(A Good Word!) Easter, the Only Hope for America

Source: Conservative Review | 27.3.16 | Steve Deace

It was always going to take a small miracle for a real conservative/constitutionalist to win the White House in this age of idiocracy. But that is nothing compared to the number of miracles we are still going to need when and if one actually gets there.

Good thing we are a people of Easter. At least I hope we still are.

Good thing we believe in miracles.

So as we enter into the Lord’s passion in these late days of March 2016, we must remind ourselves of the importance to pray without ceasing to the only God who can manifest them in our lives.

Even on our best day, His guidance is the only true north. And we have so few ‘best days’ anymore.

We must trust God in His ways and not make St. Peter’s mistakes.

America is in shambles on every front. We are economically stagnant and indebted almost beyond calculation. The vicious hate of ISIS is met just as often with concerns about Islamophobia as it is with calls for justice. Men are putting on dresses and entering women’s bathrooms because they and their apologists think they are the 21st century’s Rosa Parks. A death-cult that receives hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers each year is seen on camera cavalierly bargaining away the dismembered remains of the human beings they murdered. And the very freedom to call out to God at all, religious freedom, is being pushed as far back into a corner as our cowardice and moral ambiguity will allow.

This is all, quite frankly, beyond the power of any man – or even our formidable constitution – to cure. These are mortal wounds. We need an exorcism. We need to be raised from the dead.

But our Savior has been there. He has done that. He can show us the way. Not, though, if our faith is a fetid pool of confusion like it has been in recent months – and no doubt for far longer — in the electoral musings of the so-called “Bible Belt.”

If we have been praying at all, we have largely been praying to the god we want and not the God we need. That just won’t do. We may as well be praying to a Buick or a tomato.

To get ourselves right, we must set ourselves aside. We must trust God in His ways and not make St. Peter’s mistakes. The rooster is ever crowing in the face of our denials and rationalizations. Get behind me, Satan!

Do we pray for our enemies? Or is our idolatry such that God is fashioned as nothing more than the image of a lottery ticket, Oprah, or a leprechaun in our mind’s eye?

So sayeth the Lord: 

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.  If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:43-48)

Yes, you silly heretic, we must pray for Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Mitch McConnell, too. They most certainly have been enemies of the good, for by your fruits you will know them. But so have we. And that whole death on a cross thing was not grading on a curve. We are no less in need of its healing and salvific power than they are.

We have been far more likely to be a vanity of vanities instead of the salt of the earth, haven’t we? Our sports teams and our wardrobes concern us to no end, but a rudimentary test of our faith so often ends in deceit or depravity.

We are basically good people, right? No. Thou shall not judge, right? Wrong again. A loving God really wouldn’t do fill-in-the-blank, right?

So sayeth the Lord: 

“How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” (John 14:9-13)

If that be our God, let not our hearts be troubled regardless of what times lay ahead. For we were created in His image for a time such as this, and by His wounds we are healed.

“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son but gave him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:31-39)

Now go, pray for new life in a valley of dry bones, and sin no more. Happy Easter.

– See more at: https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/03/easter-the-only-hope-for-america#sthash.9Zd2AtdY.dpuf

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  • slhancock1948 March 27, 2016 at 4:40 pm #3281

    Our church service was wonderful this morning, in spite of the wind and storm outside! The choir numbers (my husband & I both participate, my husband had a lead solo today and he also plays electric guitar) were awesome (hard to sing without crying, and the message was one of pastor’s best. He always has good ones, but today was really good.

    This is another good message, and I have to admit that I have borne ill will in my thoughts towards DT, Hillary, and the trump-bots as a group. We do need to pray for them, as they do need Christ. Not that I think many will ever come to Him, but that is not our concern. We should be as Christ would be, and pray for the lost…heaven knows that number right here in the USA is growing. We are the 3rd largest country that is majority non-Christian now. Who’d have thought that possible even 10 years ago?

    Pray for righteousness to be restored and for the peace of Jerusalem

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