Auburn University is the second-largest university in Alabama. Known for its football team and fierce cross-state rivalry with the University of Alabama, the school is making news these days for a completely different reason.

Some time ago, five girls began meeting on campus in Neville Arena to pray. Their group grew to two hundred students. Local ministries became involved and sponsored a worship event last week which around five thousand people attended.

Following the service, a student wanted to be baptized. Crowds then began gathering at a nearby lake, where roughly two hundred people gave their lives to Christ and were baptized. Auburn Tigers head football coach Hugh Freeze, a very public Christian, helped with the baptisms. Now other universities are calling to bring similar programs to their campuses.

One student said she had never seen anything like the mass baptism: “Never in my life. I was even talking to adults who were there that were a part of it, and they said that they had never witnessed anything like that.”

“A new spirit I will put within them”

Yesterday, we focused on the urgency of sharing God’s word with a nation that is sliding ever further from biblical morality. Today, let’s discuss the necessity of living in ways that are so different from our fallen culture as to be both distinctive and attractive.

God said of ancient Israel, “You have not walked in my statutes, nor obeyed my rules” (Ezekiel 11:12a). Rather, they “have acted according to the rules of the nations that are around you” (v. 12b). This is a grievous trajectory for God’s people since “what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God” (Luke 16:15).

Tragically, the vast majority of Americans do not believe that God is the Lord who sees and judges sin. If they think of him at all, they view him as benevolent and ambivalent, the object of their subject. But they are the object of his subject. God is not on trial—we are.

His transforming promise is our only hope: “I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God” (Ezekiel 11:19–20). Human words cannot change human hearts, but God’s Spirit, using God’s word as declared by God’s people, can change any heart today.

By contrast, “As for those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations, I will bring their deeds upon their own heads, declares the Lord Gᴏᴅ” (v. 21).

Three practical steps

As you can see, it is vital that God’s people live in a way that is distinctive from our fallen culture and yet attractive to those deceived by its lies. How can we do this?

First, decide that you want to be different.

God said of the sinful Roman Empire, “Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues; for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities” (Revelation 18:4–5).

Choose right now to “come out” from your sinfully broken society, whatever the cost.

Second, ask the Spirit to make you more like Christ than you have ever been.

When you asked Jesus to be your Lord, his Spirit took up residency in your life (1 Corinthians 3:16) and you became his “body” in the world (1 Corinthians 12:27). Oswald Chambers thus observed, “In our physical life Jesus has the same setting that he had on earth.” Now we must choose every day to be controlled and empowered by the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) as he conforms us to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29).

We are exhorted: “If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25).

Third, expose the dark to the light.

Paul told his fellow believers, “At one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord” (Ephesians 5:8a). Consequently, we are to “walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them” (vv. 8b–11).

Light has always defeated darkness (John 1:5) and always will.

“These words just changed everything for me”

In 2014, Trieste Belmont was struggling with depression and decided to end her life. As she stood atop a high bridge, she says, “I was sobbing and crying and working up the courage to just go through with it.” Then a person in a car behind her shouted, “Don’t jump.”

“Those words just changed everything for me,” she remembered. “Having a stranger care about me in my darkest time made it so that I didn’t jump, and it saved my life.”

She sought support and, with the help of her therapist, family, and friends, her mental health has since greatly improved. But she reflects on that moment as the catalyst for her life moving in an entirely new direction: “Something that I realized is that even if something’s not a huge moment in your life, just the little, small gestures that you can make for other people really do make a difference.”

Now consider the impact of sharing God’s life-giving word in the power of God’s transforming Spirit. And reflect on the urgency of giving this word to a broken culture on the path to moral ruin and divine judgment.

When confronted with this opportunity, Isaiah said to God, “Here I am! Send me” (Isaiah 6:8).

Will you say the same today?

Denison Forum

The number of people in the US living to at least one hundred years old has doubled over the last decade. Ask many centenarians their secret and they’ll credit their positive attitude. But David Watson, a professor emeritus of personality psychology at the University of Notre Dame, disagrees: “I think the effects of just being positive are overrated.”

Dr. Watson claims that the trait most related to longevity is conscientiousness, or being organized and disciplined. This is likely because conscientious people are better at taking care of themselves with regard to eating habits, healthy behaviors, and safe activities.

I wonder if the same trait is vital to the longevity of a nation.

USA Today is reporting that school shootings have hit an all-time high for the second year in a row. The 2021–22 school year saw more than twice the shootings of the previous year, which was itself the highest in two decades. Unsurprisingly, Gen Z (people between nine and twenty-four years old) are struggling with their mental health; only 15 percent said their mental health was excellent, compared with 52 percent of millennials who said the same a decade ago.

Here’s another window into our societal psyche: only 26 percent of Americans are optimistic about the future of the family. And no wonder: only 23 percent believe being married is important to living a fulfilling life, compared to 71 percent who point to “having a job or career they enjoy.” In addition, 58 percent believe a married gay or lesbian couple raising children together is “acceptable”; 53 percent say the same about an unmarried gay or lesbian couple raising children.

The Lord said of ancient Israel, “My people did not listen to my voice” (Psalm 81:11), “so I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels” (v. 12). And we know how that turned out.

“These great pillars of human happiness”

President George Washington laid the cornerstone of the US Capitol building on this day in 1793. He had already helped to lay the cultural cornerstone of our new nation; in his First Inaugural Address, for example, he paid homage to the “Almighty Being who rules over the universe; who presides in the counsels of nations; and whose providential aids can supply every human defect.” He then said of his fellow Americans, “Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.”

Washington would later declare in his “Farewell Address,” “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.”

What would our first president think of the “dispositions and habits” of political culture today?

More to the point, what does God?

He said of ancient Israel, “I know the things that come into your mind” (Ezekiel 11:5) and thus knew that “you have not walked in my statutes, nor obeyed my rules” (v. 12). He said of the first-century Roman Empire, “with the wine of sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk” (Revelation 17:2). He warned the superpowers of the day: “Behold, I am bringing punishment on the king of Babylon and his land, as I punished the king of Assyria” (Jeremiah 50:18).

What was true then is true today: “No creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:13). Americans included.

“To follow truth, and thus to follow thee”

The good news is that the good news of the gospel is still “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16). Billy Graham was right: “One of the Bible’s greatest truths is that our lives can be different. No matter what our past has been, Christ stands ready to forgive and cleanse us—and then to make us new.”

This is because “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). This is not our work but God’s transforming miracle: “All this is from God, who through Christ has reconciled us to himself” (v. 18). Now we are “ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us” (v. 20).

To this end, let’s close by making John White Chadwick’s hymn our prayer:

Eternal Ruler of the ceaseless round
Of circling planets singing on their way;
Guide of the nations from the night profound
Into the glory of the perfect day;
Rule in our hearts, that we may ever be
Guided and strengthened and upheld by thee.

We would be one in hatred of all wrong,
One in our love of all things sweet and fair,
One with the joy that breaketh into song,
One with the grief that trembles into prayer,
One in the power that makes thy children free
To follow truth, and thus to follow thee.

O clothe us with thy heavenly armor, Lord,
Thy trusty shield, thy sword of love divine:
Our inspiration be thy constant word;
We ask no victories that are not thine.
Give or withhold, let pain or pleasure be;
Enough to know that we are serving thee.

Is serving Christ enough for you today?

Denison Forum