The Spirit Without Limit
Reflections on the Asbury Outpouring (Part 5)
This essay is the fifth of a series reflecting on the Asbury Outpouring. You can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, and Part 4 here.
On February 14, 2023, I awoke at 5:20 a.m. with the song “O Come to the Altar” stuck in my head. I got up and walked over to Hughes Auditorium. It was seven days into the Outpouring, and there was considerable traffic in Wilmore. Fortunately, since it was so early, I was able to walk right in and go immediately to the altar. I randomly opened my Bible to Luke 11 and began to read and pray. While I was kneeling there, someone came and laid a hand on my shoulder. I did not turn to see who it was, and after a little while the person left.
As I was leaving Hughes that morning, I ran into my friend Curt. He eagerly explained how he had been praying about spiritual hunger and Luke 11 when he saw me at the altar. He decided to go up and pray for me, and when he did, he noticed that my Bible was turned to Luke 11 as well. These were the words that God had highlighted to him for me: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11: 13)
After the first four days of the Outpouring, there was a shift in the atmosphere. Word spread as images, videos, and more disseminated online, and people began showing up in busloads in order to step inside Hughes Auditorium. I remember being taken aback to see a line of people wrapping around my school. People came from other cities, states, and even countries. It was overwhelming. There wasn’t a parking spot left in the city. At one point, police even closed the roads leading into Wilmore, turning anyone away who could not prove they were a resident. Our small town did not have the infrastructure necessary to sustain the hordes of folks flocking to get in. Sadly, some people in my community felt, in a sense, trampled by the crowds.
And yet, I could not help but marvel at the very crowds I quickly came to dread. They came with their injuries and sicknesses, their addictions and afflictions, their doubts and questions. Looking out across the lawn in front of Hughes, I was given a better framework to understand what it means in Matthew 6 that, “When he (Jesus) saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” When Jesus arrived on earth 2,000 years ago, I imagine he drew the same kind of crowd as what I saw in and around Hughes—religious leaders, skeptics, a few politicians, and other important persons, but mostly just hungry people who were most in touch with their need.
The problem with our churches today is not that people are not hungry. On the contrary, as I witnessed in Wilmore, people are desperate. The trouble is we have contented ourselves with worshipping a tame God. We have refused to press in to the depths of his love. We have resigned ourselves to a mere cognitive understanding of him, even as he has invited us to know him more intimately. And so, people have become disengaged. But God is not boring—we are boring. A disengaged church can only be disengaged because we do not know God for who he is truly. And a world that is not confronted by the message of the gospel can only remain thus if the church is not radically in love with Jesus and therefore zealously in pursuit of the Kingdom.
When Jesus began his ministry, there was no denying that he had come from God because of the power of his testimony and the evidence of his work. Jesus said it was better that he leave us because he was sending his Spirit to us in order that we might do the same works as he, and “even greater things than these.” (John 14:12) Do we actually believe that is possible with us? I cannot say for sure, but I am certainly determined to find out. We live in a desperate hour, a time when our world needs a God who is powerfully present. If we really live for him, how much of him are we able to enjoy on this side of eternity?
When we come to God with our needs, rather than giving us answers, solutions, strategies, he gives us his Spirit. We want answers, but he wants intimacy. Our churches do not need more programming, bigger personalities, more entertaining worship bands, or better buildings. We need the presence of a living God. We need deeper relationship with the resurrected Christ. Whether they acknowledge it or not, people are hungry for this. We need the Holy Spirit, living in us, working among us, unifying us in the love of God, and moving in power through us for the sake of a lost and broken world.
The Holy Spirit prompted me to read the Gospel of John in the days leading up to the Outpouring. On the first day, I read John 3, and these words burned in me: “For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit” (italics mine). In such a time as this—knowing God is true to what he says—we should press in and ask for more, so that the world might be awakened to his power, his love, his majesty. The Outpouring gave me a glimpse of what that might look like. I pray he does it again, a thousand times over, until the world is awakened.