A Great Awakening: Worth Watching!

Christian entertainment can miss the mark when it polishes away the hard edges of life. We’re picky about that, and we say it out loud. Then we found a film that surprised us enough to stop everything and recommend it: A Great Awakening, a historical drama built around the unlikely friendship between George Whitfield and Benjamin Franklin.

What grabbed us is how the movie stays family friendly without sugarcoating reality. It traces Whitfield’s growth in faith, the influence of the Wesley brothers, and the sharp difference between trying to earn your way to God through works versus receiving grace. It also tackles a question that still divides people today: are faith and reason enemies? The story argues they don’t have to be. Franklin’s reason and Whitfield’s conviction collide, but the film makes room for honest tension, long conversations, and the slow work of persuasion.

We also connect the idea of “awakening” to our current moment. An awakening means you were asleep, and recent years have exposed where many of us were sleepwalking, in church life and beyond. The biggest takeaway is personal and practical: you never know what seed you’re planting when you speak for Christ, and you can’t predict how far that influence can travel through a friend, a community, or even a nation. 

Movie Trailer: https://youtu.be/H4-rMC88ylQ?si=OP7cuIkaS8YwaJo5

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Transcript

Why Christian Entertainment Often Fails

The Film Recommendation And Setup

Grace Over Works Plus Faith And Reason

What An Awakening Looks Like Today

Planting Seeds Through Everyday Witness

Where To Listen And Final Charge

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Everybody, welcome to another Woe Foyo short this sea dub. This is not going to be your usual get in the word for yourself short. I'm just going to give you a recommendation. As you all know, I can be a little bit harsh and a little bit picky when it comes to Christian entertainment. A lot of it has to do with a lot of times they're there to put forth this ideal, and since they want to be family friendly, they won't address the reality of life, a lot of the hardships and the brutishness of these hardships at times. In addition to that, there's a lot of them that really have this good feeling they want to leave you with and this challenge, but they don't really give you a path. They want to issue this challenge of you need to live for God. Well, amen, you do, but what does that look like? There's this challenge because you don't want to be nasty and vulgar and crude in presenting these things, yet at the same time, there is this reality that in the world you are going to have to deal with those things. So a lot of times it just falls short. That being said, I came across this advertisement, went to see a movie with my girlfriend, and they had this trailer, and I go, That looks interesting. And it was a movie called A Great Awakening, and it is about the friendship between George Whitfield, who is a preacher who preached in America, he was he was British, but back when it was the colonies, and it goes through his story and his friendship, contentious one at times, uh, with Benjamin Franklin, who, as you know, was a very scientific man of reason. And for a multitude of reasons, I cannot recommend this movie enough. If they are still showing it in theaters, I went and saw it this past weekend, and let me tell you, I was nothing but thrilled. Uh, they did not try and sugarcoat anything, they didn't have to be lewd and vulgar in not sugarcoating it. So it is family friendly, but it is a historical interaction that happened over many years. It goes into showing, it goes into showing how Whitfield came into faith over at Oxford and how uh the Wesley brothers, Charles and John Wesley, were instrumental in that. It also goes to show what happens when you try and do things by works as opposed to grace. It shows that faith and reason are not mutually exclusive, rather that they can be complementary. But also historically, if it wasn't for the influence of George Whitfield, then we probably wouldn't have had an American revolution. It was this awakening that happens that causes people to rethink some things, that gets people out of what they're doing. I was talking to a friend, and he had recommended this movie to his church, and didn't know it because I was kind of catching up on what he had said to his church. And the thing about an awakening is you're asleep. And it reminds me of COVID, in a way, being a wake-up call to many people. The next thing you know, you start to see these people focus on relationship rather than just the four walls of the church. You know, you had a few, you had a few preachers out there, you had a few pastors that were going, well, as for God or men, we will we're we're gonna obey God, you know, during that whole time. And the rest of them just capitulated. Little cowards. Oh, we want to do what's best. Yep, sure. Don't want to be in a foxhole with you, though. An awakening is what we're experiencing now. It is not as pleasant and pie in the sky as everybody would put out, that all your ministers would put out. An awakening means you were asleep. An awakening means that you were either dead asleep or else you were sleepwalking, which most of us were, until the Lord started to wake us up. And there's always going to be pushback, there's going to be resistance, and how you deal with that will determine a lot. And I'm not saying I've always dealt with it the best way. That being said, I cannot recommend this movie enough because let me tell you, George Whitfield was woe fo way before there was a woe fo. All right, I cannot recommend this movie enough. Go see it, support, support those that are putting out this kind of entertainment because the great thing about it is not some ideal that's really hard to realize. It is an historical account, and it lets you know that no matter how minute it might seem at the time, you're planting a seed whenever you're interacting with somebody, because Whitfield and Franklin go back and forth, but you never know, and I'm not going to give the end of it away. If you know your history, you'll know what happens. But those seeds that he planted in the colonies as they became America, which led up to it, but also in the individuals and the influential individuals in the forming of this country, it lets you know that as a believer in Christ, you have no idea of the impact of your interaction on behalf of Jesus Christ will have on other people and what impact they will have on the world. So go check out this movie if you can. If not, wait for it to come out on streaming and check it out then. Cannot recommend it enough. Woe FOYO. Everybody, thanks for listening. We hope this inspires you to go out and check out this movie and enjoy it and be inspired by it. You can always check us out at woofyo.org or subscribe on Apple Podcast Spotify or we'll even check us out on YouTube. Probably myself is a seed of reminding if you're going to grow, you got a woefoyo. Get in the word for yourself.