Can we talk? Doesn’t it seem like we, the American people are on a losing streak? It has occurred to me that the people of God, from here on out, are going to be paying close attention to two worlds; the kingdom of this present world and the Kingdom of God.
I have never felt that the things politicians promise were going to change my life one way or the other because I never look to depend upon them for success. Maybe its because I am small potatoes in the economy. However, I believe the things that are happening now are going to require a radical change in the way we approach the world in which we live and work. We need to return to fundamentals.
I want to make a comparison between what is happening in the Church and the United States at large. It appears to me that in the same way that the present American government is becoming more and more unconstitutional, so is the much of the Church, unbiblical. Many might find that to be an outrageous statement. Only a couple of years ago, I would have thought so too. That was until I went back to the Founding Principles in the Bible and to the Constitution. We shouldn’t be surprised that as time passes and generations come and go, we lose connection to the Great Ideas that gave birth to the opportunities that help support us to be strong in the Lord and a free people. In other words, we need to recover what has been lost.
I am not laying blame in totality for our fall on the stewards of government and the Church of our generation alone. This abandonment of orthodoxy has been going on for a long time. We have been creeping farther and farther away so much that I wonder if those were alive at the birth of the Church or America would even recognize them today. Nonetheless, we need to stir ourselves from our slumber before it is too late.
We Need a “Josiah Moment”
In the long history of Israel, there came a day when a young king named Josiah commissioned the carpenters to go make some repairs on the House of the Lord. While they were looking for some things, the high priest at that time found the book of the Law in the house of the Lord and delivered it to Josiah. The king had the Book read to him.
“And it came to pass, when the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, that he rent his clothes.” (2 Kings 22:11).
Josiah immediately sought the Lord over what he was discovering and asked the high priest to inquire of the Lord saying;
Go ye, inquire of the LORD for me, and for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that is found: for great [is] the wrath of the LORD that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this book, to do according unto all that which is written concerning us.
Josiah did not stop there. He ordered a national cleansing of the idols and altars that had been erected to Baal. It was a revival with repentance and a return to the Word of the Lord. Josiah had it in his heart to recover what had been lost.
America is in the same place. She had a glorious birth and grew up to be the greatest hope for freedom loving people the world had ever seen. The Church, once the centerpiece of life in America, is now almost irrelevant in the minds of the majority of the American people. Sure, we gather in churches on Sunday. But where do we see revival on the order and likeness of Pentecost today? Are there any Josiahs out there? Will there arise out of the ash heap of Big Religion prophets that will cry into the ears of the American people to return to the Lord? Will there arise out of the nation men and women who will call the American people to discover the country they were born in and learn from the mouths of the architects who engineered our Constitution?
In an earlier blog, I wrote that it will probably fall upon the Church to do the hard work of educating the American people of their roots. We do this for minority groups all the time. Isn’t it time for us, all of us, the American people and the Church in America to recover what has been lost?
We are in a terrible economy mostly because of a melt-down of the “Spiritual Capital Index.” We have broken faith with the Constitution by allowing the creation of a massive and burdensome Federal Government that does things the Founders never would have allowed it to do. They would have left all the social things to the States who have to pay as they go. Believe me, if we had to pay for all the stuff they do in Washington, we would have incited a revolt years ago! But because they can print an infinite amount of money and engage in deficit spending, (over $12 Trillion) we just go along hoping our Congressmen can bring home the bacon. This is nothing more than grand larceny and is an abomination.
Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up. After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight. Then shall we know, [if] we follow on to know the LORD: his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter [and] former rain unto the earth. (Hosea 6:1-2).
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