Recently, some­one from church told me his tes­ti­mony. He was a drug­gie, and his drug dealer invited him over one night. He thought his dealer was going to give him free drugs, but instead they were hav­ing a Bible study! The dealer led him to the Lord, and he became part of the Jesus Move­ment. It got me think­ing though. Are we ready for another “Jesus Move­ment” type thing?

I’m not sure, to be hon­est. I think my gen­er­a­tion is ready for some­thing. Most of them don’t know what yet, though. They look for it in every­thing. I can see a lot of sim­i­lar­i­ties between my gen­er­a­tion and the hip­pie gen­er­a­tion. They felt a void, and tried to fill it. We feel a void, and we try to fill it. The hip­pies tried every­thing — free love, drugs, alco­hol, and music — any­thing they could to escape the bur­dens of life and to attempt to find mean­ing in their life. Like­wise, take a look at any­thing that exem­pli­fies my cul­ture and gen­er­a­tion. Live-in dat­ing rela­tion­ships are com­mon­place. Every­one wants love with­out com­mit­ment. Alco­hol and drugs are extremely pop­u­lar. Lis­ten to any of our pop­u­lar music. Most of it’s about love and/or sex with­out mar­riage, alco­hol, or what­ever else. Bisex­u­al­ity is the new rage, as peo­ple don’t feel sat­is­fied with what they have, they move on and try other stuff.

Young men and women of my gen­er­a­tion are hun­gry. We’re thirsty. We want life abun­dantly. We want the truth. We’ll let the gen­er­a­tion before us stick to what’s prim and proper; we want the ugly, nasty truth.

It’s this kind of open­ness that leaves my gen­er­a­tion open to God. I’m hop­ing with all my heart that my gen­er­a­tion will see a move­ment toward God, the only One who can ful­fill our needs and desires for fullness.

I think the church needs to be more accept­ing of my gen­er­a­tion. The ugli­ness exists. Deal with it. In fact, I lit­er­ally mean, “deal with it.” Don’t just try to push us away. Don’t just let us in and pre­tend what we’re doing is okay. Tell us what’s what. That’s what we’re thirsty for. If you don’t do it, our curios­ity will leave us prey for false teach­ings. My gen­er­a­tion needs some­thing. If the church doesn’t give them the truth, they’ll eas­ily fall for deceit.