Is God Calling the Church to Awaken for the 250th Anniversary?

In the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah saw the Lord.

It was a season pregnant with change, crisis, and opportunity. The old order was passing away. Stability was crumbling. The future was uncertain. And in that liminal moment—that space between what was and what would be—Heaven broke open and the prophet encountered God in ways that would define the rest of his life and ministry.

We are living in such an era. A kairos moment of divine opportunity.

In a moment in history when top cultural influencers are asking great questions about God, the Christian faith, the reliability of the Scriptures, and the validity of the Resurrection. In a day when secular headlines are amplifying the word Revival. In an hour where there is a deep hunger for the supernatural and spiritual, even among those who have rejected organized religion.

This is certainly a kairos moment. Kairos is a Greek word that speaks of a divine invitation that demands to be seized by those of us who claim Christ as Messiah and Lord. It’s not chronos time—the tick-tock of clocks and calendars. It’s God’s time—the moment when Heaven invades Earth, when eternity breaks into history, when everything hangs in the balance and a choice must be made.

We must be like the sons of Issachar in the Old Testament. Describing this Hebraic tribe, Scripture records: “Of Issachar, men who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do…” (1 Chronicles 12:32 ESV). Bestselling author and prayer leader Dutch Sheets puts it this way: “When you know what time it is, you know what to do.”

So I ask you: What time is it for America?

I believe we are truly at a crossroads moment. Just today, while writing this concluding chapter, I had a conversation with a dear friend and ministry colleague, Tommy Evans, who always has a prophetic ear tuned to Heaven. He communicated a startling but hard truth: “Set before us are two options: A Third Great Awakening or A Third World War.”

Let that sink in. Two divergent paths. Two possible futures. And perhaps—just perhaps—we have some choice in the matter. If we have any agency in determining which direction we shift into, then we must call the Body of Christ in the West to seize the moment we are in and go full throttle for awakening.

The River is rising. The question is: Will we step in?

From Encounter to Assignment

Will we say, like Isaiah, “Here I am, send me”? Or will we stand on the banks, spectators to what God is doing, missing our moment because we were waiting for someone else to go first?

Notice the pattern in Isaiah’s story. The encounter came first, the throne room, the seraphim, the overwhelming presence of a holy God. Then came the purification, the burning coal touching his lips, removing his guilt, atoning for his sin. And only after the encounter and the cleansing did the assignment come: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”

This is the divine order. Encounter leads to purification. Purification leads to commissioning. And commissioning releases us into our divine destiny.

Too many believers are trying to fulfill an assignment they’ve never received from an encounter they’ve never had. They’re operating from duty instead of devotion, from religious obligation instead of burning conviction. But God’s design has always been the same: those who see Him are the ones He sends. Those who meet Him in the fire become voices of fire.

This is how every great awakening in history has begun, not with programs or strategies, but with individuals who had trans-formative encounters with God that deployed them into their divine destinies and assignments. Jonathan Edwards in his study. Charles Finney in the woods. William Seymour in prayer. These were ordinary people who met the living God and were sent forth with power, boldness, and supernatural courage to change the world.

The same is true for you. You have a divine destiny. There is an assignment with your name on it. A sphere you were designed to influence. An expression of that holy flame that only you can carry to the places God is sending you. But in order to answer that call, in order to connect your personal encounter with Heaven’s assignment on your life, we must first understand what we’re being filled FOR.

For too long, salvation has been reduced to an escape plan, a ticket out of Earth and into an eternity somewhere else. But our idea of “going to” Heaven needs to be adjusted. The question is not how to escape Earth and get to Heaven, it’s how to bring Heaven to Earth.

All creation is moving toward a final outcome: new resurrected bodies, New Heavens, a New Earth, and New Creation. Everything is not moving toward planet Earth being blown up like the villainous Death Star in Star Wars, but renewed and transfigured.

If we have an end-times vision of God desiring to destroy Earth, the goal of our salvation will be evacuation. After all, we don’t want to get overly entangled with a planet that God seeks to destroy. But Heaven is not seeking to bring the world to ruin; it’s coming to bring renewal. Even the judgment and wrath activity in the book of Revelation is aimed at purifying Earth, not demolishing it.

The Cross was never about evacuation; it was about occupation.

And this changes everything about how we understand revival, the fire’s purpose, and the destiny of America. Jesus died not only to cleanse us from sin and reconcile us to the Father, but to make us vessels of His presence on Earth. The fire of His holy presence burns within us not simply for private devotion but to make us conduits of Heaven wherever we go.

When we grasp this, we understand why awakening matters for nations and not just for souls. Revival isn’t just about getting more people saved so they can escape a doomed planet, it’s about filling Earth with the glory of God through a people who carry His presence into every sphere of society.

This is what made America great in the first place. It wasn’t Christians retreating into holy huddles, isolating themselves from culture while waiting for the rapture. It was revived believers flooding every sphere with moral clarity, biblical conviction, and the transforming presence of God. Awakened hearts led to awakened communities. Reformed individuals led to reformed institutions. And reformed institutions created a culture where righteousness could flourish.

The vast majority of those meeting the Lord in this urgent hour are not being saved to warm pews, they are being deployed. They are going to be sent into the spheres of education, finance, economics, business, government, politics, media, entertainment, law, science, medicine, healthcare, parenting, and beyond. They are not being saved to sit in church buildings waiting for the rapture. They are being filled with Holy Spirit fire so they can flood the culture with Heaven’s reality.

We Are God’s New Temple People

This is why the fire now flows through people instead of buildings. The shift Jesus announced in John 7 was more than theological; it was strategic. Theologian N.T. Wright explains it like this: “The living God does not want to be housed in a temple of stone but wants to dwell in and flow through His new temple people.”

Because the Cross was about occupation, because Jesus came to fill the earth with His glory through His body, the Church, you are now the dwelling place of God. You are the new temple. You carry the fire of His glorious presence. And where you go, the fire of God burns, shifts, and transforms. It’s a burning unto renewal and transformation, not destruction or desolation.

That is why revival is possible anywhere. It is not dependent on a famous preacher, a large platform, or a specific location. Revival lives inside you, because the Spirit lives in you. The same fire that brought the First Great Awakening to colonial America, the same fire that swept through streets and fields during the Second Great Awakening, the same fire that fell at Azusa Street and introduced Pentecostalism, that fire is in you right now.

And this is the pattern we’ve seen again and again in America’s awakenings: the fire falls, hearts are revived, communities are awakened, and the moral conscience of the nation is renewed. America’s goodness has always been a direct result of the Church being filled with God’s presence and releasing it into culture.

When the Church loses that presence, when the fire is smothered by religion, compromise, or an evacuation mentality, the nation loses its moral compass. But when the fire burns freely through God’s people, everything changes.

America is great because America is good. America is good when the Church is filled with God’s presence. And the Church is filled when pulpits flame with righteousness, when ordinary people carrying a consuming fire step into their moment and let Heaven speak.

Here’s what you must understand: pulpits are not confined to church buildings. Your pulpit might be a social media platform where millions hear your voice. It might be a PTA board where you advocate for truth in education. It might be a city council meeting where you stand for righteousness in local government. It might be a classroom, a boardroom, a hospital room, or your own living room. Wherever you have influence, you have a pulpit. Wherever you have a voice, you have an assignment.