As an aging octogenarian, I resonate with every word of this remarkable video. It is relevant to every age group. You probably have aging people in your horizon, and whatever age you are, you too are aging!
My parents refused to let me ride it in the dark, so I went to sleep with it in my bed.
The next morning, I nudged the rooster to crow, and for the next two weeks, I was glued to that bike until bedtime. Then school started, and I had to share my biking hours with my school desk.
The best Christmas gift I can recall was my first bicycle at age five. In our German tradition, we received gifts on Christmas Eve and had to wait until after dark. It is summer in South Africa in December, so somewhere around 9 p.m., I finally got MY BIKE.
The rush of adrenaline, the novelty, the sense of wonder, the exploration, and the joy—all were stolen from me by the hard reality and tediousness of school. I entered what might be called a midlife crisis with regard to my bicycle.
Middle age in your pilgrimage follows the same pattern: excitement, exuberance, energy, and enthusiasm. Everything is new and thrilling. Then you get to know almost everything, and you realize the walk with Christ is not a casual stroll along the shores of the lake with free picnics and thrilling crowds; it requires selflessness and discipline.
My parents refused to let me ride it in the dark, so I went to sleep with it in my bed.
The next morning, I nudged the rooster to crow, and for the next two weeks, I was glued to that bike until bedtime. Then school started, and I had to share my biking hours with my school desk.
The rush of adrenaline, the novelty, the sense of wonder, the exploration, and the joy—all were stolen from me by the hard reality and tediousness of school. I entered what might be called a midlife crisis with regard to my bicycle.
Middle age in your pilgrimage follows the same pattern: excitement, exuberance, energy, and enthusiasm. Everything is new and thrilling. Then you get to know almost everything, and you realize the walk with Christ is not a casual stroll along the shores of the lake with free picnics and thrilling crowds; it requires selflessness and discipline.
When the Wonder Wears Off
The wonder of God’s love is breathtaking, but you can only hold your breath for so long, and after a while, the edge wears off. School starts. Ouch! Many drop out here entirely.
A middle-age crisis is a dangerous time. Weariness and dullness take hold, and one loses interest. Many abandon the pilgrimage at this point, so it is essential to know the symptoms and take urgent corrective measures.
A Cry for Renewal
This is the crisis Habakkuk addresses. “In the midst of the years revive; in the midst of the years make known”
The repetition is significant; it is the way Hebrew emphasizes something. If you want to say the Grand Canyon, Hebrew would say, “the Canyon Canyon”. It is a crisis of a crisis, a rut that differs from a grave merely in depth.
Right Standing With God
Habakkuk continues: “…the person in right standing before God, through loyal and steady believing, is fully alive—really alive” (The Message). We need an upgrade.
Rediscovering the Ride
In my sixties, I bought another bicycle! The freedom to explore returned. It was still exuberant, but the decades had brought a new perspective. I was no longer enamored by the bike itself, but by the journey.
New destinations continually beckoned me. My limited walking radius of three miles an hour was instantly enlarged to a world of possibilities at ten-plus miles an hour. I rode with a smile of pure delight.
Electrified Living
Then came the innovation of an electric bike! A new wonder gripped me as new possibilities and options opened up. Suddenly, I wasn’t just working harder—I was going further.
This is the exact connotation of what it means to be “revived”. The way forward is simpler than you may imagine. The answer is not simply: “Work harder. Grit your teeth and continue with sheer determination”. If that is your strategy, you will burn out before the horizon. The answer is to “electrify” your experience.
A Marriage Awakens
Marriage provides a vivid illustration. Flying back from a speaking engagement, I began thinking about my marriage. It was in a midlife crisis. Seven years in, with two small children one year apart, a very busy solo pastorate with many teaching, administrative, and pastoral duties did not leave much time or energy.
How could I revive the fire?
I began to reflect, and soon I was filled with gratitude. She was beautiful, kind, wise, generous, loyal, and humorous. Then I tried to recall all the special moments of joy we shared. Then I challenged myself to stand in her shoes and appreciate what she did routinely that I was overlooking.
What could she do that I was unable to do? What could I learn from her?
I began to hunger to know her at a deeper level than the simple chemistry and hormones that had so vividly promoted our early passion. That original passion was ecstatic in its novelty, but it had grown stale because there were no new expectations.
The Power of Spiritual Electricity
You must start that same process with your thinking about God:
Start exploring His “hiddenness”.
Express gratitude for things He has done and is doing.
Cultivate curiosity – find people and read books that stoke your passion.
In short, get back on your bike—but with a different intention and a gifted energy.
