The power of predictions and the urgency of revival
Warren Buffett is retiring at the end of the year. This is the headline news from his company’s annual shareholders meeting Saturday, but there’s more to know.
According to Forbes, Buffett is worth $168.2 billion. His company, Berkshire Hathaway, ended March 2025 with $347.7 billion on hand. Over the last year, his company’s stock rose 33.9 percent, compared with 12.3 percent for the S&P 500. All that to say, when Buffett discusses the economy, people listen.
Tens of thousands of them, in fact.
At Saturday’s annual meeting in Omaha, people came from around the world to hear the ninety-four-year-old investment guru. He stated that “balanced trade is good for the world” and that “trade should not be a weapon,” but he also urged patience to investors worried about the future. “People have emotions,” Buffett said. “You’ve got to check them at the door when you invest.”
Nothing happening today has changed his long-term optimism about the US. He observed that “we’re always in the process of change” and added, “If I were being born today, I would just keep negotiating in the womb until they said, ‘You could be in the United States.’”
Following this story over the weekend prompted me to reflect on the power predictions have to become reality and the significance of this power for our souls and society.
Why yesterday was Star Wars Day
In case you missed it, Sunday was Star Wars Day (“May the Fourth be with you”), bringing us a host of quotes from the iconic film series. One of the most memorable comes from Return of the Jedi, when Obi-Wan Kenobi famously told Luke Skywalker, “Many of the truths that we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.”
While I disagree strongly with the underlying postmodern claim that there are no absolute truths (which is an absolute truth claim, by the way), Obi-Wan was right: when we act on our perceptions, we thus turn them into reality.
For example, when an investor like Warren Buffett encourages us to have faith in America and we therefore continue to invest in the country, our economy improves and our belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Of course, it helps when the object of our faith is worthy of it. You can sincerely take the wrong road and become lost, or take the wrong medicine and die.
Churches so full they turned people away
Consider Gen Z (adults ages eighteen to twenty-seven), in many ways the future of our society. Many have sincerely placed their faith in secularism, which contributes to their lack of flourishing today. A new study found, as the New York Times reports, that young adults are struggling “not only with happiness, but also with their physical and mental health, their perceptions of their own character, finding meaning in life, the quality of their relationships, and their financial security.”
However, in response to the loneliness epidemic and a loss of trust in the establishment, large numbers of young adults—and young men in particular—are turning to the Savior rather than secularism. In the UK, the number of young men attending church services has increased fivefold, and fourfold for young women. Gen Z adults are the most likely group to report an increase in Bible reading.
This trend is continuing across all demographics. Many churches in Great Britain were so full on Easter Sunday that they had to turn people away. Seventeen thousand people were baptized in France over the Easter weekend.
Once again, we are learning to pray with St. Augustine, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
“You have been set free from sin”
The key to experiencing genuine revival in our souls and our society is making the right spiritual decisions that become reality when we choose them.
In Romans 6, Paul taught that “the death [Jesus] died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God” (v. 10). Consequently, “you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (v. 11). Consider translates a Greek word meaning to “appraise, reckon, believe to be true.”
When we make this determination that we are “dead to sin,” we are empowered to make these choices as well:
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace (vv. 12–14).
We can choose godliness over sin because “you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God” (v. 22a). You have been set free describes a completed action. The consequence of this fact “leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life” (v. 22b).
As St. Augustine observed, because of the Fall we were non posse non peccare, “not able not to sin.” But because of the transforming grace of Christ, we are now posse non peccare, “able not to sin.” The choice is ours.
If we believe Satan’s lie that we are sinners doomed to sin, we make his deception our reality. If we believe God’s assurance that we are “dead to sin” and can choose godliness with the help of God, we make his promise our reality.
There is no sin we must commit. To the contrary, “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).
Paul testified, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). You have the opportunity and ability to choose the same reality today.
“The only reason we don’t have revival”
Imagine the impact on our souls if each of America’s Christians chose to see ourselves as “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” and lived with true godliness by the help of God. Imagine the impact on our broken society. Imagine the revival that would come to our families, churches, and culture.
You can choose this reality for yourself today.
Leonard Ravenhill observed,
“The only reason we don’t have revival is because we are willing to live without it!”
Are you?
Quote for the day:
“Revival will come to us and within us when we really want it, when we pay the price.” —A. W. Tozer
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