How low must we go?

What will it take for the people of this country to realize that God is our refuge and our strength? “And in Him, and Him alone, we should place our trust”.

It's easy to blame the overwhelming greed of those who profit at others' expense. The “freedom of choice” used to take away the life of another. Individual desire placed above all else. There is simply no way to defend that kind of behavior. It is an example of human nature at its very worst!

An equally dangerous mistake, though, is to decide that the answers lie with government.
Government cannot make enough laws to control the hearts of men. Laws are only for those who willingly choose to follow them. When man’s laws cease to follow God’s laws and the interest of the people is placed in subornation to the men in power a time of upheaval is at hand.

When the government of this country is taken from the powers above and put into the hands of natural freeman, then comes destruction. In the natural man, in whom the spirit of God does not rule, the sensuous nature becomes debased through self indulgence. The unregenerate man does not subordinate his desire to God refusing to acknowledge that it is Providence that interferes and rules the affairs of individuals and nations.

Selfish ambitions and all betrayals of faith are the forerunners of sure destruction both for the individual and the nation. It is only a matter of time as all the affairs of men not divinely conserved are doomed to failure and destruction. We see this with the moral decay throughout our society.

One small ache does not suffice to bring us to our knees we are willing to continue our pursuit of happiness in our own way without regard for what God’s will is for our lives.

We offer prayers of indulgence seeking more from God, being cognizant of all the blessings we have been provided both as individuals and as a nation.

The internal separation of body, mind and soul grows to the point that we forget that God is in charge of everything in our life and our nation as a whole. When we reach the point in pain or failure where we cry “My God, My God Why has thou forsaken me”, as we think he is not answering our prayers, the need to remove the pain itself becomes the prayer that overrides all others.

Pain is thus the perfect prayer, a truly loving God allowing us to share in His redemptive work in our lives as we are brought to our knees with a very concise focus. Acceptance of God’s will….All right Lord it is your will I want…it has always been your will. He has not forsaken us at all but rather brought us to the point we are willing to receive his redemptive Grace as we ask for his will to be done in our life. It is a simple matter of choice to give one’s life freely over to God’s will and recognize that Christ died on the cross for our sins.

Even so it is a difficult choice to arrive at as beginning with the sins of Adam, mankind has been mangled as a being separated from the will of God. A chaotic soul with a dead spirit, degenerate mind, and a body that wastes away—not too promising, eh? That is where we are as a Nation. We are but a tempest tossed on the sea of life with the freedom to make choices that accentuates our struggle with the integration and integrity of body, mind, and soul with a dead spirit separated from the will of God. As a sinful Nation like any individual sinner we have an inner struggle for control taking place. Yet it is a fight that does not have to be waged but first we must make the “choice” to lay down our cross and follow Christ.

Once Jesus Christ is accepted as our savior, we are indwelled with the Holy Spirit and have a guiding light. We are changed and we will grow in the Lord if we pray, study, meditate, fast, embrace solitude, practice submission, live simply, serve others, worship, confess our sins, seek guidance, and celebrate.

We have stood idly by to long and the enemy has come in to destroy the nation. They have became so numerous and ingrained that they are able to use our laws and our freedom of choice against us. The nation once seen as a guiding light upon a hill no longer represents that ideal. God’s people have been forced from the political scene.

What afforded the enemy such an opportunity? We have not defined who we are as a people, our language or the basis of our laws. What do we stand for as a Nation? If we do not define that we have no standard to judge decisions by. This allows an enemy to come in, take advantage of our freedoms and plant the seeds of bad laws, thus contaminating our entire legal system. We can never fault the enemy for trying to destroy us by using the very freedoms and liberties we have. It was and is his task and purpose to destroy; the fault can be placed on the indifference of good men who sleep, thus allowing the enemy to do what he does. Very bluntly what has occurred in America happened first because the church went to sleep, and then because the enemy came in and caused the damage. It is time for churches to respond to the needs of God’s people.

God wants every individual to pray for our civic leaders, because civic leaders and their policies affect every individual. Simply for our own benefit we should be praying regularly for our leaders at local, state, and federal levels in each branch of government. Prayer is the key step to effecting significant and lasting change, for situations do not change on earth until they have been changed in heaven. Additionally, we need to pray faithfully that God will root the wicked from office and will raise up righteous individuals to replace them. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," and having the right individuals in office will prevent the enactment of many damaging policies.

As William Penn said:
Governments rather depend upon men than men upon governments. . . . If the men be good and moral, the government cannot be bad. . . . Good laws do well, good men do better; for good laws may lack for good men to enforce them . . . but good men will never lack good laws nor allow bad ones to continue.

Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, one of the first Justices, wondered if we could survive as a nation if we did not teach our children about religion and morality as restraints upon the liberal sensual desires of freemen. Well since June 25, l962, students are forbidden to do what they and their predecessors had been doing since the founding of our nation - publicly calling upon the name of the Lord at the beginning of each school day. The prayer which prompted the Engel vs. Vitale ruling had simply prayed: "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence on Thee and beg Thy blessing over us, our parents, our teachers and our nation." As a result of this decision which removed the Bible, prayer and any mention of God from our schools we have been brought to our knees. And that is where we should stay in prayer for our nation and our children’s future.

The law may say that our children can’t pray but it can’t stop them or us from praying. We should pray: "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence on Thee and beg Thy blessing over us, our parents, our teachers and our nation."

We should teach our children well that they may know what has been lost since 1962.

The lack of a vision for American makes us look like a degenerate adolescent who refuses to accept responsibility for his actions, trying everything regardless of the cost, in search of a life purpose.

Who are we? As a nation we need to answer that question and plan for our future. The best stimulus is individual confidence based on a firm foundation knowing that we are following God’s will in our lives and in our society.

It took a civil war to bring us low enough to create our national motto “IN GOD WE TRUST” which first appeared on a coin in 1864.

Let’s hope we can avoid that destructive path this time. That’s my two cents worth.

Does anyone have one of those original two-cent coins?