The world today no longer accepts a belief system rooted in tradition and complacency, that is, “doing church” the way we’ve always done it. The next generation will either see the power of God working in their lives in real, tangible ways, or they’ll have no use for our message and no interest in following our Savior.
The days of stale denominations filled with lukewarm believers are over. The ones that aren’t already dead and buried soon will be. I feel sorry that they will never experience the joy of reaching the world for Jesus and seeing what he could do through and in them as a church body if they would only open up and allow him.
But I’m not discouraged, because I’ve seen the future of the body of Christ, and it’s an exciting one. God is doing a work today in the hearts of young people that is as real and dynamic as any revival in recorded history. Every day my ministry takes me into the lives of inner-city kids, the most unreachable souls in our society. These kids are as hard and angry and lost as any group on earth. Yet our message is getting through to them. The walls are coming down. They are coming to Christ in great numbers, and when they do, their newfound faith is genuine and life-changing.
Many of these kids become our most powerful and effective evangelists. The Holy Spirit burns within them like a furnace, a raging holy fire in their souls, just waiting to explode upon the world. God is loosing his Spirit on these kids in magnificent ways and they’re turning their worlds upside down.
What would happen if every believer in this country caught that kind of passion and vision? What if we allowed God’s Spirit to release his power in our lives as he has in the lives of these kids? If we did so, the world would never be the same!
Nicky Cruz, internationally known evangelist and prolific author, turned to Jesus Christ from a life of violence and crime after meeting David Wilkerson in New York City in 1958. The story of his dramatic conversion was told first in The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson and then later in his own best-selling book Run, Baby, Run.