The Need for Spiritual Awakening

How blessed are the people whose God is the LORD! Psalms 144:15
Summertime.  It’s here and… it feels like it is halfway over already.  Watermelon, swimming, barbeques, and long road trips are some of the typical events of summer. This week is the week leading up to one of the highlights of summer…July 4^th.

America is changing.  The week as we celebrate our freedom and the blessings of living in America it would be easy to take the time to launch into a political diatribe on what all is wrong with the country. Times of greater crisis tend to trigger more severe attitudes toward our nation and right now our nation seems to be in turmoil. But let’s enthusiastically celebrate this important day, realizing that our nation has both its weaknesses and its strengths, but reaffirming our understanding of what it is to be both Christians and Americans.  Let's thank God for this amazing mix called America. Let us take a good look at what God has to say about our relationship with Him and with our country.

As American Christians we find ourselves on this Independence Day facing the reality that for the first time in American History we may be becoming a minority when it comes to influence on our government. The most basic contours of American culture have been radically altered. 

·      Two thirds of the public (68 percent) now say religion is "losing influence" in American society, while just 19 percent say religion's influence is on the rise.

·      The percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades. That statistic explains who we are now—and what, as a nation, we are about to become if changes are not made.

The moral teachings of Christianity have exerted an incalculable influence on Western civilization. Once Christianity is abandoned by a significant portion of the population, the moral landscape necessarily changes.

This is not to say we are a minority in numbers, but our lack of involvement in the process of government and our lack of impact on our culture through weak evangelism have silenced our voice.  Christians have allowed the world to define us as bigoted, racist, intolerant, narrow-minded, mean-spirited, uncompassionate, backward thinking, and the list goes on. This is primarily based on the failure of Christianity to proclaim the gospel of grace and freedom to a world blinded by sin. 

We are on a path towards a “Post-Christian” America 

Here the gods of political correctness and humanism (man is god) assume the thrones of power and threaten anyone who disagrees with attacks of “racist, bigot, homophobe, or worse.  Christians have spent too long trying to change the world by controlling the lives of people instead of influencing them and changing their hearts.  Our country is in a desperate state today.  For the first time I really am scared for the future of my children and what they may have to face as they become adults. The good guys are now the bad guys and the bad guys are the helpless victims, regardless of the fact that they laugh in the face of authority and blatantly disregard and disrespect rules and laws.  When they are confronted, they scream that they have been treated unfairly.  We do need to pray for our country and be more vigilant than ever with standing up for our Christian heritage.

Scripture to Claim:
So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. Ephesians 4:17-19