Welcome to Living My Faith, a weekly show that celebrates the everyday believers who are walking with Jesus, not just on Sundays, but in every area of their lives. From relationships and parenting to health, habits, and home, our guests share how they keep their faith at the center of it all. Hosted in Jacksonville, Florida, and supported by Christ-centered partners, Living My Faith is a space where real life meets real faith. Today, our host, Brian Sexton, spoke with Chris Widener of Revival 250.
Chris Widener
President of Revival 250
Website Address: revival250.com
Short company description:
Revival 250 is America’s 250th Anniversary Revival. On May 3, 2026, 12,000 people will gather together in VyStar Arena in Jacksonville, Florida. We will then be live-streaming through the Pray.com app with 26 million downloads, to homes, churches, colleges, and military bases. We will also be streaming globally. Revival 250 will bring together the best preachers, worship leaders, singers, and testimonies from across our nation to challenge Christians to turn their hearts fully back to God. Headline speakers include Jonathan Cahn, Dr. Tony Evans, Dr. Alveda King, President Emeritus of Promise Keepers Raleigh Washington and John Rich. We are partnered with Pray.com, the National Religious Broadcasters Association, Resi, the US Christian Chamber of Commerce, Pushpay, Salem Media, and more. Revival 250 is a 100% nonprofit event with all proceeds being distributed to Christian ministries.
Transcript:
Brian:
Welcome back Living My Faith. I’m Brian Sexton and today we’ve got noted author, speaker, podcaster, all-extraordinaire Chris Weidner. Chris, how are you?
Chris:
Thanks for having me.
Brian:
Thanks for being here. Yeah. It’s great.
Full disclosure, Chris has become a friend and a mentor. But we’ve been talking about Revival 250, which is why you’re sitting in this seat right now.
You’re in Jacksonville getting ready for the May 3rd event. What is Revival?
Chris:
So revival literally means to come to life again. Right. So you’re in the football business? Replay. What do you do? You show the play again. So revive means life. Whatever the Latin term company’s come to life again.
And so when you’re talking about the church, and or even Israel in the Old Testament, there were times in which they were close to God. There were times in which they were far away from God. And when you’re far away from God, you could kind of say, you’re kind of dead to God, right? Because you’re not living for God. And your faith doesn’t really translate into how you live your life.
And so it means to come to life again. It means let God work in your life. Commit your life to the kinds of things that we know we’re supposed to be doing, starting with the very simple one. Love your neighbor. You know, it’s simple, but hard to do so.
Well, you know, it’s funny. G.K. Chesterton, the great Catholic theologian, said one and I love G.K. Chesterton, one of the most quotable guys. He said, it’s not so much that Christianity has been tried and found wanting, but it’s been that Christianity has been found difficult and left untried.
And that is one of my favorite quotes of all time. But you could also say that about exercise, about dieting, about saving money. It’s something we tried, and we’re all saving money. That’s for the birds. It’s like saving money is hard when I want to buy all this stuff.
Brian:
Is this the right time? We celebrate America’s 250th anniversary coming up this summer. Is this the right time? Is there an energy for revival in America? I know we’ve seen a return to Christianity in this country over the last year and a half. Is now the right time?
Chris:
Well, I think it’s the right time. I think people see signs. You look for signs really. And in fact, I was born and raised in Washington state. And on May 18th, 1980, there was a big international news story, and that’s that morning, 8 a.m., that Mount Saint Helens blew.
Well, nobody in Washington state that afternoon when Mount Saint Helens blew. I can’t believe that. We all knew it was going to blow. Why? Because of the signs. The tremors, the earthquakes, the plumes of smoke.
So when you look at revival or any cultural phenomenon for that matter, you can see signs that things are happening. It’s why stock traders look for what’s going on, because they want to know what the market’s going to do. So there’s always signs of things.
And I think what we’re seeing now is especially on college campuses, but in churches around the country there’s been signs. And then there’s also been a desire. People really have a desire to see God move.
And I think it comes from the bankruptcy of the culture that we live in. You know, this goes all the way back to King Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes, richest man to ever live. He could buy and sell Elon Musk a few times.
He wrote a book called Ecclesiastes. He was already the richest guy in the world. He goes, I’m not happy. Meaningless, meaningless. All is meaningless. So what should I do? I’ll try women. Well, meaningless, meaningless. All is meaningless.
