Therefore, Pray
Reflections on the Asbury Outpouring (Part 1)
February 8th marks the anniversary of the start of the Asbury Outpouring. Two years ago, the Holy Spirit moved in power at Asbury University, my alma-mater. What began as an ordinary chapel service turned into 16 days of non-stop worship, prayer, confession, repentance, and more. The world seemed to descend upon our tiny two-stoplight town, desperate to step foot inside Hughes Auditorium to meet with God. The Outpouring was unforgettable, difficult and overwhelming at times, but mostly wonderful. I am a different man because of my experiences there.
My story of the Outpouring began in the month that preceded it, and so, as I find myself remembering it in the month leading up to its second anniversary, I thought it would be appropriate to spend several weeks reflecting on my experience. My prayer is that these words would be for my readers much like the songs that resounded from Hughes Auditorium over those 16 days—pure and beautiful words that not only prompt thanksgiving but somehow inspire worship. He is worthy.
-Michael
Even before I knew what “revival” meant, I think God was preparing me for it. I turned to Christ at an early age and became zealous about my faith in middle school. I have vivid memories of initiating prayer gatherings with my friends in sixth and seventh grade to pray for our community. When I showed up to Asbury University in small town Wilmore, Kentucky, although I did not have much of a theological framework for revival, I was compelled by the possibility.
Asbury University has a history of revivals. There are records of it occurring in 1905, 1908, 1921, 1950, 1958, 1970, 1992, and 2006.1 Revival has in many ways shaped the culture of the school. It’s in the air, so to speak, for better and unfortunately sometimes for worse. I was first exposed to the concept through overzealous acquaintances and chapel speakers who had the notion that they would be the ones to usher in the next revival. These individuals tended not to love those in our school very well; their efforts were often forced and somewhat off-putting. The abuse of a concept does not negate its proper expression, however, and so I still often found myself hoping for it and praying for it as often as it occurred to me.
January 2023 was a difficult month for me. I dropped my parents off at the airport after a stateside visit and immediately drove to Asbury Theological Seminary’s campus where I had just moved in. I graduated from Asbury University in December of 2022 and through a series of disappointments found myself applying to go to the seminary across the street even though I had no ambition to go into professional ministry. I wanted to write fiction and work for an arts organization, but I encountered heavy blows on both of those fronts during the fall prior which left me limping across the street to the seminary. All this to say, I was reluctant to be there at all, but God seemed to open this door to stay in Wilmore and continue my education.
I got very sick my first night on the seminary’s campus and was out for nearly a week. During that time, I cried out to God because I was miserable and lonely. And when I listened, I heard a small, still voice whisper to me to begin interceding in prayer for my friends and neighbors. I pulled out a notebook and on one page wrote down the names of my friends and other neighbors whose lives I longed to see God transform. On the page beside this I wrote down a prayer for myself: “Restore my faith in the power of prayer.” And then I began to pray.
From that point up until the Outpouring began, I heard God many times exhort me to pray. I have a friend named Josh who I met during my first year at the university. We bonded over the way we had seen the power of God through prayer in our lives and so freshman year we made it a practice to pray together weekly. These humble meetings were encouraging to us, but when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we fell out of the practice. One day during the month that preceded the outpouring, Josh and I got lunch at the university cafeteria. Near the end of our conversation, unprompted, my friend looked up to me and said, “Do you remember how we used to pray together freshman year?” We decided to go right then to the chapel at the back the library to pray together like we had before.
On our way over, I was considering my lingering love for the university and I found myself meditating on a passage of Scripture from Matthew that I had often prayed in gatherings with other students during my time there:
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”2
When we reached the library chapel and sat down, I asked Josh what we should pray about and he told me one word: shepherd. I laughed and told him that I was just thinking about the Matthew 9 passage which I recited to him. He looked at me, himself astonished and said, “That’s incredible. The other word I thought I heard was harvest.” We proceeded to pray for the harvest, that God would send out more harvesters just as the passage instructs. As we were walking away, I told Josh that I was ordinarily a skeptic about the possibility of revival but that I had a sense God was up to something on the university’s campus. He laughed and we agreed to continue meeting to pray.
There were many other instances like these in the month leading up to the Outpouring. I spent many hours locked away in my room, interceding for my school. I was surprised by the way my heart still seemed to bleed for my university classmates even though I had moved across the street. I joined prayer groups, I gathered new seminary friends, I made every effort to come before God because I had this growing sense that God was up to something extraordinary. And as the month proceeded, I felt the Holy Spirit strengthen me to offer up very bold prayers. I prayed that God would begin an invisible revival— invisible not because it wasn’t real or visible, but invisible because it would be like a seed planted beneath the soil, whose fruit would not be seen for years to come. I prayed for a different kind of revival than what many people were anticipating, not one driven by spectacle, but subtle and hidden.
On February 7th, I was praying about the possibility of starting a prayer room in Wilmore as my new roommate Tony had dreamed, when I felt God direct me to Jesus’ teaching on prayer in Matthew 7. I wrote down these words: “What if for two hours Wilmore carried more influence over our nation and the course of history than Washington D.C., or New York City, or Moscow, or Shanghai, or anywhere else?” I wondered if it was possible for Wilmore, Kentucky to become a prayer closet that the world withdrew into in order to intercede on behalf of the world. I had no idea what was about to begin the next day.
My purpose here is not to paint a picture of myself as one who always hears God or, heaven forbid, portray myself as one who in any way initiated the Asbury Outpouring. In truth, I go through many seasons baffled by my own inability to hear God or understand his work in my life. Many of my prayers remain unanswered. And the Outpouring was the fruit of many people’s prayers over years and years, long before I ever stepped foot in Wilmore, not just my own. I share my testimony about the days leading up to the Outpouring because in it I see God’s kindness to me in inviting me to participate in something great that he was doing. He did more than restore my faith in the power of prayer—he made me utterly dependent upon it; by it I live and without it I would die because by it I am granted access to the God whose love sustains me. Prayer has become my lifeline. And I am so grateful for it.
The invitation that I received from God during the month leading up to the Outpouring stands today. We have no idea the shockwaves our prayers send in the spiritual realm. Each prayer that we offer to God is like a seed whose fruit we might never enjoy ourselves but could nevertheless yield immeasurable blessings for our neighbors and our children or our children’s children. And yet, even the prayers which God does not choose to answer in the immediate sense, he answers by giving us something better than what we asked for: as we draw near, turning our face to him, releasing our burdens, naming our petitions, we yield to him our hearts and grant him opportunity to draw near to us. Indeed, when we pray, we cast our hopes on one who is better than us, whose power surpasses our own, whose love is beyond our comprehension, and we are granted something better than what this world could ever offer us: God himself.
Matthew 9:36-38