There’s a great spiritual awakening taking place. Are you part of it?
Something is going on at a very deep spiritual level in society these days. It’s been going on quietly for a number of years now. There’s a growing desire, a powerful hunger, in the hearts of mankind for things of the Spirit. As you’re reading this, I hope you’ll find one thing you can do, an idea you can embrace and make your own, a way you can be part of the great spiritual awakening that’s taking place today.
The first great spiritual awakening
All the promises of satisfaction and success in the world’s materialism are being seen for what they are, false facades, empty, meaningless, and unsatisfying.
This great spiritual awakening is taking place right under our noses. You can see evidence of it in all the movies and television shows about the Bible, like The Chosen, which focuses on the life and ministry of Jesus. And there are lots of shows about other Bible characters as well.
Earlier this year a movie was released called A Great Awakening, about the Reverend George Whitefield, who was an evangelical preacher and pivotal in the founding of the Methodist church along with the John and Charles Wesley. I’ve just recently learned of this movie, and haven’t seen it yet. But I plan to.
Reverend Whitefield was convinced that to be a Christian meant being born again in the way Jesus explained to Nicodemus.
Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” John 3:3 NIV
For him, Christianity was not an intellectual acceptance of the right doctrine, but a spiritual transformation by accepting Christ into your life.
Whitefield, along with others, contributed to the religious movement which has been called the Great Awakening here in the United States in the 1730s and 1740s.
The great spiritual awakening of today
So why do I bring all this up? This great spiritual awakening had a profound effect on the Christian church almost 300 years ago and continues to have an effect on it today.
But there is a new spiritual awakening taking place right now and its momentum is growing. And I believe it will have a greater impact than when Reverend Whitefield was preaching to thousands of people.
Have you noticed the signs of this great spiritual awakening? Will you participate in and help it prosper?
Yes, I believe you will be and already are part of this great spiritual awakening, this spiritual revival so to speak, that’s taking place today. Every prayer and effort to follow Christ in your life, perhaps over many years, along with others doing the same, has had a cumulative effect on the growing hunger in the heart of mankind for a more spiritual approach to life.
How to be part of the great spiritual awakening
Now you may be thinking: Hey James, this all sounds amazing and I want to be part of this great spiritual awakening you’re talking about, but sometimes people who are involved in this sort of thing get all worked up emotionally and think they’re being spiritually minded, but in the end, it doesn’t seem to me they’re much more spiritually minded than they were before. How can I be part of a spiritual awakening, in my own life and in society as a whole, without getting caught up in the emotionalism that sometimes goes along with it?
What a great question. First, I’ll say, you never know for sure how deep something goes in someone else. What may look like overly emotional and superficial behavior to you may be very heart felt and deeply spiritual for someone else. So try not to be too judgmental about what others are doing. Focus on what it all means to you.
What can you do to experience spiritual awakening in your own life and help others find it too ?
Are you awake?
The place to start with yourself. Ask God to wake you up. Tell yourself, encourage yourself, to wake up from thinking the material world has the answers to your questions and your needs, the healing and solutions to your problems, or can save you from your sins.
I love this promise from Psalms. It’s really a prayer.
As for me, I shall behold Your face in righteousness;
I shall be satisfied with Your likeness when I awake. Psalm 17:15 NASB20
When we wake up to a spiritual perspective, we see God more clearly. We are satisfied, fulfilled, and discover solutions to our problems. We see God’s nature and are more aware of the fact that we reflect the fullness of His nature because we are His children, made in His image and likeness.
The first step to your own spiritual awakening
The first step in your own great spiritual awakening is to acknowledge, accept, and embrace the fact you are the image and likeness of God.
Well, I’ll take that back. I think maybe the very first step is to become dissatisfied with a material approach to life and admit the need for spirituality in your life. You can’t go forward spiritually if you’re still trying to get solutions from the material world’s way of doing things.
The next question is not always an easy one to answer. Are you pursuing your own hopes and dreams of purpose and fulfillment? Even if they’re very noble and your motives are to help others, if your aspirations are based on your plan for your life instead of God’s plan, you won’t be as awake to what God is doing.
