In his sermon 'Signs of Revival in the Younger Generation,' Jason Dohm reflects on a recent conference in Asheville where he observed signs of spiritual awakening among young people. He draws parallels between this and biblical accounts, such as the revival under King Josiah, emphasizing that true revival involves a deep, personal commitment to God beyond institutional religious practices. Dohm identifies six signs of revival: genuine spiritual life, personal ownership of faith, a deep love for God, a passion for God's word, a desire for personal holiness, and staying power. He references the Great Awakening and events at Asbury University as historical and contemporary examples of revival, urging congregants to seek a personal and communal outpouring of God's Spirit. Dohm stresses the importance of personal faith over inherited beliefs and warns against complacency, urging young people to pursue their relationship with God independently.

I think we had a good conference in Asheville. It was actually two conferences. There was a pre-conference, but it's grown to the point where I don't think you should call it a pre-conference anymore. There's been a conference for singles. It's not really a singles conference in the sense that it talks about singleness.

This one was called Holiness to the Lord. So it's really just preaching to Christians about consecrating yourself to God. We happen to be preaching that to single young people. The first of three years, I think there were 150. The second year there were 200.

This year there were 300 single young people. So it's Just a really sweet time with them. And when I woke up this morning, the plan was to preach what I had preached to the whole conference on work, glorifying and enjoying God in your work. But we called an audible this morning and I'm actually going to preach not what's on your handout, but there are lines on your handout, you can put anything on the lines you want to. They'll serve any sermon.

So I'm going to preach actually what I preached at the Singles Conference and we'll work our way back to the other one at some point I think. I'm going to read, I'm not going to tell you where I'm reading, because I just want you to listen to it. In the chapter before where I start, if you didn't believe in the sovereignty of God, you would say that they stumble on the Word of God. They just happen across the Word of God. The scriptures have been lost, have completely fallen out of use, out of consciousness.

People aren't even aware of what they don't have, and then they're cleaning up the temple, and they come across a book. It's the Scriptures, and they bring the Scriptures to the king. The king reads them. This is King Josiah. He reads the Scriptures, and When he reads them, he tears his clothes because what he's reading is so far from what the people are thinking and doing that he knows that God must be furious with them.

So the king rends his garments. And this is where we pick it up. I'll be reading, but just let me read it. Just let me read it while you listen. This is 2 Kings 23 verses 1-6.

Now the king sent them to gather all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem to him. The king went up to the house of the Lord with all the men of Judah and with all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests and the prophets and all the people both small and great. And he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant which had been found in the house of the Lord. Then the king stood by a pillar and made a covenant before the Lord to follow the Lord and to keep His commandments and His testimonies and His statutes with all His heart and all His soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people took a stand for the covenant.

And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, the priest of the second order, and the doorkeepers, to bring out of the temple of the Lord all the articles that were made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the hosts of heaven, and he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel. Then he removed the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense on the high places in the cities of Judah and in all the places around Jerusalem, and those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun, to the moon, to the constellations, and to all the host of heaven. And he brought out the wooden image from the house of the Lord to the brook of Kidron outside Jerusalem, burned it at the brook of Kidron, and ground it to ashes, and threw its ashes on the graves of the common people." So, what are we reading about? We're reading about revival. We're reading about when God orders circumstances.

They didn't just stumble across the Word of God. They came across that on the exact day and moment they were supposed to. God ordered all of those circumstances. And then he poured out his spirit on a king and on the people to revive them, to restore the things that had been lost. What happens when that happens?

People take the idols and they burn them, grind them to powder, and throw them on the graves of the people who are responsible for such things. So the title of my message was, signs of true revival in a younger generation. When God does that, when He orders circumstances and then enters into it by pouring out His Spirit to give revival in an unusual way. You shouldn't expect this to be happening all the time, but sometimes God orders events and then pours out His Spirit in an unusual way. What does that look like?

Don't you want to know what it looks like for? Don't you want to know what we should be praying towards and to be on the lookout for by faith? That's really what we're talking about. I happily concede that I'm not an expert on revivals. I wish I was.

I wish I had seen so much of it with my own eyes that I could just tell the tales of the things that I've seen with my own eyes. So I don't offer myself as an expert in revivals. But I can say this, I was at a time and in a place where the Holy Spirit was moving on young people across the local churches in my hometown. In other words, it wasn't just a move of God in one church or just a few churches. When I can see the faces of the people who were affected by this and start thinking, oh, he went to that church, she went to that church.

