SLP048 - God Bless America ... Again!

America, with all of its faults and challenges, still remains a shining beacon of hope, freedom, and opportunity. Without question, the USA stands as evidence of the grace and blessing of God. As I have crisscrossed this nation for the last 20 years, having visited more than 2/3 of the states, what I see is a beautiful land; a blessed people, and a nation that God Himself has raised up as a light.

On this week’s episode, we take time to give thanks and pray that God will bless our nation once more as we turn our hearts towards Him.

Over the last 50 years in this nation, there has been an intentional attempt to diminish that light. The most impressive enemy of our day is not Russia; it is not Iran; it is not North Korea or even Al Qaeda. The greatest enemy of our nation is complacency and division.

The Bible clearly states that ‘A nation divided against itself cannot stand’. Never before in our nation’s history has their been such division and strife between people groups:

• Republicans and Democrats
• Libertarians and Independents
• Blacks and Whites
• Conservatives and Liberals
• Pro-choice and pro-life
• Socialists and Capitalists
• The Bible is clear also that it is at the place of UNITY where God commands the blessing:

Psalm 133:1-3

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious oil upon the head, coming down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard, coming down upon the edge of his robes. It is like the dew of Hermon coming down upon the mountains of Zion; For there the Lord commanded the blessing—life forever.

Our nations forefathers, with all of their own issues and faults, found it necessary to come together around a set of values

Declaration of Independence:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. 

Proverbs 14:34

³⁴ Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people.

“In proportion as the genuine effects of Christianity are diminished in any nation, either through unbelief, or the corruption of its doctrines, or the neglect of its institutions; in the same proportion will the people of that nation recede from the blessings of genuine freedom. Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican forms of government, and all the blessings which flow from them, must fall with them.” – Jedediah Morse 1799

II Chronicles 7:11-22

¹¹ Thus Solomon finished the house of the Lord and the king’s palace, and successfully completed all that ^[c]he had planned on doing in the house of the Lord and in his palace. ¹² Then the Lord appeared to Solomon at night and said to him, “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. ¹³ If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people, ¹⁴ and My people ^[d]who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land. ¹⁵ Now My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to the ^[e]prayer offered in this place. ¹⁶ For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that My name may be there forever, and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually. ¹⁷ As for you, if you walk before Me as your father David walked, even to do according to all that I have commanded you, and will keep My statutes and My ordinances,¹⁸ then I will establish your royal throne as I covenanted with your father David, saying, ‘^[f]You shall not lack a man to be ruler in Israel.’ ¹⁹ “But if you turn away and forsake My statutes and My commandments which I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them, ²⁰ then I will uproot you from My land which I have given ^[g]you, and this house which I have consecrated for My name I will cast out of My sight and I will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples. ²¹ As for this house, which was exalted, everyone who passes by it will be astonished and say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house?’ ²² And they will say, ‘Because they forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers who brought them from the land of Egypt, and they adopted other gods and worshiped them and served them; therefore He has brought all this adversity on them.’”