Are you willing to leave all for Christ, to follow the way Jesus thought, lived, and loved? Are you willing to seek God’s will and not your own in everything you do?
Jesus’s example
Jesus set the ultimate example for this, when he said,
Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.
I can do nothing on my own. I judge as God tells me. Therefore, my judgment is just, because I carry out the will of the one who sent me, not my own will. John 5:19, 30 NIV
He adds
For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken. I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say. John 12:49, 50 NIV
No one on the face of this earth has ever been as spiritually awake as Jesus was. When he says he can’t do anything by himself, but can only do what he sees God do, when he says he only does God’s will and says only what God tells him to, he’s showing us how to be more awake spiritually when we follow his example.
Getting yourself out of the way
It’s really about getting yourself out of the way, so to speak. And that’s exactly what Jesus is talking about when he describes what it means to actually follow him.
Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. Luke 9:23 NIV
Are we doing this? Are we really doing this enough? I know I’m not. There are days when I do a much better job of it than other days. But I could easily be much more consistent.
Are you willing to give up your personal opinions, perspectives, and desires for success and only go where God leads? This is incredibly demanding.
All too often we pursue what we want to do and convince ourselves it must be God impelling us forward. I admit, it’s not always the easiest thing to discern when something is God’s will or not, but we always need to be willing to let go of our assumptions and listen more carefully for God’s will in our lives.
Several years ago, I did a previous episode on this topic of knowing what God’s will is you might enjoy. Episode 79: How Do You Know if Something Is God’s Will?
How to be part of this great spiritual awakening
The more you can let go of your personal will and follow God’s will, the more receptive you’ll be to this great spiritual awakening taking place.
So what do we really need to do to be part of this spiritual awakening? There’s no formula or perfect little pat answer, but here are a few ideas I’ve been thinking and praying about.
There has to be a realization that you need something the world cannot give you.
We need a deep desire to express more godliness in our lives.
We need to follow Christ more closely and consistently.
We need to increase our love for our neighbors, in other words, all mankind.
We need to pray for purity and humility, and then live purity and humility in our lives.
The Book of Psalms encourages spiritual awakening
I think of this verse from Psalms
Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Psalm 51:10 NIV
We need to leave behind bad habits and limiting material belief systems.
Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Psalm 139:23, 24 NIV
We need to acknowledge more consistently and accept the fact each of us is a child of God, made in His image and likeness.
Living your faith
We need to embrace the good news Jesus preached that the kingdom of heaven is at hand and within us.
We need to practice our faith and our spirituality to the best of our ability. This helps us grow spiritually.
And when this happens, we’ll hear the voice of Christ saying to us what the Master said to his servant in the parable of the talents,
Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness! Matthew 25:21 NIV
What will wake you up?
Ask yourself: What is keeping me from being more awake to the spiritual realities of God’s love and the healing power of His presence?
What is it that wakes us up when we’re sleeping? It could be something internal like a bad dream. Or it could be something external like a loud noise during the night. And sometimes we wake up because we are fully rested.
What wakes us up when we’re asleep spiritually? The answers are very similar. Maybe you’re wrestling with some personal problem or issue and you realize you’re so absorbed in the problem you need to shift gears and get a more spiritual perspective. Sometimes a challenge comes up from outside your own life that abruptly wakes you up to the need for a spiritual dependence on God for the solution.
And sometimes, when we’re caught up in the world’s way of doing things, or overwhelmed with the mistakes and struggles of our lives, the thing that wakes us up is a rebuke, whether from God, another person, or the shock of hitting rock bottom.
Then there are the times we wake up spiritually because we “have been faithful over a few things,” we have grown spiritually and are ready to be even more awake to, more aware of, God’s spiritual power and presence.
The blessings of spiritual awakening
Whatever it is that wakes you up spiritually is a blessing, whether or not it feels like it at the time.
Sometimes that initial moment of waking up is not so pleasant. You realize you’ve been making mistakes or being too materially minded or self-focused. But when you become aware that you’ve been chasing the decoys and counterfeits of true joy, happiness, and a purposeful life, and how unsatisfying that can be, it’s actually proof that you’re already in the process of having a spiritual awakening.
