I want to talk to you about something that’s been heavy on my heart, and I’m going to ask you to stay with me because some of this is going to sting.
God has been extraordinarily gracious to this country. I don’t say that lightly. He didn’t have to do what He did here. He sovereignly chose to pour out His Spirit on this land in ways that shook the world — the First Great Awakening, the Second, Azusa Street, the Jesus Movement. He raised up preachers with fire in their bones. He saved millions. He planted churches everywhere. None of that happened because Americans were particularly deserving — it happened because God is merciful and God is sovereign and He does what He pleases for His own glory.
“For he says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.'” (Romans 9:15)
That’s grace. Unearned, undeserved, freely given.
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” (James 1:17)
Every revival, every awakening, every soul saved in this country — that was Him. All of it.
But grace is not a permission slip for apathy. And I think we’ve forgotten that.
The Sickness Within
Here’s what I see, and I’m going to say it plainly: the American church is sick. Not dead — I don’t believe she’s dead, because Jesus said the gates of hell won’t prevail against His church (Matthew 16:18) and I take Him at His word. But she is sick. And the sickness didn’t come from outside. It came from within.
We have people who have the Bible in their hands and don’t know what’s in it. Hosea said it plainly —
“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” (Hosea 4:6)
That’s not talking about people who have never heard it. That’s talking about people who had access to the truth and didn’t pursue it. That’s us. We have more Bibles, more Bible apps, more Bible podcasts and commentaries and study tools than any generation in history, and biblical literacy is at an all-time low. Paul warned Timothy that this was coming —
“The time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.” (2 Timothy 4:3)
That time is not coming. It’s here.
We have traded the expository preaching of the Word — which is how God has always chosen to build His church — for entertainment dressed up in religious language. And the fruit is exactly what you’d expect. Shallow people. Weak faith. No roots. Jesus described it himself — when trouble or persecution comes, they fall away immediately because they have no depth (Matthew 13:20-21). The moment the real trial comes, they’re gone, because nobody ever taught them that:
“through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.” (Acts 14:22)
That’s on us. Pastors, teachers, leaders — that’s on us.
A Low View of God
Then there’s the issue nobody wants to say out loud: we have a dangerously low view of God.
The Reformed tradition got something deeply right that a lot of the church has lost — God is holy. Terrifyingly, magnificently, utterly holy. Isaiah saw just a glimpse of it and fell on his face like a dead man.
“Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5)
John saw the risen, glorified Christ on Patmos and fell at his feet as though dead (Revelation 1:17). That’s the appropriate response to encountering the living God. But we’ve built a culture where God is basically a self-help resource — available when needed, manageable, unthreatening, endlessly accommodating. We’ve domesticated Him.
We’ve lost the fear of the Lord, and Proverbs tells us that’s the very beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10). The writer of Hebrews says:
“Our God is a consuming fire.” (Hebrews 12:29)
Peter says judgment begins with the household of God. (1 Peter 4:17). These are not soft texts. These are texts that should make us tremble and take stock of how we’re actually living.
“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Hebrews 10:31)
The church that loses the fear of the Lord loses everything downstream from it — holiness, repentance, genuine conversion, transformed lives. All of it.
At the same time — and I need to say this just as clearly — a high view of God’s sovereignty is not an excuse to sit on your hands and wait. The same God who predestines also commands.
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” (Matthew 28:19)
The same God who chose us before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4) also fills His people with the Holy Spirit and sends them out with power.
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)
You can hold both of those truths — in fact, you have to do so. A Calvinism with no urgency for the lost is not biblical Calvinism, and a Pentecostalism with no doctrinal foundation is just emotion waiting to be deceived.
“Test everything; hold fast what is good.” (1 Thessalonians 5:21)
We need both the truth and the fire. We need the Word and the Spirit together. They were never meant to be separated. Jesus said:
“The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” (John 6:63)
It’s the same thing. The Spirit doesn’t move against the Word — He moves through it and with it.
The Idolatry
Let me talk about the idolatry, because I think it’s the root of a lot of this.
The American church has developed a habit of putting things in the place that only God belongs. Some of us have made political power our savior. We’ve placed all our hope in elections, in legislation, in getting the right people into office, as if the Kingdom of God rises and falls on Washington D.C. I understand the instinct — the stakes feel high, and they are. But —
“Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish.” (Psalm 146:3-4)
No political party carries the gospel. No candidate is the answer to what ails us. We are not one election away from revival. We are one repentance away from revival.
“Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” (Proverbs 14:34)
You can’t legislate your way to righteousness. It has to start in the church.
