Winds of Change

There are some people that are good at spotting trends. My daughter is that way. It seemed that when she was a teenager, she was able to identify and be the first to embrace emerging fashion trends. That of course meant that she was a little “ahead of the curve” sometimes -- wearing colors, belts or even hats before they were “in”. She really didn’t seem to mind making a fashion statement a little before things became popular with her friends or the general population.

The ability to keenly identify change before it is fully recognized by the rest of the populace is a great asset and something many would aspire to have. In the world of big business, people like Bill Gates, Michael Dell and even Donald Trump have had great financial success because they were able to identify a growing trend in the general population and jumped in to capitalize on it in business.

We call these changes that appear on the scene “trends” and the people that identify and quickly embrace these trends “trendsetters”. When the winds of change are in the air, people that are alert to such changes pick up almost intuitively that things are changing and are better prepared to react and either embrace or resist the change.

In the spiritual realm, there are also times when there are “Winds of Change”. If we use the general term “trends” regarding these changes we will be apt to miss the true significance of what may be actually happening. Often what prognosticators consider to be religious trends may in fact be a movement that is ordained by the Holy Spirit. For example, we can look at recent phenomena such as the popularity of Rick Warren’s “Purpose Driven Life”, which has sold over 18 million copies, as just a trend towards spiritual self-help books. The success of conservative political viewpoints in politics could be attributed to the growing alliance between right-wing religious activists and fiscal conservatives. Or we could look at the growth of the mega churches which are typically culturally relevant and often independent non-denominational churches and categorize these phenomena as nothing more than the general trend towards large box, one-stop solutions to everyday needs similar to the growth of Wall-Mart and Best Buy.

If we think of these changes as simply a part of our popular culture we are apt to miss the more spiritual significance. On the spiritual side of our culture, we categorize these large developing trends that are breathed by the Holy Spirit as movements and occasionally even revivals.

Spiritual movements in general and revivals in particular are of great interests to religious historians and theologians. I am neither, so I will not even attempt to define the requirements of a true revival. I can tell you however that there are definite Winds of Change. People are being called to faith in Christ in record numbers and in many different ways, in many different venues and in the most unlikely places. If you study the numbers that people like George Barna provide us, the common denominator among those churches and Para-church organizations that are growing and appearing in greater number in the United States are two things: The first is a deep abiding faith in the God of the Bible and the second is a heart for changed lives.

The wind of change that I see is a growing number of people that are completely surrendered to God. They, like the Apostle Paul are “dead to self”, Paul said it best, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by Faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20). I daily thank God that I am meeting people in all walks of life that are “dead to self”. These are people that are only interested in serving God. They are sometimes in ministry but often are employed elsewhere. Together, regardless of their occupation are fully convinced of the reality of the Kingdom of God and they understand that their primary purpose in life is to serve God.

The Wind of Change is in the air.