I remember the time I was invited to
preach the chapel service for a Christian high
school, and as I spoke, the kids were
paying me no never mind.
They were on their phones, they were talking
and laughing with each other.
A couple of girls on the front row
made fun of me the whole time I
was up there.
I couldn't have moved those kids if I
had a steamroller that day.
When I was done, the pastor of the
school came over to me and he looked
at me apologetically and said, I feel sorry
for these kids.
They don't know what it's like to experience
God at a meeting.
When I was a young pastor in the
early 1970s, there was a touch of revival
in the land, and I remember the presence
of God was so thick at church, he
didn't want to leave to go home.
We were at church all odd hours of
the night, praying and weeping and basking in
his glory.
It just breaks my heart that these kids
don't know anything about that.
Well, I agreed with him, and this generation
of our youth today need God more than
ever.
They have grown up in church, and they
leave church as soon as they hit college
age.
They're leaving the church in droves because there
is no reality of God there.
We have failed in our efforts to reach
these kids with Jesus.
We caved in to their demands and changed
our worship service for them to be more
like the world.
We gave our teenage youth groups movie nights
and pizza nights, and we gave them what
they wanted instead of giving them what they
needed.
We quit preaching against sin so they don't
even know what sin is.
They have no problem sleeping with each other
and see nothing wrong with drinking alcohol or
smoking weed.
But the main reason they do all that
is the fact they are not escaping from
reality, but quite the opposite.
They are searching for reality.
They grew up in a home with a
double standard.
They grew up under the parenting that said,
do as I say instead of do as
I do.
They saw that their parents acted one way
at church on Sunday and behaved at home,
quite the opposite, during the week, and the
kids saw right through our hypocrisy.
They left the church because it wasn't real.
We thought if we gave them the music
they wanted and recreational church activities, we could
hang on to our kids, but we were
wrong.
When the teenagers realized that the parents had
no living reality of God in their lives,
then religion just became a sham to them.
I remember a church that went through this
and came out on the other side.
First, it began with the men.
Some of the men of the church began
to get serious with God, and they rededicated
their lives to the Lord Jesus.
Then their wives noticed a change in the
home.
Their husbands were more tender toward them and
more patient with them and more loving toward
them, and they took the spiritual lead in
the home by having daily devotions with their
wives.
Well, soon this spread to the women of
the church, where when they saw what it
was like to have a godly husband, they
became more godly wives, and they rededicated their
lives to the Lord Jesus.
Well, soon this was too much for the
teenagers in the home, as they saw for
the first time what it was like to
have two real godly parents living for the
Lord.
So the teenagers began to get saved one
after another.
That church eventually was turned upside down in
revival, as the reality of God was there.
There was a power of God in the
meetings, and the kids didn't want to go
home.
They just wanted to stay at church and
soak in the atmosphere of the reality of
Almighty God.
In Psalm 110.3 it reads that people
should be willing in the day of that
power when God shows up.
It makes all the difference in the world,
friends, but it began with the men of
the home.
They got serious with God, and he got
serious with them.
How about you, friend?
Are you searching for reality?
God says, return to me, and I will
return to you.
Every revival begins with a personal revival, and
revival can never come without an exposure of
and judgment on sin.
Are you ready for reality?