The clapboard house has been transformed to recreate a commune from the 1970’s. Talk about déjà vu. The costumes and interior design take me back to those strange days before I became a believer. The sad emptiness, feeling there must be more to life than this. Anger over the war in Vietnam. Conflict with my parents over us kids being hippies. Daily paranoia that I might get busted for possession of illegal pot. Racial tension. Disillusionment with adults . . . “Don’t trust anyone over thirty.” The never ending search for peace, love and meaning.

Stepping out of that funky little house, I returned to 2022. It was a bright spring day in Fairhope, Alabama and we were visiting the set for the Lionsgate film, Jesus Revolution.

Fairhope. What a great name for a city! I’ve been praying for opportunities to share the gospel with the crew and actors. I want them to know that the scenes being re-enacted aren’t just a movie, it actually happened. I was just fourteen when God’s love broke through and I received Jesus as my Savior. The story is true and the life change was real. It is lasting.

I believe a revival in this generation can happen again. It seems it is time.

One day on the set, a crew member and I had a long conversation about the fear and frustrations of this world. Millions of Ukrainian refugees are suffering. The global pandemic keeps morphing. We see a generation of young people depressed and anxious. Rampant drug use is more deadly than ever, and broken families seem to be an unavoidable way of life. Everything appears to be coming apart and our nation is divided over what to do.

Our weary world needs help that only God can give.

As we talked, I said it’s so similar to the way it was when I was a teenager. The music, the drugs, the sexual revolution. Our search for meaning, for love and truth, was in all the wrong places.

I had recently studied Paul’s message to the Athenians in Acts 17, and that’s what was spilling out of my heart in this conversation.

There is a God. He made everything we see—all the beauty in our world, and the wonder in our universe. He holds the planets in their orbits and keeps it all from falling apart. And that isn’t all.

He is deeply involved in His creation.

Through Him, we live and move and have our being. In a way, we all are like blind people groping to find Him—but the truth is that He has come to seek us, and save us from being lost.

God is not disengaged.

He is not like an angry deity, gleefully throwing lightning bolts at us. He is near and ready to forgive. We know this because He sent Jesus to die on the cross for us and rise again in victory so that we can live in Him.

We can trust Him with all our fears and regrets. We don’t have to freak out about what is going on around us because He loves us! We can trust His power to sustain us.

This is good news for every generation.

That’s why we are making this movie to tell the story of redemption that surprised the world. It wasn’t the music or persuasive influence of any personality that changed me and my generation. It was the unexpected and fresh moving of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Oh how we need this now!

Can you hear His voice calling you to hope?

I believe a revival can happen again. In this generation.

 

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Lord, I have heard of Your fame; I stand in awe of Your deeds, Lord. Repeat them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath, remember mercy.  Habakkuk 3:2 (NIV)

Will You not revive us again, that Your people may rejoice in You? Show us Your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us Your salvation.  Psalm 85:6-7 (ESV)