Others have made comfort the idol. We have built a version of Christianity so cushioned, so convenient, so carefully designed never to disrupt anyone’s life, that it bears almost no resemblance to what Jesus actually called His disciples into. He said if you want to follow Him, deny yourself, pick up a cross, and walk (Luke 9:23). That’s not a metaphor for mild inconvenience. That’s a call to die.
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20)
That’s the normal Christian life according to the New Testament. Crucified. Dead to self. Alive to God. The church that won’t preach that is not doing people any favors — it is giving false assurance to people whose eternity depends on the truth.
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 7:21)
That’s a terrifying verse, and we need to stop tiptoeing around it.
Then, there’s the prosperity gospel, which I’ll just say plainly is a different gospel. Paul’s words to the Galatians apply —
“If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.” (Galatians 1:9)
The apostles weren’t wealthy. Paul was beaten, shipwrecked, imprisoned, and eventually executed. He described himself as…
“in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.” (2 Corinthians 11:27)
If the prosperity gospel is true, Paul was doing it wrong. The real gospel doesn’t promise you a comfortable life — it promises you a meaningful one, an eternal one, a life hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3), which is better than anything the world can offer.
God Is Not Done
Here’s what I want you to hear though, and I mean this with everything in me: God is not done.
He is not done because He is faithful.
“If we are faithless, he remains faithful — for he cannot deny himself.” (2 Timothy 2:13)
He is not done because His purposes cannot be thwarted —
“I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.” (Job 42:2)
He is not done because He has a covenant people in this country — a remnant that hasn’t bowed the knee to Baal (Romans 11:4), people in small churches and big ones who are genuinely hungry, genuinely seeking, genuinely broken over what the church has become and desperate for the real thing.
“The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” (Psalm 34:18)
Those people aren’t invisible to God. He sees them. He’s near to them.
And He is not done because the Spirit of God is still moving. The same Spirit who hovered over the waters at creation (Genesis 1:2), who fell like fire at Pentecost (Acts 2:3), who showed up at Azusa and Cane Ridge and a thousand other places — He is not on sabbatical. He is not asleep.
“The Spirit blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.” (John 3:8)
You cannot schedule revival for the third Sunday in October. But you can position yourself. You can pray. You can fast. You can get honest before Him. Joel’s word is still alive —
“Return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.” (Joel 2:12-13)
Rend your hearts. That’s the invitation. That’s always been the invitation.
What I’m Asking You to Do
Repent. Not as a formality — actually repent. Get specific. Agree with God about where you’ve drifted, where you’ve compromised, where you’ve loved other things more than Him. Bring it into the light.
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)
“Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” (Isaiah 1:18)
There is mercy at the throne of grace for a church willing to humble herself.
“God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” (James 4:6)
Humble yourself. He’ll do the rest.
Get back in the Word. Not just devotionally — doctrinally. Know what you believe and know why you believe it.
“Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15)
“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17)
That’s not a suggestion. That’s the design. The Word is how God shapes His people. Let it do its work. Let it challenge you, correct you, wreck you if it needs to do so.
Pray like you actually believe God answers: Because He does.
“The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” (James 5:16)
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” (Matthew 7:7)
Not might be. Will be. We have not because we ask not (James 4:2), and the American church on the whole does not pray. Not really. Not corporately, not desperately, not persistently. The early church prayed until the place was shaken. (Acts 4:31). We need that kind of praying again.
Pursue holiness. Not legalism — holiness. There’s a difference.
“Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” (Hebrews 12:14)
“As he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.'” (1 Peter 1:15-16)
A church that doesn’t take holiness seriously is a church that doesn’t take God seriously, and a watching world can always tell the difference between people who’ve actually been changed and people who are just performing religion.
Finally, go. Go to your neighbors, your coworkers, your city.
“How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” (Romans 10:14)
That someone is you. Carry the gospel like it’s the most important thing in the world, because it is.
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” (Romans 1:16)
That power hasn’t diminished one bit. It’s the same gospel that saved you, and it will save them.
Choose
The world is watching. People are lost and they’re hungry for something real — they’re just exhausted by what’s been passed off as Christianity. Give them the real thing. Give them a church where the Word is preached with conviction and the Spirit moves with freedom, where holiness is taken seriously and grace is given lavishly, where sinners are welcomed and comfortable sin is lovingly confronted, where God is actually big and people actually expect Him to show up.
“Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16)
That’s the witness. Not a slick campaign — a transformed life. A Spirit-filled community. A church that actually looks like Jesus.
That church changes everything around it. It always has. It always will.
I still believe that church exists in America. I believe God is raising it up right now, in this moment, in this generation. I believe He is calling you — today — to be part of it.
So choose. Not later. Now.
“Choose this day whom you will serve.” (Joshua 24:15)
I’ve already made my choice. The Lord is my God and I’m not going back.
What about you?
