July 19, 2015

As a nation, July is our birthday month and it is accompanied by much celebration and hopefully, prayer. This is a very momentous and difficult hour for the Body of Christ and for the United States of America. Nevertheless, it is to this hour and to this nation that the Lord chose for you to live and speak.  Either by birth or by migration, you are here by the Sovereign Hand of Almighty God.  The Apostle Paul said… 

Acts 17:26 NIV84 – From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.

You are here in this hour, for this season, in this nation to announce the Good News of Jesus and to live your life as citizens of the Kingdom of God!  Please consider the words of Pastor Matt Chandler or The Village Church…


“The Kingdom of God wasn’t born on the Fourth of July.” --Matt Chandler


The Supreme Court decision regarding Same-Sex Marriage will certainly NOT be the cause of any decline within our nation…it is, however, a SYMPTOM of it.  The United States is not, and never has been, a Theocratic Nation.  At best, we were a culturally Christian nation, but not one truly ruled by the Lord Jesus Christ.  Now we are no longer even that…but it has been this way for a long time.  We have chronicled quite extensively on Sunday Mornings and in SALT, the profound and rapid loss of influence the Church has had in America. 

We can be assured that the Biblical definition of Marriage is not dependent upon the winds of politics, the deliberations of Justices, or the revisions of suspect modern scholarship that seeks to accommodate the culture rather than the plain text of Scripture.  If our Lord Jesus wanted to change the definition of marriage, He certainly could have, but instead He affirmed it:

Matthew 19:4-5 NIV84 – “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?”

Please make no mistake, I believe in freedom.  So much so, that I believe in a God that has granted to Humanity the Right to be Wrong if they so choose. Furthermore my friends, the Gay Lifestyle is certainly not the only brokenness within our culture.  Beloved, our entire culture is BROKEN and in need of God! Frankly, in far too many ways the Church is quite broken too.  

Sin enslaves.  Regardless of whether it is homosexual, heterosexual, lying, stealing, murder, gossip, racism, maligning…all sin enslaves.  Therefore, when one Human Being is enslaved, all of Humanity suffers; When one Soul is Lost, all of Creation groans. Rather than anger then, our response should be HUMILITY and brokenness.  As I said, we are the ones who have lost our influence within the Culture.

Matthew 10:7 NIV78 - As you go, preach this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near.’