It has to have been a dozen churches in my hometown Greenville, North Carolina, that God was doing something unusual among the young people. So I have seen that. Young people were being saved. Definitely young people were being saved. The young people who were already saved were being discipled and growing like crazy.

It was just a time of tremendous spiritual growth. Maybe we had a mini revival. I don't think people will be writing books about what happened in Greenville, North Carolina in the mid-80s. But something real happened, And I didn't even understand it until later that this wasn't just happening in every town. And it doesn't just happen all the time, but God was doing something that was unusual among us.

But wonderful. Unless you live under a rock, you've heard of events at Asbury University in Kentucky that happened in February. They had a meeting, It was just planned to be a normal meeting, and it just lasted hours and hours. People wouldn't go home. And then the next day, more people gathered.

They went all day. The next day, more people gathered. And in our circles, what was happening at Asbury University in Kentucky generated a lot of discussion about what was actually happened. You have the reports and it makes you wonder how much are we really getting of the truth as what's happening? How much of this is real?

Is any of it real? Is some of it fake? Is all of it fake? That immediately made me think of Jonathan Edwards and the book that he wrote after the Great Awakening. The Great Awakening was a tremendous outpouring of the Holy Spirit to save people and to revive the people who were already saved in the 1730s and 40s.

It lasted more than a decade. So much so that it has a name, The Great Awakening. And So Jonathan Edwards, after the fact, after this more than a decade of God bringing together circumstances and then pouring out his Spirit for revival, did a look back to just analyze what he had been a part of. Actually, his preaching was a great stimulus that God used for this revival, among many other things, but you've heard of sinners in the hands of an angry God. That was a powerful sermon that really, in many ways, launched the Great Awakening.

He was a good person to look back and analyze what had happened. He did so in a book called, The Religious Affections. Here's a summary. I haven't read all of the religious affections, but I've read large portions of it. Here's the summary.

Some of it was real and some of it was baloney. Some of it was real, some of it was fake. Some of it lasted and proved itself to be a genuine work of God. Some of it was only for a very short period of time, and then the people who seemed to be so affected were worse than ever a year later. And this is really true of revivals, that often even when there's a very genuine move of God, that there's also sort of a counterfeit that happens inside it and alongside it.

When I heard about the events of Asbury, my overriding thought was this, I don't know what's happening at Asbury. But whatever is happening at Asbury, God, please revive me. Whatever is happening in Kentucky, please come to Youngsville. Please bring together circumstances and pour out your spirit in my heart, in my house, in our church, in our town. I don't have any way to know what's real and not real at Asbury University, but God, pour out your spirit here to save people and for the people who are saved to to revive them.

So that's really the heartbeat of this message. This is not a scholarly analysis of the Great Awakening or what has happened at Asbury University in Kentucky in the month of February. It's really a plea that we together would seek God to visit us in an unusual way, to pour out His Spirit in an unusual way here. God, would you in your kindness visit us? Would you in your kindness to us Bring together circumstances and pour out your spirit in ways that we've only read about and heard about.

But in our reading about it, in our hearing about it, It does make our hearts burn that we wouldn't live and die and not see it with our own eyes. You sweeping hundreds of souls into heaven, into your kingdom. You causing your people to shake off our slumber and be so alive in Jesus. So God, Show us what to hope for, what to look for, what to pray for, what to cry out for. Give us a burning desire in our hearts for these things, I pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Give you six signs of true revival in a younger generation. Sign number one, real spiritual life as opposed to institutional religion. As opposed to institutional religion. I've tried to explain this to them and I trust I don't have to explain it to you that I'm the last guy to be accused of being anti-institutional. Institutions are bad.

Local churches are bad. No, local churches are great. My life is centered around local church. So, I'm not anti-institutional, I'm pro-institutional, but I'm anti-confusion. Confusing institutional activity with real spiritual life.

Do you know you can have a lifetime of institutional activity and never be alive? So, the good religious institutions and institutional activity is actually God's idea and given to us in the scriptures. It's not all that, but the good religious institutions and religious institutional activity is given us by God. But it's to serve spiritual life. It's to help us channel and deepen and grow Real spiritual life.

So those things should never be confused. You can spend a lifetime in institutional religion, and a lot of people do, and never be spiritually alive. In John 3, Jesus says to a strict man, he's careful over his life, very careful over his life, a religious man, very religious, His life is filled with institutional religion, institutional religious activity. A leading man, He's a teacher and a leader among the Lord's people. A respectful man.

