Revival - Fear to Love No. 2
To improve the condition or strength of something worn-out or weak is to revive it. When an old toy or concept becomes popular or important again (insert bellbottoms) it is revived or experiencing a state of revival. In a church setting, a revival, for those who have never experienced it, is a series of services, usually within a weeks’ time, intended to awaken the heart to the critical need to accept God as your personal Lord and Savior.
I grew up attending church revivals in my small-town home congregation and at our local camp meeting. They all shared similar practices. Hell-fire sermons about repentance and turning from sin were the standard. Lots of shouting and squirming. Lists of sins one might have committed. Each service ended with a public altar call, an invitation to make your way to the altar to kneel and to repent, asking Jesus Christ to be your “personal Lord and savior.”
As a young child and early teen, this was a frightening and uncomfortable experience for me. First, I struggled with their shouting and yelling. Secondly, everyone was watching. By our very human nature, we cannot help but watch and ask, “who’s going first?” We cannot help but think, “Well, if Lisa goes, then I have to go.” I did not want to appear to consider myself perfect or worse, indifferent because those things were not true. Instead, I was confused and honestly, I felt ashamed that it did not mean more to me inside than it did. I could not catch hold of the desired “conviction” necessary to achieve the goal.
Remember in my last post, from fear to love No. 1, I had already made the leap in my head that even if I “accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and savior,” I was bound to screw something up 5 minutes after I left the sanctuary. I often felt my very thought process related to the revival service was enough to put me over the top of the sin mountain. So, I just followed the motions. I attended and played along – until my new supervisor invited my new boyfriend and me to her church for a revival.
She repeatedly told me that my new Lutheran boyfriend could not be saved because he was Lutheran, and it was my job to work on that. So, because HE was amazing and supportive of me, we attended together.
We drove 55 minutes to her small church with more than 150 people crammed inside. The fire department would have shut it down. People were standing around the edges. I had never seen a church that full.
Everyone seemed eager to hear the new guest preacher who traveled across the country in an RV with his family preaching at revivals. I was basically sitting on my boss’ lap we were so close. I was afraid to think anything bad for fear she might hear me. I wanted to “do the right thing,” and “behave the right way.” I was worried I would not be able to emotionally connect during this experience like had been the case during so many other revivals. I so wanted to get this right.
After 20 minutes of unmemorable announcements, the guest pastor began preaching. Two key moments of the sermon remain with me to this day. About halfway through the sermon, he began yelling.
SHUT UP! SHUT UP! I SAID SHUT UP!
To say I was terrified is a complete and utter understatement. He was looking in my direction. I was not talking, but I was so afraid at this point that he thought I was, I entertained that he might be yelling at me – I was an outsider – new to the church. He continued with his yelling and berating, along with his hellfire sin talk.
Then, after his sermon, he announced he was excited to share a funny story with us. He and his family had been traveling and pulled into a “sketchy” hotel parking lot (his word). “There were all these black guys outside, so I went outside to walk around. They were being loud, and I didn’t like it.”
In horror, the punch line of the story was that he pulled a gun out and pointed at one of them for being too loud. (I will pause here and let you re-read that.)
Yes, he thought they were too loud, so he pointed a gun in one of their faces - this “man of God.”
Before leaving, I turned to my boss. I was completely afraid to ask about the gun story, but I had so many questions. I went with the one I thought was safest.
Who was he yelling at?
Friends, this is where my entire world of faith significantly began to crumble.
No one.
Wait? What? “He wasn’t yelling at anyone in particular; he was simply trying to keep people’s attention.” No matter how I longed to “get my faith right” and listen to my elders, my conscience told me this was completely and utterly wrong. I sat there the entire service worried and afraid. I sat there terrified that I would be publicly shamed or called out. It snapped in my head as a junior in college that something was VERY wrong with this tactic, and completely WRONG with randomly pointing a gun at someone for being too loud!
At that moment, the simplest of songs came to my heart and mind and I can only believe it was the Holy Spirit.
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to him belong, they are weak, but he is strong.
I had been caring for children as a nanny and in my church’s nursery and vacation Bible school long enough to know that you do not yell at the weak.
I connected that I had been feeling completely weak in my faith journey. Broken. Inadequate. If someone is weak, if I am weak, then the stronger of the two parties does not need to yell. I am already broken. The stronger of the parties needs to build up. And this song I had been singing since birth clearly said, that Jesus loves me, I am weak, and friends…it told me that I belong.
This was the first time I began to ask, inside only of course, if I “belong” already why must I accept? If I belong, and Jesus loves me, then doesn’t that mean that Jesus has accepted me, even in my weakness?
The seeds were planted
The words were forming, and I left there for the first time able to process these feelings with someone who had a different faith experience than my own. My boyfriend – the Lutheran – who was going to go to seminary after college let me ask questions in a safe and loving way.
The revival did not have the desired effect on my boyfriend that my boss wanted, I must admit, but it was an awakening for me. It was a key moment in my life that led to deeper questions and to this place, right here, right now.
If you have deeper questions, I invite you to share those here. Contact me or leave them in the comments. I am happy to receive them. I won’t promise an answer, but I will listen. Thanks for reading.