Jesus gives us the blueprint for this spiritual electricity in Luke 11: “Ask, Seek, Knock”. The verbs are in the present continuous tense: “keep on, never stop, and always be asking, seeking, and knocking”. Practice it until, like riding a bicycle, wobbly at first, but ultimately requires no thinking, your response to life is to connect with God in every situation.
What are we seeking? The Holy Spirit. He is the electric energy of your spiritual experience. He doesn’t replace your pedaling; He elevates it to new possibilities.
Your Discovery Awaits
To start that stoking process, I challenge you to explore the dynamic the Holy Spirit brings to your own experience.
Remember: Eternity is the horizon. It will NEVER be boring.
Mount Everest continues to rise about ¼ inch (5 mm) a year due to a massive, ongoing “tectonic smashup” between two tectonic plates: the Indian Plate and the Eurasian Plate. The region is prone toJustification by faith is more than a doctrine; it is a seismic event. It is the moment human effort is swallowed up by divine grace. continuing earthquakes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4WLHIUU2uU&t=7s
Justification by faith is a tectonic smashup between the grace of God and human arrogance. This contrast is clearly surfaced in the difficulties in prayer: unanswered as well as answers not to my agenda. (Habakkuk:1-2:5) Human arrogance demands God do what an arrogant human desires. (The many who testify they tested God and he failed them highlight the matter.) Specifically 2:4 “Look at that man, bloated by self-importance— full of himself but soul-empty. But the person in right standing before God through loyal and steady believing is fully alive, really alive.” (The Message)
Paul and the Shock Within Judaism
Paul was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, indicating a brand of fussy obedience that was all enveloping. Friendship with God cannot be earned. It is offered as a gift to be accepted. The obverse side to this coin is a pernicious human perception that God requires performance for acceptance. Here is an historical trajectory of the performance model: The Torah, the five books attributed to Moses, were analyzed to contain 613 commandments. The Talmud (which came after Paul) demonstrates where this led: a 63-volume “instruction manual” that explains the 613 details in depth. It is like the tax code of the USA” The “page count” of the U.S. tax code is a moving target because it depends entirely on whether you are looking at the literal laws passed by Congress or the massive library of regulations required to actually follow those laws.As of 2026, here is the breakdown of the length of the tax code:If you only count the actual Internal Revenue Code (Title 26 of the U.S. Code) as published by the government, it is approximately 6,800 to 7,000 pages.
Paul recognized that it was impossible to be scrupulous enough. His discovery that God declared a person righteous, or justified, based on faith in the doing and dying of Jesus in his place, was a tectonic shift with continuing impact. Harking back to the revelation made to Habakkuk, he found that accepting the gift of God, offered freely, was pivotal in friendship with God. Mount Everest, after all, is still rising!
Luther and the Shock Within the Church
More than a thousand years later, the same idea shook Europe.
The medieval church had developed a complex system of penance, sacramental participation, and religious effort. Many believers lived with deep anxiety about whether they had done enough to satisfy God’s perfection. All who were sincere in seeking God lived with quiet anxiety: had they done enough to satisfy God’s perfection?
Martin Luther certainly tried. Reflecting on his years as a monk, he wrote, “If ever a monk got to heaven by monkery, I should have been that monk.”
Despite his scrupulous observance, he was wracked by doubt. He thought a pilgrimage to The Holy City would resolve his crisis of faith. Luther ascended the 28 marble steps (which tradition says were the steps Jesus climbed to face Pontius Pilate) on his knees. On each individual step, he stopped to recite the “Our Father” (Pater Noster) and, according to some accounts, kissed the steps where he believed he saw stains of Christ’s blood. Instead of feeling the spiritual peace or “certainty” he expected, he reportedly stood up and thought (or whispered), “Who knows if it is true?” Maybe God requires a 100 steps, and/or a Pater Noster and a Hail Mary on each step? How do we satisfy perfection?
While teaching the Epistle to the Romans, Luther came to understand that righteousness before God was not something earned but something given through faith. This realization became the shock that led to the Protestant Reformation. The chain from Habakkuk to Paul gained another link,
The discovery of “justification by faith” brought profound personal relief to Luther and soon spread across Europe. This shift was a geopolitical seismic event: when the established Church in Rome collided with these simplified Biblical truths, the resulting “shockwaves” permanently fractured the monolithic religious landscape, forcing a complete reordering of the map of Europe.
Wesley and the Shock of Methodism Two centuries later, the same truth again changed a life—with far-reaching consequences.