He's not one of these who is opposing, challenging Jesus at all. He comes to Jesus very respectfully and acknowledging man, coming to Jesus saying, the things that you're saying and the things that you're doing have to mean that God sent you. Here's what Jesus says to him, You must be born again. You have to be born again. You're not born again.

You're strict, but you're not born again. You're religious, but you're not born again. You're a teacher and a leader, but you're not born again. You're respectful, but you're not born again. You acknowledge that the things that I'm saying and doing must mean that I'm sent from God, but you are not born again.

You must be born again. There are lookalikes for everything in religion. Everything real has a lookalike, but none of the look-alikes impart life. They look so genuine, but none of them can give you real spiritual life. You must be born again.

In my example, Greenville, North Carolina in the 1980s, the people that the Holy Spirit moving on overwhelmingly had grown up in the church. They were church folk. So they weren't bolting on religious to their life. Religion was already bolted on to their life. They were already at church when the doors were open.

So what was happening to them? They weren't going from irreligious to religious. They were going from dead to alive. It's not the same thing. And for those who were already alive, they were being radically revived.

It almost felt like they were being born again, again. The renewed spiritual vigor was so powerful, it felt like, I think this is actually what happened to me. I think I had been born again maybe four years earlier. But It felt like I was being born again, again. There was so much life flowing into us.

When the Holy Spirit is moving to save the lost and to revive the saved, there is authentic, vibrant spiritual life. And the lookalikes become obvious. A week ago, a month ago, a year ago, This passed for spiritual life. The lookalikes passed for spiritual life. You were convinced that it was spiritual life a week ago, a month ago, a year ago.

But now, it can't pass for spiritual life. It becomes blindingly obvious. We're doing things, but that's not the same thing as spiritual life. This whole thing is a whole other category. That's sign number one, real spiritual life as opposed to institutional religion.

And the distinction is all of a sudden before you in technicolor, how different they are. The confusion about them just evaporates. Sign number two, personal ownership of salvation. It goes from a group activity, we're all saved, to very personal, I must be saved. I must be saved.

I know you've heard this saying, God only has children, no grandchildren. God only has children, no grandchildren. What is the preacher trying to communicate when he says God only has children, no grandchildren? He's saying that You cannot be in relationship with God through your parents' relationship with God. You either have direct relationship with God through His Son Jesus Christ, or you have nothing at all.

We've been studying in Romans. Everybody's born with the same family head, Adam. And you are inescapably dominated by his defining act. What's his defining act? What act defines Adam?

Implunging our whole family line into sin, death, and corruption, and his nature was changed by that act of rebellion and he passed it down to his children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, great great grandchildren and now it's in me and I am in scapably dominated by the nature that I inherited from my family head in Adam. Your only chance to be reconciled to God is to change families, is to change races and have the head of your family no longer be Adam with all that corruption and your family head must become Jesus Christ with all that righteousness that's His. Especially in Christian families, you begin riding along figuratively, but actually literally, Hey kids, get in the car, we're going to church. You begin literally riding along, Get in the car, you. At some point, each individual has to own their own sin, and has to own their own Savior, or else be lost.

If You don't understand that you are the problem. Your sins have separated you from this God who is holy. And there is only one thing to be done about those sins or you must be lost forever and that is to flee to Jesus Christ who He is and what He has done on the cross and that if you don't go and enter into that transaction by faith that you will be lost. Nothing anyone wants for you will change your state of being an enemy of God. Only you can embrace salvation by faith in Jesus Christ.

Your parents want to do it for you, they cannot do it for you. Your church leaders want to do it for you, they cannot do it for you. You must trust in Jesus, or you will be lost. Did you know that a Christian home can be a very dangerous place to grow up? I didn't say that I'm not thankful for Christian homes.

I'm thankful for Christian homes. I didn't say you shouldn't grow up in a Christian home. You should grow up in a Christian home. I didn't say a Christian home is not the best place for a child to grow up, it is the best place to grow up. Then why would I say it's a dangerous place to grow up?

Because in a Christian home, you're not at liberty to give outward expression to your inner inclinations. Your inner inclinations can't just run wild, or that will get constrained. Christian parents that won't let you do what you would do if no one was there constraining you. And if no one were there constraining you, you would take a step, and then another step, and then another step, and you would end up doing things that you never thought it would be possible that you would do. That is true.

That is true. That is true. So because you are not at liberty to give outward expression to your inner inclinations, you can conclude that you aren't that bad and you don't need much to be right with God. Nothing radical needs to happen for you to be right with God. You don't feel dead in your sins and transgressions.

