After listening to Tuesday’s State of the Union Address, I couldn’t help but to consider the spiritual state of our nation. The following is a warning – a warning over realities that are only seen with spiritual eyes (2 Cor. 4:16–18). First, I will share my burden for the nation and the condition of the church, then I will share what I believe to be our only hope.
Regardless of which book of the Bible I read, it is clear that America is drifting from the God who orchestrated her founding, blessed her beyond measure, and has carried her almost 2 1/2 centuries. In modern times, we find ourselves not only drifting from Gods’ will and ways but are at the crossroads of utterly rejecting Him – the One who has the solutions to every problem we face.
The leader of ancient Israel once said, “What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him? And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today?” (Deut. 4:7–8). Like the Israelites, who eventually departed from the God who had done so much for them, America is choosing a similar path.
It has been touted over the last few decades that abortion should be rare, legal, and safe. Sixty million abortions later, sacrificing our children on the altar of convenience has become commonplace and has left our nation defiled before God (Is. 59: 3, 7; Ps. 139:13–16). Recently, the protection of our most defenseless and innocent took another devastating blow in the state of New York. The leadership of New York passed legislation allowing abortion for almost any reason up to the moment of birth. With other states debating whether to follow suit, we must search our ways and repent or we will face God’s wrath (Rom. 2:4–6).
The shedding of innocent blood is only one of the ways that we are distancing ourselves from God’s hand of protection and blessing. God hates divorce (Mal. 2:15–16; Mark 10:1–10), and yet we have become a nation of divorce; God’s intention is to “keep the marriage bed pure” (Heb. 13:4), and yet our nation has participated in every sexual perversion imaginable; God told us not be friends with the world, and yet we have saturated ourselves with worldly entertainment (James 4:4). Because of these behaviors, we must search our ways and repent, or we will face God’s wrath.
Possibly most egregious, the church has been negligent in addressing the issues of our day—the very issues that bring God’s blessing or provoke His judgment (Jer. 18:7–10). How will a young person know that gay marriage is prohibited by the God who loves us, unless we tell them? How will those struggling in their marriages take their vows seriously if we don’t address the need to work things out at any cost? How will we become God’s friends by rejecting worldliness if we don’t tell the flock how worldliness is creeping into our lives individually and the church corporately? We must search our ways and repent, or we will face God’s wrath.
In recent decades the numerical growth of churches is often rooted in marketing techniques, dynamic speaking, feel-good messages, and churches that offer programs for everyone. But the Scriptures reveal that God has one church growth strategy—the only strategy that produces genuine fruit—that is the strategy of putting His presence, power, and truth at the center of all we do (John 15:4–5; Rev. 3:15–20). Everything else is doomed to fail due to the entrapments of entertainment, personality cults, and other methods of attraction that ultimately leave God on the periphery and the sheep spiritually famished. We must search our ways and repent, or we will face God’s wrath.
Ironically, because God’s judgments are righteous, our nation’s greatest threat is God Himself and yet He is our greatest hope (Ps. 9:7–20).
To see the negligence of the church reversed and the matrix of unbelief changed may seem like an impossible task. But our job is to humbly open the door to the Lord and let Him show us what to do (Rev. 3:20). I believe that God wants to be our first love more than we understand (Matt. 22:37–38; Rev. 2:4–5). Even in the waywardness of our nation—both inside and outside the church—God is beckoning us to come to Him in humility, repentance, and faith (2 Chr. 7:14).
While inspiring his generation toward space exploration, John F. Kennedy declared, “We choose to go to the moon not because it is easy, but because it is hard.” To change the church in America, which will then be able to bring true solutions to our nation, will be hard. But just as President Kennedy dared his generation, we must not let the daunting nature of this task deter us from pursuing it because God Himself is our greatest hope.