Ultimately, it’s God who causes you to wake up. Jesus explains this process in the parable of the Prodigal Son. After the younger son spent all his money and fell on hard times, Jesus says,
… he came to his senses, Luke 15:17 NIV
In other words, this young man woke up when he hit rock bottom. But it was God who woke him up. And it’s God who wakes you up and brings you to your senses. Why? Because He loves you.
How does my personal spiritual awakening fit in with the great spiritual awakening?
Now you may be wondering: Hey James, I get what you’re saying when it comes to my need to be awake spiritually, but how does that fit in with this great spiritual awakening for the whole world you’re talking about?
God is not just working in you your life. God loves all mankind throughout all time. That’s why He sent Jesus 2,000 years ago to start this waking up process. That’s why He sends Christ and the Holy Spirit, His Two Witnesses, into the hearts of all His children on the face of the Earth.
Yes, God is causing you to wake up spiritually. And at the same time He calls to all His children to wake up.
Sometimes it helps you to wake up when you see someone else’s awakening. And others are encouraged when they see your spiritual awakening.
I love this encouragement:
You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober. 1 Thessalonians 5:5, 6 NIV
Today’s great spiritual awakening
The great spiritual awakening taking place today is gathering momentum and nothing can stop it. God is revealing Himself to all mankind and the darkness cannot resist this spiritual light of God’s presence.
Right this moment, and every moment, God is calling out to each person on this earth individually, and also collectively, to wake up spiritually, to come to their senses, so to speak, and return to God’s way of living and loving instead of being continually fooled by the material world’s decoys.
Now you may already be very spiritually minded and awake. But there is always room for progress.
Some of the spiritual practices that got you where you are now, may not be what you need to experience an even greater spiritual awakening.
If you’re traveling somewhere to hike up a mountain, you may take an airplane, then a bus or car to the beginning of the hike. Those are important means of transportation to get you where you need to be. But you can’t climb the mountain in a plane or a bus. You have to get out and walk.
Just so, what got you to this point in your spiritual awakening may not be what you need for the next part of the journey. You can’t take outgrown religious practices with you on your spiritual journey any more than you’d take the plane or the bus on the hike with you.
If you stay in the plane or the bus, you can’t get to the top of the mountain. If you hold on to old ways of thinking and doing things, you won’t experience much if any spiritual progress and you certainly won’t experience the great spiritual awakening going on today.
A simple request
Let’s come back to the request I made at the very beginning of this episode. What is one thing you can do to, one idea you can embrace and make your own, or one bad habit or a way of thinking you can let go of that will help you be more spiritually awake?
I’ll go first. The thing I need to stop doing is mindlessly scrolling on social media. It’s a distraction. It’s a decoy. And it keeps me from focusing on things that are much more important for my own spiritual growth, as well as doing things to help others. I make this promise to you that I will make a dedicated and sincere effort to stop this nonsense. And I’ll keep you posted on my progress.
What is one thing will you do, or stop doing, to be more awake spiritually?
The more spiritually awake you are, the more you’ll experience and participate in the great spiritual awakening that’s taking place right now.
Let’s all be part of it.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Photo Credit: Greg Rakozy
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James Early, the Jesus Mindset Coach, is a Bible teacher, speaker, and church mentor. He conducts Bible workshops online and in person. His focus is on getting back to the original Christianity of Jesus by learning to think, pray, and love like Jesus. Contact him here.
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Bible References
John 3:3 NIV
3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
Psalm 17:15 NASB20
15 As for me, I shall behold Your face in righteousness;
I shall be satisfied with Your likeness when I awake.
John 5:19, 30 NIV
19 Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.
30 I can do nothing on my own. I judge as God tells me. Therefore, my judgment is just, because I carry out the will of the one who sent me, not my own will.
John 12:49, 50 NIV
49 For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken.
50 I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say.
Luke 9:23 NIV
23 Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.
Psalm 51:10 NIV
10 Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Psalm 139:23, 24 NIV
23 Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Matthew 25:21 NIV
21 Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!
Luke 15:17 NIV
17 … he came to his senses,
1 Thessalonians 5:5, 6 NIV
5 You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness.
6 So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober.
