Hope

God must alternately laugh and weep at our most recent self-inflicted cursing—not the first. I fear that as a nation we have commenced our final slide into judgment.

Israel killed one innocent man and cried, “His blood be on us, and on our children.” We have chosen for a leader a man who consents to the bloody, cruel slaughter of over a million innocent babies every year. Does their blood cry out from the landfills and sewage treatment facilities? The rivers that flow through our great cities carry their precious blood throughout the land and down to the sea where it is dispersed to the whole world. With our human frailties we can forget the millions who never saw light and the tens of thousands who briefly blinked at the brightness and tasted sweet air only to be killed by a member of our honored American Medical Association, but their souls are under the altar, crying for vengeance, and the Father always beholds their sweet faces. I laugh with God, for those little ones await the Millennium when they will defy the hit man’s instruments of death and grow to maturity in the Father’s Kingdom. They meant it for evil. God meant it for good.

I remember the fifties very well. You could smell the fear of communism. It was everywhere, fear that by force of arms our sacred homeland would fall to Socialists. But sixty years later we went to the altar and willingly took the hand of the enemy, proudly saying, “I do.” We will soon regret this one drunken night, but will we be like Esau, “who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears” (Hebrews 12:16–17). Have we as a nation sold our birthright? Do we even have enough character to come to regret our choice and seek our birthright with tears, or will we march into bondage celebrating our power to choose? But, the bigger question is, if we seek our birthright with tears, will we find a place of repentance, or, like Esau, is it too late for us as a nation? I don’t know. It is God with whom we have to deal, not a political party. One man does not a nation make or break, but the heart of the nation is revealed in the choices it makes. It is not a pretty heart. America needs a transplant—no, much more, we need a resurrection.

We do need a new heart to love the Lord our God, and not the things of the world which pass away. We need a new mind with which to exercise judgment, to think soberly as we ought. We need new eyes with which to look upon things lovely and of a good report rather than upon the lusts of the eyes. We need new ears with which to hear the voice of God and to listen to the preaching of the pure Word of God. We need new ears so that we might hear the cries of the suffering and lonely and heed the call to take the gospel to those who have never heard. We need new tongues that we might speak his name who alone is most holy, that we might tell the old, old story to those who know it best and to sinners who have never heard anything but a prosperity gospel. We need new hands that we might lift up the fallen and embrace fellow believers. We need new feet that we might walk in the old paths and follow the Savior wherever he leads. We need a new backbone that we might put on the whole armor of God and carry our cross to the finish line, bearing one another’s burdens.

The body of Christ has no business crying over our worldly lot until we have first cried over our own sins. How do we think we are going to fix the White House when we haven’t put our own house in order?

Now is not the time for blame. Repentance cannot live in the house with blame.

Now is not the time for despair. Our hope has always been in another world, another kingdom. We have always been aliens, strangers and pilgrims, just passing through. Nothing has changed except the world. We have trusted in it too much and allowed it to comfort us. Good riddance.

Now is not the time for fear. Like David, in a time of judgment, we are in the hands of God. His wounds are for our healing, his stripes purge us of rebellion. Hard times on the outside can be the best of times on the inside.

I tell you the truth, not fabricated positive platitudes, when I say, “In light of our present darkness I have never had more peace and hope. I am excited about a revival of the Body of Christ. If the church takes a good beating, the fake Christians will get up and walk away, while the blood of true believers will be the seed of the next great awakening.”

Whatever may be, let us spend our days in rejoicing with the wife of our youth, in singing praises to God with our children, nurturing them and equipping them to be faithful to their Lord. Let us redeem the time and sow the seeds of faith in the soil of fear and despair. Many will become disillusioned, a perfect environment for the good news of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

We at No Greater Joy have doubled and tripled our efforts. We are engaged in more projects than we can manage. We have never been more diligent or aggressive. We ignore the noise and march to the heavenly drum beat. Come march with us.