Jesus Revolution by Greg Laurie

Author:Greg Laurie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Christian Living;Jesus People—United States—History;Revivals;REL012120;REL108020;REL012000
ISBN: 9781493415342
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2018-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

Today when you try to describe the Jesus Movement to a young person, he or she often visualizes it as an otherworldly experience, perhaps something like flying in a plane through a hurricane, or surfing an impossibly huge blue wave, or time-traveling to the days of the early church in the book of Acts.

It did feel like each of those things, and far more. Like all movements of the Holy Spirit, the Jesus Revolution was powerful, transformational, exciting, and emotional.

For some, the experience only lasted as long as a wave. It upended them, but gradually things returned to life as usual. Some slipped back into drugs and alcohol. Some decided that they’d been mistaken about Jesus, and perhaps a different faith, or no faith at all, was what they actually preferred. All these years later, some of them write blogs that sound suspiciously bitter for someone who is so over his or her encounter with Jesus.

Some people slipped into cults. As Jesus said in the New Testament, tares grow alongside the wheat. The imitation next to the genuine. Outwardly they might have resembled the Jesus Movement people, but in reality they had nothing to do with Jesus at all. Some cults ended up as autocratic communes that cruelly abused women and children. Others removed themselves to the hills, waiting for their version of Jesus to come. Others got stuck in a time warp, repeatedly trying to relive their high-water experiences of 1970.

So, for some, the Jesus Movement was a passing wave, or a fire that soon went out. It was a non-sustainable cultural anomaly. But for uncountable numbers of baby boomers, the Jesus Revolution was a pivot point, and everything was different afterward.

Many became pastors, lay leaders, missionaries, parachurch volunteers, and powerful influences for Jesus in their communities. Many went on to birth all kinds of strong, steady ministries to help people in need and bring glory to Jesus Christ. The sustainable legacy of the Jesus Revolution—something we can all learn from—is the lives of those for whom it wasn’t just a golden ’70s experience that passed, but an ongoing reality rooted in the Word of God and in a healthy local church.

That’s how it was for Greg. The center of the Jesus Revolution for him, circa 1970, was not starlight, rainbows, or a mystical spiritual circus. It was a decision: “Am I for Jesus or against Him?”

Then, having decided that he was for Jesus, the new life wasn’t static. It was a journey about learning how to grow up in Christ, about an ongoing revolution of being transformed by the renewal of his mind. It was about partnering with the Holy Spirit. It was all about grace. At the same time, it involved work. Daily life was now built on practices that were as ancient as they were revolutionary: worship, the study of the Bible, prayer, fellowship, and evangelism.

When he was a teenager, Greg saw some who’d come to faith in Jesus, their faces wet with tears. Yet a few weeks later, they’d dropped away.

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