I have been following with great interest the spiritual revival that is currently taking place at Asbury University in Kentucky.

In case you are unaware, the students met for their regular Wednesday morning chapel service on February 8th and they are still meeting. I am seeing pictures on social media and reports that students, faculty, and people from the community are coming and going while all participating in prayer, worship, and Scripture reading. Some are calling it a season of repentance, confession, and salvation. One eyewitness said, the altar is wet from tears.

Some pictures and videos show the 1500 seat chapel full to capacity. If one looks closely across those in attendance, it’s clear that although this is a large corporate event, those in attendance are individually occupied with prayer as if they are the only ones present. Some are focused on the open Bible on their laps, others appear lost in songs of worship, and many are obviously engaged in deep personal prayer.

I must admit, when I first heard that Asbury University was in revival, I was most interested in seeing just what that looks like.

After seeing the pictures and watching the videos coming out of this revival, what strikes me most is what is absent.

There is no hype from the platform, no worship singers engaged in any type of emotional persuasiveness, and no one is running up and down the aisles.

One professor wrote on his social media account that he had a 10-minute window in his schedule to stop in and see it for himself. He explained having an almost supernatural sense of peace and loss of time or care about getting back to work. In fact, he said he ended up staying over an hour.

At some point I began to wonder what the chapel speaker said or did to set off this revival, so I found the video recording of it. I hate to say this, but I wasn’t impressed. Nothing dynamic or earth shaking, nothing grabbed me about that chapel that I could single out as the starting flame of this revival fire.

I am just struck by the primitive approach of prayer and repentance as the mark of this revival. I found even the worship songs being sung to be thoughtful and without flashy lights or hyped up atmosphere.

For some reason this revival reminds me of the account from Matthew 26:40 when Jesus said to his disciples, “Could ye not watch with me one hour?” It has me thinking of this because I am starting to think the real spark of this revival is simply a group of students who actually watched one hour with Jesus in prayer.

There is a revival at Asbury University now because some students obeyed the conviction of the Holy Spirit on their hearts to tarry with Jesus in prayer.

So as I continue to be encouraged by reports coming out of Asbury University, I am also asking myself, Why can’t we see this across other institutions and even churches?

I realize that there are reports of other Christian colleges starting to catch the revival spirit in their chapels but if the secret to revival is a simple commitment to prayer, Why can’t we all find revival for our own souls and within our own communities?

The more I see what God is doing at Asbury University, the more I long for Him to do it with me.