I started attending about a month after Diana died. Eventually we grew to more than a thousand young people, who, out of our hunger for God, gathered for worship each Tuesday night. Our lives were changed dramatically as we met together with Him each week.
This was a proper response to tragedy. When, suddenly, we all got a fresh revelation that life was short and that none of us was guaranteed tomorrow, these TBS young people offered us Jesus as our only hope, and we all sought to get our lives right with God as fast as we could. I’m forever grateful to those who, in their grief, simply made invitations. I can’t express my gratitude enough. In like manner, this book is an invitation to you. Due to my experience with TBS, I assumed that the tragedy of September 11, 2001 would lead us to a great turning back to God nationally. When that didn’t happen, a spiritual crisis of sorts arose in me. How should we have responded as a nation? I’ve always believed that it’s never too late to respond rightly, once we finally know how, because God is rich in mercy. September 11 affected our nation as a whole. Therefore, wouldn’t Jesus offer an invitation to the nation as a whole to find comfort in Him? In this pattern, our response to His invitation must also be national, as a whole.
What is the invitation of Jesus to America now in our generation? If He could give an altar call and invite us as a whole nation forward, what would that look like? It’s still not too late to respond to the invitation of Jesus. With Him, the most merciful Being in all of existence, it’s never too late.
Prior to September 11, we had already scheduled the Jesus Revolution team to be going to churches and schools in the Northeast of the country. Suddenly we found ourselves ministering to some who had known individuals who died that day and many whose sense of security had just been newly shattered.
That fall I saw firsthand how people responded swiftly with fresh decisions to change their lives, as the heart of the Northeast had been broken and soft before God in the wake of 9/11. Many, in deep repentance and tears, made decisions for Jesus and took a fresh look at the priorities of their lives. The temporal values of this world suddenly were giving way to what really mattered. Commitments were made to live for God and to reach out to those who didn’t know Him.
But that window of a softened heart seemed to close very quickly. By January of the following year it seemed that everything had gone back to normal. Well, things may have gone back to normal for most, but not for me. I was marked by it all. Maybe you share the same sentiment. Our national response to God on the heels of 9/11 left me wanting so much more. I just knew that we hadn’t responded as we should have. Perhaps it was because of my previous experience.
Before going to YWAM, my life had been transformed by Jesus because of friends who responded correctly to tragedy. In fact, this personal revival in the love of God is what led me into YWAM in the first place and into being open enough to hear God’s call for my life. Several youth from my county had started a home group Bible study that met on Tuesday nights. Then, one of them, Diana Sharp, died suddenly in a car accident just two months after they had begun this little fellowship. Her funeral was on a Tuesday morning. Fifty teens went forward to the altar and gave their lives to Jesus at her funeral. At the end of the funeral, Diana’s Tuesday Night Bible Study (TBS) friends had printed invitations to attend their meeting that week. One of those who attended was quoted as saying, “We just hung out, cried and prayed together.” What had begun as a simple Bible study turned into quite a move of God. TBS doubled in size that week of Diana’s funeral and didn’t stop growing for years.
Impact the culture of your generation by joining this worship led community in our nation’s capital city!
God is raising up a generation of worshipers who are in love with Jesus and who desire to see His name lifted high! Come and join us in our nation’s capitol as we bring an unceasing song of adoration to the one we love simply because He is worthy. Oh that our love for the man Christ Jesus would bind us together in strength and unity, that as we fix our gaze on Heaven, we could declare to this culture the worthiness of Christ.
Rev. 5:11-13
Then I heard the voices of many angels, the four living creatures, and the leaders surrounding the throne. They numbered ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands times thousands. In a loud voice they were singing,
“The lamb who was slain deserves to receive power, wealth, wisdom, strength, honor, glory, and praise.”
I heard every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth, and on the sea. Every creature in those places was singing,
“To the one who sits on the throne and to the lamb be praise, honor, glory, and power forever and ever.”
As a young man I set my sights on being a cross-cultural missionary to a people group somewhere in Asia. I went to Youth With A Mission (YWAM) for training for this purpose, but God had other plans. He called me out of Ezekiel 3:5 to my own house and my own people, the United States of America.
Poetically, ironically and perhaps divinely, my public ministry days started on September 11, 2001. Our itinerate YWAM ministry team was packing a van and trailer full of luggage and equipment that fateful morning when we received word that the first of the World Trade Center towers in New York City had been struck.
The name of that mobile ministry team was “The Jesus Revolution.” We had anchored our message in the concept that nation-changing revolutions happen because a critical mass of people believe in the promise of a better tomorrow and act upon that faith. We were simply declaring that the only revolution that brings true hope and true change is found in
Jesus Christ, when we embrace Him as our Lord and Savior in every area of our lives and reach out to love the world into doing the same. President Obama campaigned on these very same words, “hope and change,” seven years later, and I remember thinking to myself, “Those were the words we used with the Jesus Revolution team.” In true YWAM fashion, we were now preaching the simplest of messages, not pulling any punches — to know God and make Him known.
