Good Fruit and New Wine: On the Asbury Revival

The skepticism and ridicule aimed at the Asbury revival, even by Christians, is unsurprising. The disenchanted and politicized gospel of American Christianity struggles to envision a move of God at all, much less one that does not directly serve our agendas. A revival that is simply a visitation of the Holy Spirit, a gathering of ongoing worship spurred by tearful confessions of sin, leaves us wondering when God is going to get with our program. Yet if the result of this revival is only that a group of young people knows that God sees them, and they receive the love of God shed abroad in their hearts, that is enough. We can commend our additional priorities to God in prayer and trust that he sees us, too, and will work his will in his way and in his time. 

The Experience of God 

My twenty-year-old son is a student at Asbury University. He is a biochemistry major and works off campus. His workload is such that he cannot spend days on end at the revival, though he has been back several times. He describes a joyful, peaceful, authentic expression of God’s love among the worshipers there. Last week I visited the campus. I took him to lunch and we talked, and then he went to class. I went to Hughes Auditorium and joined in the worship. It was as my son described. There was a sweetness about this gathering. The loving presence of God was palpable. 

I have spent considerable time in revivalistic gatherings. Sometimes the Spirit’s presence is undeniably manifest. Sometimes things feel contrived or manufactured. Sometimes God so fills the gathered faithful that they respond with tears, laughter, or cries of praise and thanksgiving. Sometimes affected emotionalism becomes a distraction. I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. The bad and the ugly are disappointing, at times painful, but the good is the life-changing presence of the one who is goodness itself. And as I sat in Hughes Chapel, I could sense that God was present. God was moving with power. 

A Tree and Its Fruit 

I understand, however, if you don’t simply take my word for it.  My experience is subjective, and no matter how fervently I believe something, it may not be true. In fact, I wouldn’t want you to evaluate this revival based upon my testimony alone. 1 John 4:1 teaches us not to believe every spirit, “but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” Beyond such subjective experience, then, how can we tell true revival from false? Our Lord taught us that we can know a tree by its fruit: 

Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits (Matt 7:16-20).

Even in the moment, we can discern the presence of the Holy Spirit by the fruit we see. Paul writes: 

[T]he fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another” (Gal 5:22-26). 

Love, joy, peace, and the other characteristics of the Spirit’s fruit will appear differently from time to time and place to place, but in most cases we know them when we see them. They indicate the real presence of God and a true desire among the worshipers to receive his life-changing presence. When there is love, peace, and joy, when there are acts of repentance that signify the crucifixion of the flesh, when people wait patiently upon the Lord and behave in the moment in ways that bear witness to his character, God is moving. Attention-seeking, greed, envy, or other such works of the flesh should cause us to ask what spirit is at work. My own assessment of the Asbury revival, confirmed by many testimonies of others, is that we are witnessing a genuine move of the Holy Spirit. Simply put, the fruit is there. 

In a fuller sense, however, we will not know the fruit of this revival for years. Decades from now, students who were present during this move of God will testify to the way in which his manifest presence changed the trajectory of their lives. Some will testify, like Wesley after Aldersgate, that they never knew God’s love personally until this moment. Others will share that God radically redirected their vocational goals. Still others will testify they were delivered from sin and their lives were never the same. I hope I live long enough to hear some of these accounts of God’s work. 

Good Fruit and New Wine 

Nevertheless, responses to the Asbury revival have sometimes been less discerning than dismissive. Rather than judging the tree by its fruit, many have judged the tree by its root—the evangelical, revivalistic wing of the Wesleyan movement. For whatever reason, they find this expression of Christianity deficient. They regard that which arises within it with skepticism, if not hostility. Perhaps this expression of the faith is too evangelical or conservative for them. Perhaps it is too Wesleyan. Perhaps they simply find revivalism distasteful or vulgar. Particularly in this time of division among Methodists, the claim that authentic revival is happening in this evangelical context will strike many as implausible. 

Whatever our ecclesiastical prejudices, however, God is sovereign and will move where and when he wants. Here he has chosen to honor the prayers of penitent college students with a prolonged visitation of the Holy Spirit. Why Asbury University? Why now? Why in this way? Though we may have our intuitions regarding these questions, we cannot answer them definitively. God’s ways are not our ways, nor are his thoughts our thoughts. What we do know from Scripture is that the work of God brings forth good fruit. The penitence, humility, joy, reverence, and peace that have welled up in this revival are signs of its authenticity. 

No doubt, some people at the revival have acted in ways that discredit what is happening there, just as in every other revival that has taken place since Pentecost. And like Pentecost, there will be people who sneer, “They are filled with new wine” (Acts 2:13). In fact, those filled with the Spirit at Pentecost were filled with new wine, but they were not drunk. They received the new wine that was the good news of Jesus Christ, and God is pouring forth that wine in abundance once again. Now is not the time for cynicism, but prayer, humility, gratitude, and ongoing discernment. Now is the time for us to pray that this move of God will continue to spread scriptural holiness across the land, that people across the U.S. and the world will drink deeply of this new wine, and that the love of God will be shed abroad in the hearts of many. 

God knows we need it. The Western church is anemic and faltering. Generation Z has come of age within the chaos of postmodernity, the crumbling structures of Christendom, and the narcissistic hypnosis of social media. It is utterly unsurprising that God has reached out in this way and in this time to these young people who have cried out in repentance. I anticipate this revival will be especially meaningful for Generation Z. The church has not reached them. Smoke machines and coffee beans have not enticed them to give their lives to Christ. They have been largely unmoved by our ham-fisted attempts to make the gospel “relevant.” But God has not forgotten them. God is not confused or befuddled as to how he will reach them. God is moving with power. The only question for us is whether or not we will come alongside the manifest work of the Holy Spirit. 

David F. Watson is Academic Dean and Professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, and is lead editor of Firebrand.

Church LifeDavid F. Watson9 Comments