Change Doesn’t Happen Over Night

For Freedom--Galatians 5:1 ^ | March 28, 2013 | Michael D. Day

[WXRGina]

In 1976 — 37 years ago – I received Christ, and began my life as a Christian. In those days I had bought into the idea of the “new morality”. That is, I thought marriage was old-fashioned and a failed idea — that a couple could just as well make their lives together work on their own terms, and that they didn’t need social approval or legal recognition to make it “right”.

I had come to this conclusion because my generation had witnessed a decline of morality and seen the breakdown of marriage and the family. The divorce rate was on the increase and the dysfunctional family seemed to be the norm. Because a significant number of people had abandoned traditional values and sought alternative lifestyles, there seemed to be a general agreement — whether true or not — that those traditional moral values had failed. Not just that people had failed to live up to those values, but that the values themselves were somehow to blame for broken families and broken lives.

The decade of the seventies was a time of cultural realignment. The new morality included “free sex”, which meant marriage was no longer considered a valid reason to hold off sexual activity. Everyone could now have sex, whether you were married or not. Pre-marital sex, extra-marital sex, multi-partner sex, homosexual sex — it was all good. Forming a meaningful, committed partnership (as in marriage) was considered something altogether different.

We in the west were convinced by books about the population explosion that there were already too many people in the world and the only sane thing was for us to stop having so many babies. The stupidity of this belief is that in 1975 the world population was only 4 billion. Despite the western world’s decreasing birth rates, the world population has almost doubled (As of this writing it is well over 7 billion). Why is that? Because the rest of the world isn’t worried about over-population. In fact, if it weren’t for immigration (both legal and illegal) the American population would be shrinking, not growing.

The net effect of our sexual/moral/marital revolution, the changes in our population demographics and the rejection of institutions of traditional, Biblical religions was an erosion of the core cultural identity of the American people. We no longer have a pluralistic, E Pluribus Unum identity. We are a diverse and fractured society.

Change doesn’t happen over night. After becoming a believer, It took me a while to learn about God’s standards and expectations for my life. I read the Bible and gradually became aware of what God expected of me. For more than a year after being saved I was not attending church and was living with my girl friend. But the Holy Spirit kept urging me to sanctify our relationship through marriage. Though it wasn’t in a church, we were married by an ordained Christian minister in 1978.

The Holy Spirit continued to work in my heart to become involved in a local church and in 1979 my wife and I finally joined a church and were baptized. Even though I personally had rejected the traditions and values of my parents’ generation, and my own generation had gone off in its own direction, I had returned to the God of the Bible, and had begun my journey with him. I finally found my place in God’s plan when I was in my thirties. No, I didn’t change over night either.

In the seventies, when young people were rejecting the traditions of their parents, there were still enough people living by those old traditions to sustain them for a while. But as one generation grows old and dies, they are gradually replaced by those with younger, different views. Now, the numbers of those who still hold to traditional values has decreased, while the numbers of those who call for even more changes has increased.

In 2013 society is once again moving in a new direction — down — down to its own destruction. Now the latest iteration of the “new morality” is to accord legal recognition to homosexual marriage — equal in social and moral standing to the time-honored Biblical institution of marriage. This trend is foolish, and in the long run, will not stand because it will lead to the disintegration of civilization.

This disintegration won’t happen immediately. It’ll take a while. After all, 37 years ago, in the midst of the sexual revolution and the beginning of the New Age, when Biblical traditions were being tossed out and replaced with the touchy-feely influence of eastern thinking, I was born again into the family of God. If that could happen to me then, it can happen to others today.

In my life as a Christian, God has allowed the Bible to change my way of looking at the world, the way I think about the world and the way I live in the world. That’s because when God saves a person, he changes them. And I’ve been changed by God. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says it this way:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

I pray for the salvation of this present generation. They have lost their way because they have shut their eyes and ears to the truth. They have rejected the Word of God and accepted lies. Forgive them LORD, for they know not what they do. Even your own people are ignorant of your word. As you rescued me, and brought me out into a spacious place because you delighted in me (2 Samuel 22:20), O LORD, please rescue them.

Reach down into their prisons of sin and bring them out. Release them into the freedom that can only be found in you, because you delight in them. And may they delight in you and dwell in your house forever. Amen.

[yldstrk]

GOOOD post

[WXRGina]

I thought so, too.

We get so inundated with hardcore, government tyranny posts, that a little breath of God’s truth can cleanse the spiritual palate.