And so you take half measures as if it isn't true that the only thing that will make things right is if you're raised from the dead spiritually. You think tweaks will do it, when no tweak will do it. In my hometown, the Holy Spirit was moving on young people, and we were breathtakingly aware that a person had to have a direct relationship with God or they had nothing at all. God poured out His Spirit and just convinced us that it was all or nothing. Either I'm right with God because of my trust in Jesus or I have nothing.

And the ground in between was completely swept away by God's grace. In fact, we had such a desire to go farther than the older generation. We didn't want to be satisfied with their experience of God. We wanted more! We didn't want to be satisfied with their experience of God.

We wanted more! We didn't want to be satisfied with their level of faithfulness to God. We wanted more! We didn't want to be satisfied with their level of understanding of Scripture. We wanted more!

Now this needs to come with a warning. Here's the warning. When young people get saved, they almost always think that they just invented zeal. They're the only ones on fire for the Lord because they don't see the same marks in the older generation that they think that they ought to see. It's very easy as a young zealous believer to despise everyone who's older than you.

I invented zeal, let me teach you about zeal, not knowing that your parents used to be zealous in the ways that you think they should be zealous. But now, their spiritual life has evened out in a good way with a consistency and a steadiness and a depth that if you were smarter than you are, you would want. So be careful. Want more. Hey young people, want to go beyond us.

We invite you to go beyond us. We plead with you to go beyond us. In your experience of the Lord, your knowing of the Lord, your faithfulness to the Lord, your understanding of the Scriptures, go beyond us and all of that, we won't be sorry at all. We'll be cheering you on. Just be careful that you're not despising us too much.

As if human history started on the day of your birth, It did not. People have been zealous for the Lord for a long time, and young people have been very poor judges about what a real, deep, consistent relationship with the Lord looks like. So be careful. Why do I speak that from experience? I despised a lot of people's walk with the Lord that I had no business despising in those years.

I publicly repent. When the Holy Spirit is moving to save the lost and revive the saved, the people being moved upon get off the coattails of others and take personal ownership of their faith. You're not riding into heaven on anyone's coattails. You go because you've trusted in Christ or you don't go at all. That's sign number two, personal ownership of salvation.

Sign number three, love for God. This is such a critical distinction between religious activity and the overflow of authentic spiritual life. It looked the same on the outside. One is infused with love for God, and the other is dry and cold and mechanical. In that time, in that place, in those years in Greenville, North Carolina in the 1980s.

I just wanted to be with God Love for him was burning in my heart. I wish you could know how bright it was it was burning. I didn't need anyone to see me or notice me or approve of me or praise me or think well of me. I just needed to be near Him and feel that He was near me. And it wasn't just me.

There were a bunch of us who couldn't wait for the next opportunity to be with God, and we would sing and pray and study simply for the pleasure of being with God. Of being with God. He had saved us from our sins and he was all lovely and We couldn't help but love him. We didn't need any exhortations to love him. We didn't have to try to love him.

I know over a long walk with the Lord that those embers can cool and they need to be fanned into flame again. So I'm not despising that. If they've cooled, fan them. They've cooled, fan them. I'm not saying that that's always going to be our state, and that you should expect that it's always going to be that state.

But I'm saying sometimes, I want you to know that state. That's what I'm trying to say. That's what I'm fumbling over here. I want to make sure that even if It's not right now in your walk with the Lord that when I say those things, you have some frame of reference for it. You have some frame of reference where you don't have to try to love the Lord.

But it's just flowing out of your heart because of the goodness that you've experienced in him. Paul Washer has described it in these terms, and I've described it from this pulpit in these terms, Boots on and boots off. I'll say it again. What does that mean? Boots on.

When do you need your boots on for working for war? Is there work in the Christian life? You betcha. Is there war in the Christian life? You betcha.

All that's made so plain in Scripture. Should that be the sum total of your spiritual life? Oh, I don't like your chances of lasting if it is. If it's nothing more than work and war to you, and you never have a time where you don't need the boots for work and war, you take them off, and you just have time to enjoy God. You're going to hit burnout fast.

So by all means, do your work. Engage in warfare. But don't forget that we need to have our boots off and to be in our favorite chair with our favorite beverage and our Bibles just laid open on our laps. And the agenda is to enjoy God. To marvel at the things that He said and just to enjoy the sweetness of drawing near to Him.

