February 24th Devotion

It’s Time to Change Course
Greg Laurie

Will You not revive us again, that Your people may rejoice in You? (Psalm 85:6 NKJV)

The United States of America is at a crossroads. Our nation is unraveling before our very eyes because we have rejected what God says in His Word. The closest parallel to today that I can think of would be the 1960s and early 1970s.

I was born in 1952. Elvis was still singing, Marilyn Monroe was on the screen, and Ike was president. Of course, decades have come and gone since then, but when I look at the young generation of today, it reminds me a lot of what was happening during my youth.

We have a drug epidemic sweeping our nation. We have 300 fentanyl deaths every day. This drug revolution started in the 1960s, propagated by the mentality of turn on, tune in, drop out. We basically smoked a lot of marijuana and took LSD.

Ironically, those are also the two most popular drugs right now. Marijuana use is up, so much so that more people smoke pot than cigarettes. And in the wake of many states legalizing it, experts have warned of a cannabis use disorder that causes psychosis and addiction.

Now add social media to all these things our young people are dealing with, and it’s like pouring gasoline on a fire. It amplifies everything. Self-harm among young people is up 334 percent. The suicide rate in the United States has increased 30 percent since 2000 and has tripled for young girls. This generation needs help.

As believers, we should commit to doing anything we can to change this course, call people to Christ, and pray for a mighty spiritual awakening to sweep our nation and beyond.

Now, we don’t decide when a revival happens. God does. We can’t organize it, but we can agonize for it in prayer. We can get our hearts ready. Revival starts with you. It starts with me. It starts with us as the church. And it begins right where we are.