Why Here?

I waited patiently for the LORD to help me, and he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and the mire. He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along. He has given me a new song to sing, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see what he has done and be amazed. They will put their trust in the LORD.                                         Psalm 40:1-3 NLT

The recent outpouring of the Holy Spirit that was experienced particularly in Hughes Auditorium on the campus of Asbury University (which is the ninth of such events to be recorded in Asbury’s 133-year history) raises two questions: why here, and why now? And there are two answers: 1) we don’t know, and 2) this is way God reveals himself.

Why did God choose Jerusalem? We don’t know. But he did. Why? Because the true God, the God of the Bible, reveals himself not in the timeless cycles of nature, which come from nowhere and go nowhere, but in unique places, times, and persons in human history. This is what distinguishes the Bible from the myths. The myths speak about “everyman” in timeless events occurring in places that don’t exist. So real people in real places in real time are without value. You only matter to the extent that you somehow correspond to some ideal of humanity.

Wrong! You matter! God has chosen to put his very image in you. And the world that God made on purpose matters. Is God revealed in the sunrise? Of course he is. But, oh, so much more he is revealed in a unique man like Abraham, in a unique place like Jerusalem, and in a unique time like 4 BC – 29 AD. But in this way, he says every person, every place, every time is important. Rather than everything being dissolved into the ideal, everything is sanctified by the actual.

So, we can only say “thank you.” Thank you for breaking in upon us and for a few days allowing us to soar like the eagles. Because of that we can now run the marathons of our days and not be worn out, and we can walk on long dusty roads and not quit. You have baptized the ordinary with yourself and with your blood have washed away the filthiness that we had come to accept as normal. That is revival.