Dozens of young people scattered with counselors throughout the southwest side of Reed Green Coliseum in response to Francis Chan’s challenge to follow Jesus.
Earlier, Chan had challenged participants at Momentum, formerly known as Brethren National Youth Conference, to fall in love with the person of Jesus. It was the third session of the conference, which is being held on the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.
“Are you really in love with the person of God?” he questioned the audience of more than 2,100 teens and adults.
“Are you hot or are you lukewarm?” he asked. “Are you lukewarm? That’s a problem. Jesus says the ones that are lukewarm; I’m going to spit them out of my mouth,” he added, reading from the section in Revelation 3 that describes the church at Laodicea.
“Do you understand what it means to spit?” he said. “It’s not good,” he added, noting that the reality that many of us are wretched, poor, pitiful, blind, naked.
“Why did he rebuke these people?” he queried. “He didn’t want to spit them out of his mouth. He loved them!”
He encouraged the audience to consider what it means to be earnest and repent.
He read Rev. 3:20 – “Here I am, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with me.”
“It’s a very intimate picture,” Chan noted. “It’s a relationship. Let me eat with you. We’ll have this union. We’ll have this marriage bond. We’ll be together.”
He noted that the next verse promises that those who overcome will be granted the right to sit with God on his throne.
“What would it be like to sit on the throne with God?” he said, reading the description of heaven in Revelation 4.
Chan stressed that it’s all or nothing.
“God is sitting there with this ring,” he noted, reciting traditional wedding vows. “Do you want to spend eternity with me? If so, you have to forsake all others. But do you want me?”
He challenged conference attendees to pursue the ring. “Do you want to be the bride of Christ that submits to him?”
The evening session opened with a solo by Jeremy Perry, a student from the Grace Brethren Church in Clinton, Md., testimonies from several young ladies who had helped with the Katrina rebuilding project on the Gulf earlier in the day, and a special tribute to Ed Lewis, who celebrated his 61st birthday on Sunday.
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