A Devotional Reflection
There’s something electric in the air on college campuses across America. And it isn’t the hum of political protest or the drone of another mandatory diversity seminar. It’s something older, deeper, and infinitely more powerful. It is the unmistakable sound of young men and women waking up — and turning their faces toward God.
If you were watching GAP26 this evening, you felt it too. Young moderators — poised, articulate, full of conviction — stepping forward not with the jaded cynicism we’ve been told defines their generation, but with clarity, purpose, and a maturity that made many of us catch our breath. They were, as someone wisely put it, a breath of fresh air. And they were a sign.
The Generation They Said Was Lost
For years we’ve been handed a narrative: Gen Z is spiritually hollow. They were raised on screens, shaped by algorithms, and handed a worldview assembled by institutions that left no room for the transcendent. The architects of that worldview — the tenured skeptics, the campus activists, the social engineers — were confident they had sealed the deal. Science had replaced wonder. Ideology had replaced faith. The church was a relic.
But God has a way of confounding the confident.
“Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” — Romans 5:20
The very generation that was supposed to abandon faith altogether is producing some of the most passionate, intellectually serious young believers this country has seen in decades. They have looked at the empty promises of a life without God — the anxiety, the purposelessness, the moral confusion — and they are saying, no thank you. They are searching. And they are finding.
The Revivals We Almost Missed
It began making headlines that the mainstream press didn’t quite know what to do with. In February 2023, a routine chapel service at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky simply… didn’t stop. Students stayed. They worshipped. They wept. They confessed. They prayed through the night, and then another night, and then another. Word spread on the very social media platforms that were supposed to be instruments of secularization, and young people drove hours — from across the country — just to be in the room.
Asbury was not an isolated tremor. Similar outpourings were reported at universities from Texas to Virginia, at secular campuses and Christian ones alike. Campus ministries like Cru, InterVarsity, and Young Life are reporting surging attendance. Young people are filling church pews, downloading sermons, reading their Bibles — not because their parents made them, but because something in them is hungry for what the world simply cannot provide.
The world offers them identity politics and tells them to find themselves. But you cannot find yourself by looking inward. You find yourself by looking upward.
What They’re Rejecting
Part of what makes this generation’s faith remarkable is what they are consciously walking away from. Many of these young believers grew up being told — in classrooms, in media, in the cultural water they swam in — that Christianity was intellectually embarrassing, morally backward, and historically shameful. They were handed the arguments. They were given the talking points. Some of them parroted those talking points for years.
And then they did something their teachers didn’t expect: they thought for themselves.
They read the thinkers the curriculum skipped. They encountered the historical case for the Resurrection. They wrestled with C.S. Lewis and found they couldn’t dismiss him. They read Augustine and discovered that the restlessness they felt had a name — and a remedy. They looked at the secular progressive vision for human flourishing and found it couldn’t bear the weight of real human suffering, real human longing, or real human hope.
“The heart is restless until it rests in Thee.” — Augustine of Hippo
They discovered that the emperor had no clothes. That a worldview built on the assumption that nothing is sacred, nothing is permanent, and nothing ultimately matters is not liberation — it is a cage dressed up in the language of freedom.
The Courage It Takes
Make no mistake: for a young person on most American college campuses today, choosing faith is not the path of least resistance. It can cost friendships. It can draw mockery from professors and peers. It can mean standing in a classroom and respectfully but firmly disagreeing with a narrative that the institution has decided is settled.
That is not weakness. That is extraordinary courage.
And we should say so loudly. The young men and women standing up for truth — in lecture halls, in dorm rooms, on social media, on platforms like the one we watched tonight — deserve our admiration, our prayer, and our support. They are not fighting yesterday’s battles. They are engaging the intellectual and spiritual questions of this moment with intelligence and grace.
They are proof that the Holy Spirit is not bound by demographic surveys.
What This Means for the Rest of Us
For those of us who are older in the faith, this moment is a call to two things: prayer and humility.
Prayer, because what God is stirring in this generation is fragile in the way all new growth is fragile. It needs cultivation. It needs the church to be worthy of the searching hearts that find their way through its doors. It needs mentors who will disciple without crushing, who will answer hard questions without flinching, and who will model a faith that holds up under pressure.
And humility, because we did not engineer this. We did not market our way to revival. We did not out-strategize the opposition. God moved — as God always moves — according to His own purposes, in His own timing, among people the world had counted out.
That is the character of revival. It always surprises the experts. It always embarrasses the cynics. It always exceeds what the faithful dared to hope for.
A Word of Encouragement
If you are a young person reading this — if you are one of the ones feeling that pull, that hunger, that sense that there must be something more than what the prevailing culture is selling — listen to it. That hunger is not weakness. It is not naivety. It is your soul doing exactly what it was made to do: seeking the One who made it.
The world will tell you that faith is a retreat from reason. Do not believe it. The greatest minds in human history — Augustine, Aquinas, Pascal, Newton, Lewis, Chesterton — found in Christ not the end of their thinking, but the foundation that made thinking possible.
The world will tell you that the Christian story is over, that history has moved on, that God is an artifact of a less enlightened age. Do not believe that either. History has heard that announcement before. It has always been premature.
The fire is rising. And the most exciting generation of believers in recent memory is just getting started.
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” — Romans 12:2
Inspired by the young voices of GAP26 and the generation choosing truth over comfort.
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My Books, Workbooks, and Fun Books
Knowing the Unknowable One
Opening the Treasure Chest
Walking Heart-to-Heart with God
Walking Heart-to-Heart with Each Other
Fighting the Good Fight of Faith
Christian Mysteries: Why I Love Them!
List of Some Nonfiction Books You Don’t Want to Miss
Index of Assorted Topics