When the Holy Spirit is moving to save the lost and revive the saved, hearts burn with love for God, and they recoil at duty. Not because I don't think we should do our duty, not because Christianity doesn't have duty. It does have duty, And we should do the things that God tells us we should do. But in this state, when there's such love for God in our hearts, you wouldn't dare let it be called duty. I'm just talking about a disposition towards what God asks of us.

I'm not saying it has anything to do with your salvation. We've been preaching through Romans. Not the Gospel Paul preached. It doesn't have anything to do with our salvation. When love for God is what it ought to be in our hearts, there are these things that God requires of us, but in the doing of them, you wouldn't dare let it be called duty.

You wouldn't Dare let it be called that. Because if all the requirement was taken away, but you knew it would please Him, you would do it anyway. That's sign number three, love for God. Sign number four, a love for God's words. Love for the words.

You've all taken math classes? How did you read your math textbook? I didn't love math, so I had to work up to it. I had to steal my mind and my thoughts to get ready to plunge into mathematics. Now, how would you read a love letter from the beloved?

From a beloved. Like the math book? Got to work up to that, do you? I doubt it. You read it over and over again just for the fun of it?

I bet you do. Do you linger over it? Is it worn? If a person doesn't have a new Bible, if they have a ten year old Bible, you can tell a lot by what that Bible looks like. Is that a math book or is that a love letter?

You can tell a lot by the condition of a ten year old Bible. Whether someone just owns a math book or whether they've gotten a love letter. If God said it in his book, we believed it was the revelation of perfect truth from heaven. If God said it in his book, We wanted to learn it and obey it. We wanted to know everything that was in the book.

We didn't want to stay ignorant of anything that was in the book, not even for one more day. Give it to us all, even the scary stuff. You said it, we don't want to be ignorant of it. Psalm 19 10 says that God's words are more to be desired than gold, yes, than much fine gold sweeter also than the honey and the honeycomb in Greenville, North Carolina. In the mid-80s, among a bunch of young people, a lot of teens, a fair amount of 20s, and a few 30 year olds.

We would read Psalm 19 10 and say, So it is. More precious than gold? So it is. Yes, then much fine gold. So it is.

Sweeter than honey? So it is. Then the honeycomb? So it is. We were amening Psalm 19 verse 10.

When the Holy Spirit is moving to save the lost and revive the saved, the Bible becomes a most precious possession. You're rarely caught without it. Now we all have our phones with the Bible on it, it's sort of cheating. It's not a litmus test anymore. It is read and re-read, it is memorized and meditated on, it's treated like a love letter from a beloved.

That was number four, a love for God's words. Sign number five, a desire for and carefulness about personal holiness. A desire for personal holiness? A want to be holy. And a carefulness about personal holiness.

When the Holy Spirit moves on young people, They don't want him to become like them. Hello? You out there? They want to become like him. There's a whole lot of Christianity out there where people want to fashion God in their image, and they don't have any desire at all to be fashioned into His.

I'm saying when God brings together circumstances and then pours out his spirit to revive people, that flips. There's no more of this describing the God that you want to be and then slapping the name of Jesus on that God and he looks just like you and he's comfortable with everything about you. That stops when God pours out His spirit to revive. And you say, God I'm nothing like you, please change me. Make us to be like you.

We don't want to make you like us. The Holy Spirit is holy, they want to become holy. To be holy is to be set apart to and set apart for. That's what they want. When people are being saved or the saved are being revived, that's what they want.

They want to be set apart to. God, set me apart to Yourself. Put your name on me. Let me be yours. They want to be set apart for.

God, take this ransom life and use it in any way that would make you happy. Set me apart for whatever would please you. They want the old ingrained patterns of defilement to give away to new patterns of Christ-likeness. Here's a funny story to make the point. When I was first, this is right this period of time, mid-80s, Greenville, North Carolina, I'm being revived.

And when I was 12 years old, our family lived in Oxford, England for a year. So I tell people I was educated at Oxford. What's actually true about that? I went to elementary school in Oxford in a public school. It was a lousy public school, but I was educated there.

So it is technically true. What did I actually learn in Oxford during that year? I learned to cuss. I came back an accomplished cusser. Not around my parents who would not have it for a minute, but around my friends.

I mean my language was filthy. So now I'm being revived. And I can't bear the thought that people would know I'm a Christian, but I talk like this. And what people would think about Christianity if they heard me talk about this. But If you've ever become an accomplished cusser, that is habit, pattern.

