess our disobedience and fall at Jesus' feet, with our independent, self-sufficient pride smashed and our hearts eager now to go and do with Jesus what He asked of us long ago. Spat out by the great fish, Self-Service, we will joyfully run our divinely appointed race of Christ-service.

If we have stopped short in discipleship because family or friends objected, and have turned back from a fully surrendered, passionately committed life of seeking Jesus, His Word, and His will "first" (Matthew 6:33), a dense, foggy cloud of conviction will envelop us. And soon, these searing words will appear, written in fire: "You were running well; who hindered you from obeying" (Galatians 5:7, NAS). And, confessing to Christ that we have stopped following Him, and when and where we stopped, we will joyfully resume seeking, studying, and following Him wholly. And not look back.

If we have been stumbled in our spiritual walk by hard tests involving painful offenses, cruel injustices, thorny adversaries, or abuses rendered relentlessly by implacable critics and impenitent haters, in Jesus' presence we will suddenly pass from the darkness of falling away into the light of reentering the way. Gripped by the awe of God, we will obey Christ's Word concerning our thorny trials and troublemakers, and return to the faithful devotion, worship, and service / ministry that marked us before adversity moved us. And never again be moved by adversity.

If we have doubted that Jesus will come again, a flash of prophetic revelation will be instantly downloaded to our disappointment-darkened heart. It will say simply, if Jesus has come to us now in His glorious Spirit, He is certainly alive today and thus sure to come to us in His glorified body, as He promised, "I will come again, and receive you unto myself" (John 14:3). And from that moment forward, we will eagerly watch for the signs of His appearing and diligently prepare for it.

In all these, and many other ways, Jesus' presence suddenly conquers and permanently changes human hearts when He comes into our "Hughes auditorium" - our home, our church, our Bible study, our prayer meeting, our worship gathering - unexpectedly, unprecedentedly, supernaturally, and sovereignly . . . by His Spirit.

As we enter into the Holy Spirit's Presence, He enters into us and permeates our soul - spirit, mind, emotions, and will - with His omniscience, bringing to light every dark thing that separates us from Jesus' radiant, intense, life-giving light. His Presence is irresistibly active: penetrating, enlivening, exhilarating, awakening, inspiring, igniting, burning with devotion, exposing all sin. Like a divine Surgeon, the great Physician skillfully cuts through the "skin" of our consciousness, probes our subconscious, and brings to the surface every pride-hidden sin that prevents or hinders a close, personal relationship with Him.

In every case the predictable reactions described above, and others equally spiritually beneficial, occur, resulting in deep changes that produce lasting Christlikeness. Christ's true presence, when powerfully touched, never produces superficial, temporary spiritual highs that come and go quickly. And if we go on to become His true disciples - deeply serious, irrevocably committed, self-disciplined, student-followers of the Son of God - we will never slide back into the spiritually dry deadness of unbelief and worldliness.

Summing up, Jesus' sustained, manifest presence is highly active and creative. It (He) produces conversions, convictions, contrition, corrections, commitments, recommitments, reconciliations, and renewed expectations of Jesus' appearing that come, change us, and remain. These enduring, biblical changes in human lives are the hallmarks of a mystical and spiritual yet undeniably real house call by history's most unique and only divine human - the God-man, Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ! They confirm that He has indeed visited us in and through the marvelous, miraculous moving of His mighty Holy Spirit. And millions, touched and gripped, thereafter walk willingly with Jesus the rest of their days and at the end of their days rest.

Friend, it is time for us to pray: "Lord Jesus, walk into our 'Hughes auditorium' today . . . as we pray. And stay!"

Praying,

Greg Hinnant
Greg Hinnant Ministries

Written on Monday,20 February 2023 02:13  Share Your Comments Here