John Wesley devoted himself to rigorous discipline and the pursuit of holiness. Yet he lacked assurance about his standing with God. That insecurity was exposed during his 1735 voyage to Georgia.
Mid-Atlantic, a storm so violent struck, that even the experienced sailors were terrified.. Waves crashed over the deck, sails tore apart, and passengers panicked, certain they would die. Wesley, though a devout Anglican priest, found himself afraid—without the calm confidence he thought he possessed.
In stark contrast, a group of Moravians calmly sang hymns through the chaos. When Wesley later asked if they had been afraid, their answer was simple: they were not—even their children faced death without fear.
The moment unsettled him deeply. Wesley realized he had religion, but not assurance. His faith was disciplined and sincere, yet lacked the settled trust he saw in them.
The storm did not convert him, but it destabilized him in the best way. It forced a question he could no longer avoid: did he truly trust God, or merely practice religion?
On May 24, 1738, while listening to Luther’s commentary on Romans, Wesley felt his “heart strangely warmed.” He came to trust in Christ alone for salvation.
That shift transformed his preaching. Its impact spread rapidly, helping spark a national awakening. Some historians even suggest it played a role in England avoiding a revolution like France’s.
The Shock in America The same doctrine ignited the First Great Awakening in eighteenth-century America.
Preachers like George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards confronted a comfortable assumption: that being right with God came through birth, baptism, or respectable behavior. For many, religion had become little more than inherited custom. Justification, they insisted, comes by faith alone—not by family background, moral effort, or outward religion. A person is made right with God only through a personal, inward trust in Jesus Christ.
Whitefield called people to the “new birth,” pressing for inner transformation rather than external reform. Edwards argued that true religion consists of “holy affections”—a heart genuinely reshaped by love for God. Faith, in their preaching, was not mere agreement, but deep reliance.
This shifted Christianity from cultural assumption to personal encounter. It unsettled the self-assured, yet opened the door to all: anyone could be reconciled to God through faith.
Removing the Bottleneck The Awakening didn’t just change the message—it changed how it spread.
Before the revivals, preaching was largely confined to ordained clergy, creating a natural bottleneck. Growth was slow, limited by how many ministers could be trained and installed.
But if faith is personal, then testimony becomes universal. Those who experienced new life began to speak of it. The result was explosive: the rise of lay preaching.
Methodists and Circuit Riders John Wesley’s decision to authorize lay preachers multiplied the movement overnight. Circuit riders carried the message across vast distances—on horseback, in fields, homes, and frontier settlements—spreading Methodism far beyond the reach of traditional structures.
The Baptist Grassroots Model The Baptists, with their emphasis on local leadership and personal testimony, were already positioned for this shift. Lay preaching fit naturally. Ordinary people with a clear conversion and a gift for speaking could lead, enabling rapid growth across the South and West.
Lay preaching didn’t just support the revival—it fueled it. The message created transformed people; lay preaching turned them into messengers. Together, they reshaped the American religious landscape.
The Personal Shock
The impact of justification by faith is not only historical; it is deeply personal.
In the Epistle to the Romans, Paul writes: “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The passage continues through Romans 5:1–12, describing the remarkable results of justification: peace with God, access to God, hope, and glory in suffering, and the assurance of reconciliation, all made real in the power of the Holy Spirit.
For countless individuals throughout history, these words have brought profound relief. The fear of never being good enough is replaced with the confidence that acceptance with God rests on Christ’s work rather than human effort.
A Message That Continues to Change Lives
From the revelation to Habakkuk, Paul’s proclamation in the first century, Luther’s rediscovery in the Reformation, to Wesley’s awakening of heart, the doctrine of justification by faith has repeatedly brought renewal.
It reminds us that the foundation of the Christian life is not human achievement but divine grace.
And whenever that message is rediscovered, it has the power to transform both history and the human heart.
What’s In It For Me?
“Revived” medically speaking, is a miracle – a dead body is brought back to life. That, in a spiritual sense, is what happens when someone trusts in Christ. Baptism mirrors this miracle. We are baptized or initiated into His death and Resurrection. It can be compared to a marriage ceremony where the parties say“I do”. “I do” must not be construed as “I did it!” -as if the ceremony was the conclusion. it IS a done deed, but with the promise to keep up at it, loving, honoring, tending,
And that is a description of revival. It begins when you say “I do” to Jesus. That “first love” needs constant renewal, or revival. Each time we feel distant, the way back is to say “I do” in response to God’s question
Say “I do” now! Maybe for the first time. Maybe for the hundredth time. It is a process of falling in love, growing in love and staying in love.
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