I've been trying to formulate my thoughts about what I wanted to write regarding our recent election.
I just keep thinking, as a country, we've gotten what we've begged for...not unlike Ancient Israel when they refused God as their King and begged to be like all the other nations. God answered their prayer, and it ended up in years of heartache for them.
Israel was created to be a people for God. They were to live lives that pointed others to God. They were to be set apart for His glory.
As Christians, we too are to live lives set apart for God's glory. We're to live in such a way that others KNOW that we are different...even if that means that we endure persecution for it. We're not to live to our glory, but to God's.
Yet in our country, we've called evil good and good evil.
We've allowed Hollywood to define our moral values, instead of turning to the Lord and His Word to teach and instruct us.
We've aborted our babies in massive numbers, and called them tissue.
I know. The world formed my viewpoints for 29 years of my life.
Just last night, Shane and I were talking about abortion, and he was expressing his frustration over the fact that so many people who call themselves Christians, do not believe that abortion is a sin.
He was pretty fired up about it, to be honest.
I told him this story, about myself when I THOUGHT I was a believer, but was so very lost.
"When I moved to Wisconsin (1995), I remember going to a new church one day. I was so excited to have found a Bible church! (It was an Evangelical Free Church..they type I now am a member of, but this was the first time I'd been to one.)
I remember walking in and seeing all of these grown men with little lapel pins of feet. I thought it was the oddest thing...like their wives hadn't had the courage to tell them how stupid a "feet pin" looked. I was like, "don't they wear flag pins here?!" and then "lapel pins are tacky, anyway".
The service began, and the pastor started teaching on the "sin" of abortion. I put sin in parenthesis, because at the time I didn't think it was one.
Well, the longer I sat in the pew and listened to him teach, the madder I got. There were several times throughout the sermon that it was all I could do not to pop right out of my seat and yell, "THIS IS NO PLACE TO BE SPREADING YOUR POLITICAL VIEWS!
TEACH THE BIBLE TO ME, BUT DO NOT TRY TO IMPOSE YOUR PERSONAL BELIEFS ON ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
I'm not kidding when I tell you, I was FURIOUS!"
What a contrast to today, to the person that I am in Christ today...to the way that I THINK today, and to how my moral values are defined today.
I look back to that time and I see a young woman whose thoughts and life had been molded by the culture, not by God's Word. And, by the false teaching of a pastor who was so wrong...so Biblically off!
This is where our country is today. We've allowed anyone and everyone and anything and everything BUT the Lord's Word to tell us what is ok and what is not.
When I looked at President-Elect Obama's precious little girls in the picture that I saw online of his victory walk, my first thought was, "I wonder how many of his grandchildren he will lose to abortion."
Oh, I hope and pray that the answer to that question will be zero. I pray God's hand of protection and grace upon both of them.
I also pray that he and his whole household will come to know the Lord in a deeply personal way. Granted, I don't know his heart...only God does. But, I know that the stance that he's taken on many things is completely contrary to God's Word. The fruit is not in keeping with someone sold out to Jesus Christ.
Yet, I think about my own salvation. I went from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light in an instance...in the privacy of my own home when the Lord Himself drew me into complete surrender to Him.
From the moment that I repented and surrendered my life to Jesus, He began ordering my footsteps, and teaching me how to walk in obedience to Him.
I will pray no less for President-Elect Obama.
Let us pray for his salvation. Let us pray that he comes to know the Word of God, and lives as a bond-servant of Jesus Christ. Let us pray that he will seek the wisdom of the Lord.
Let us pray for his wife and children, too.
