Posted on 11/10/2018 11:44:07 AM PST by HiTech RedNeck
For years and years I've watched the political climate go downhill in America.
Even Donald Trump hasn't been a cure, only a figurative Dutch boy with his finger in the dike. A large and bulging segment of society has gone frankly profligate and has just pushed the House of Representatives over the line. "Liberal" (though that is what the profligacy movement sounds like) has been left behind. Profligacy is illiberal. Liberals of old would have engaged in reasoned discourse with the conservatives of old. The new ones scream and throw tantrums.
We've been for a long time under the assumption that the political system itself is a shelter against wrong. And more and more that assumption is failing.
I wish to reassert to all who will listen that our ultimate and best shelter is found not even in politics but in God. It is only He who can put His hand upon a cursed situation, extract the devil from it, and turn it into a blessing. Mere human powered political activity cannot do this. And this won't happen in the context of the inaction of His people. Prayers and thanksgivings must take place. When God is glorified, more of His glory follows. When God is given short attention, less of His glory follows.
It looks to me from some recent events that God is leading Donald Trump himself down that path; though he began as nominal at best from a lukewarm mainline church following, those gathering around him have been insisting on more in God's name. This is the place where we should always repair to at the end of the day. We can discuss human machinations all night and day till we are tired, but the Lord is head of it all and we ourselves are part of that. We don't get to be spectators in this sport. Do we have a burden for the country? Then let's not merely criticize. Let's call on the Lord, Who is above all criticism, for His grace and blessing in this trying situation, on the basis of His promises.
Amen to that!
Thank you. Was a wonderful service with 14 baptisms.
Wonderful!
Deliver us from evil, Lord. Amen.
So happy for you!
God speed a day when the idea of an election that is otherwise is as antiquated as American chattel slavery.
To continue the dialogue, pride is indeed the danger, and if, to speak hypothetically, Donald Trump and his supporters had no interest in God or Christ, that would be the logical end of where we would go — to become a proud Whore.
This does not (thank God, thank God, thank God) appear to be the case!
Donald’s vision started out with a “role for Christians.” Well, their role as assigned by God is as earthen vessels of the supernatural Christ. God tossed Donald a package and didn’t initially spell out to him exactly what would be in it when it was unwrapped. But the bible sure spells it out to us.
I do not believe the age of the Whore is yet here. We’ve flirted with it, but the Lord has been raising up a standard.
Thank you. There were 14 of us baptized last night.
Amen!
One thing I have to confess is that it has put quite a glaring light on my own heart. It has tended to be more double minded than I would like to say. It has loved things in the world. To use the knowledge of the Lord as a basis to go cockadoodle-do (and there’s a lot of that on FR) is not right — to use it to edify people and defend faith in Christ is right.
We have a small, but hot spark of the Lord here with the people in this thread. I myself have been soggy and hard to light. The Lord has been at it for about 30 years in my case. This sometimes doesn’t happen overnight. But in some cases, it does seem to happen overnight. All people’s cases are different and all for a purpose.
Amen. It is easy to get discouraged about the direction of our country. We need to be in prayer for her... and us.
Yes — we are all in the boat of something larger. It’s getting to a point where we need an “answer for the hope that is in us, with meekness and respect.”
Remember where our modern version of “liberal” came from. It was a distortion and distension of earlier ideas of godly generosity, whose purpose was to help people who had strayed back into the God groove, as it were. Once it forgot about God, it also forgot its way. Does it mean that the root idea was wrong? No, no, no, no, no! A million times no! We are going to have to be willing to see past the foolishness of these people in appealing to them to embrace a true-Christ vision. DO be liberal... FOR the sake of the Lord, i.e. don’t just use Jesus to wag your fingers at us, but SHOW us all what it means when YOU play this sport with YOUR skin in the game! Ah, they’ve often been hypocrites, bad ones. Jesus will forgive and bless.
I know what you mean. I am ashamed to say that, though come this February, I have been a Christian for fifty two years (though there were gaps at times when I tried completely to ignore the Lord), and I should, by this time, have become a spiritual giant, I’m still struggling along, not living or practicing the victorious, fruitful life I know the Lord intends for all His disciples. One of comforting things, though, is that, flawed as we believers are, we are accepted in the Beloved, and forgiveness is ours from moment to moment. That does not, however, help the fact that I have squandered much of the time I have been given, and the knowledge of that shames me. We can never compare ourselves to the lives of others, and think, “at least I didn’t do THAT!” We stand or fall on our own sin, but PRAISE God, we have redemption through Christ our Lord, and are forgiven, because HE paid the price for our sins! But shame on us for not living our lives every second of every day, in ways that are pleasing to Him, which very, very few of us do.
The comfort of the Cross that Jesus bore means more and more to us as we become more aware of the sin that must go under the blood of the Lord. It’s as C. S. Lewis said: a moderately bad man knows he is not very good, but a thoroughly bad man thinks he is quite all right.
The only tenable view is that our salvation and our sanctification is a work of Christ, not a work of us. We can, and as we mature we will more and more want to, bring it forth, yet “with fear and trembling.” The fear and trembling are from the consciousness of our own falling short of the grace of a powerful God who desires a degree of love that would stagger any mortal. I plead God daily for mercy and then remember that I should also show mercy to other people. The spiritual air that we choose to give to other people is the same kind of air that the Lord will furnish to us.
Amen. Comforting thoughts.
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