I was saved and I was being revived, but that doesn't just mean that your patterns and habits magically are just all transformed in a moment. They are not. So I had a friend, we both wanted this to change in our lives and we gave each other the permission to do a robust open hand slap anytime either one of us cussed. During that, during the months that followed, I slapped a lot, and I got slapped a lot. Was that a good idea?

I'm not sure I doubt it. I'm not commending it to you. I'm just saying that when people are being revived, there is a no holds barred mentality where you'll spare nothing to be free from that old ingrained defilement. And if it means And if it means getting open hand slapped, you'll cheerfully submit to it. Because you don't want this Christ, this Savior to somehow be made like you, you want to be made like Him.

When the Holy Spirit is moving to save the lost and revive the saved, people lose the ability to be careless about what they think and do and say and watch and listen to. Now listen to that again. They lose the ability to be careless. Yesterday I could be careless about what I think and say and do and listen to and watch, but today I just, I can't be careless about it. Because the Spirit is being poured out and He's a Holy Spirit.

Last week I could be careless, last month I could be careless, last year I could be careless, but today, because of the Spirit of God, I can't be careless. I've lost the ability to be careless about what I think, about what I say, about what I do, about what I listen to, about what I watch. Sign number five. That's sign number five. A desire for and carelessness.

A carefullness about personal holiness. Sign number six. Almost done. Staying power. Staying power.

It lasts. Not necessarily always with the bright intensity of that period of time where God is pouring out His Spirit in an unusual way. Don't think that I'm saying that. I wish that were so. I don't think that's so.

There is such an intensity about when God is doing these things that you long for after the fact to know that intensity again. But it does last. And when I say staying power, that's God's power by the way. In the by the way. In the Calvinistic system there are five major points and you can make an acronym TULIP.

T-U-L-I-P they all stand for one of the elements of this Calvinistic system. The last letter P stands for perseverance of the saints. This is what we're talking about here. But I've heard multiple preachers convert that to preservation of the saints. So I don't care at all whether you keep it with the original perseverance of the saints or change it to preservation of the saints.

I like that additional word though, preservation of the saints, because it puts a fine point on the real truth, which is, it is God that does that. It is not that you as a believer knuckle down, and so you keep yourself until the finish line. The doctrine of the perseverance of the saints really means that God undertakes the work to preserve you to the end. It's not you knuckling down. It's God holding you in His hand and no one can pluck you out of it.

That's that doctrine. Genuine moves of God result in lasting transformation. That's pretty simple. If it's really God, it lasts. If it's not God, it burns out.

Sometimes sooner, sometimes later, but it always burns out. There is immediate, permanent transformation in state. You go from dead to alive. You go from having a heart of stone to having a heart of flesh. You go from dead to sins and transgressions to resurrected from the dead.

That's about as stark and permanent as it can be. That is state. But then, the rest of your days are your life patterns catching up. You wish they would all catch up on day one. They don't.

They catch up over time. Sometimes there's a lot of transformation fast. This happens at different rates for different people. But it's all progression. For everyone, it is a progression.

Sometimes it's slow, but It's always ongoing and it's always lasting if it's genuine, if it's really God. The real analysis of what happened at Asbury University in Kentucky in the month of February will be a year from now. Better yet, five years from now, better still, ten years from now. We'll know. We'll know by whether it lasted or whether it burned out not everything that seemed to be real in Greenville North Carolina in the 1980s proved to be real over time.

Janet and I were both part of this by the way. Janet and I can make a list of the people who were during that time. And it might be a 50-50 list of people who are really walking closely with the Lord now and in people who have fallen away. Some of it was genuine and some of it was baloney. Time sifts it.

This much we know for sure. He who has begun a good work in you will complete it. This is Philippians 1 verse 6b. If God begins a good work in you, He will complete it. Not might complete it, He will complete it.

When the Holy Spirit is moving to save the lost and revive the saved, The saved stay saved. And the already saved keep making meaningful progress. If you are really saved, you stay saved. Why? Because you know how to knuckle down?

No, because God's really faithful and He's almighty. End of story. He's perfectly faithful and He's almighty So you can't even jump out of his hand. No one can pluck you out of his hand. And you are part of no one.

That's number six, staying power. Let me conclude in Genesis 32. Again, you can just listen and go there if you want, but you can just listen. Genesis 32. It's Jacob wrestling with God.

The nerve. The nerve. Who in their right mind would wrestle with God? Listen. Genesis 32, 24-30.

Listen, Genesis 32, 24-30. Then Jacob was left alone, and a man, capital M, signifying deity, God, a man, wrestled with him until the breaking of day.