I’m going to try art. Meaningless, meaningless. He tries everything he can to fill his soul. And at the very end he says, this is what I found. Love God and obey his commandments.
Brian:
So nicely what Saint Augustine said, which is there is a God sized hole in everyone’s heart.
Is that what you’re going to do is try to fill that?
Chris:
Well, so it’s interesting. People say, so are you saying revival is going to happen that day? And I say, I can’t guarantee revival, but I can guarantee this.
The atmosphere at Vystar Arena will be one that is conducive to revival, meaning we’re going to give people for five hours, through the speakers and the worship time, the prayer time, an atmosphere in which they can push everything else out and say, what is it between me and God? How do I rectify this? How do I draw closer to God?
So that’s the design. And when groups of people do that, that’s what we typically call revival.
And I’ll say this. When I was studying for my book The Coming American Revival, I noticed that revival over the course of American history has happened about every 50 to 75 years.
The last two were 1970, the Jesus People Revolution, made famous by the film a couple years ago. And then the one previous to that was 1906, the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles.
And then you go back first, second, third great awakenings, some of those.
And people say, why does it take 50 to 75 years? Well, you can see this with the Israelites in the Old Testament. You see it with the church in the New Testament.
That’s how long it takes for the children and grandchildren to forget what God did for their grandparents. Because every generation, if you don’t pass along those values, every generation becomes a little more distant to God, a little God is a little less relevant.
And then they end up in a bankrupt culture and they go, well, this doesn’t work for me. Maybe I better turn back to what grandma told me about.
And then you see that revival. And it’s cyclical.
So I guess secular or cyclical would work there.
But I think now we are 56 years out from the Jesus People Revolution.
But if you think about the context of why we need a revival in the 70s, I mean, the 70s were free sex, free drugs.
But even if you take the worst of what was happening then and you put it here in 2026, we are as debauched as you can possibly get.
Brian:
There’s no doubt.
Culture is so hungry for something that people can put their teeth into. Something substantive.
Chris:
Well, that’s why I think it’s happening in colleges.
Because I have six kids, and most of them went to college. The last two just got out of college the last 2 to 3 years.
So we spent a lot of time on college campuses over the last seven years.
And I was shocked at what college kids are doing today.
Like when I was growing up, the worst you would consider was marijuana.
In fact, I’ve never even been in the same room as cocaine. Never seen it in my entire life. I’ve seen it in movies, that’s it.
Well now these college kids, and these are the best and brightest schools in America, cocaine, ayahuasca, fentanyl, marijuana laced marijuana, all these kinds of things.
And then their sexual culture, they call it a hookup culture, and some of these kids are 15 to 20 partners a year.
And what happens? Same thing that happened to Solomon. Absolutely meaningless. Meaningless. All is meaningless.
Brian:
I am just going to hold this up because this has become the portal to whatever you want.
Pornography, gambling, hookup culture, all of those things.
So when we talk about the afternoon, the five hours that you’ve mentioned, you’ve been crisscrossing the country, adding speakers, fundraising for the event because it’s a nonprofit event.
Anybody in particular you’re excited about?
Chris:
Yeah. One guy I’m really excited about, I’m excited about all of them, but when I became a Christian in 1983, I was living in Seattle, and we had two Christian talk stations.
And I grew up completely non-religious. I knew nothing.
In fact, my first year of Bible college, the first class we had to take was called the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible.
And I remember sitting in class and saying, stop, stop, stop. I’m trying to figure something out.
Let me get this straight. Abraham built an ark.
And everybody just laughed.
So I knew nothing about the Bible.
But as soon as I became a Christian, I started listening to those stations.
And who was there? A guy named Tony Evans.
Doctor Tony Evans, Urban Alternative out of Dallas.
And I cut my teeth on guys like Tony Evans and John MacArthur and Charles Stanley.
But we have Tony Evans coming.
Doctor Alveda King, Martin Luther King Jr’s niece.
Jonathan Cahn is going to be our closing speaker.
Doctor Raleigh Washington, former president of Promise Keepers.
So we have a really great lineup.
May 3rd, Vystar Arena.
People can go to Revival250.com.
And it’s going to be a great day.
And I’ve loved getting to know so many people here in Jacksonville.
I made lots of great friends.
Friendships that will last a lifetime.
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