But as bad as Americas problems may be, or the problems being faced by other nations for that matter, I am thoroughly convinced that answers  are not to be found in the political, social, and economic arenas.  The reason for this conviction is simple.  America’s, or the world’s, woes are spiritual, and offering solutions in these arenas of human endeavor will only add to and extend the problem.

We have strayed far from the principles of our founders, the same principles that are found in our Bible.  If we ever expect to turn our nation onto a path of prosperity and liberty, we must first turn our hearts and minds back to the loving Father in heaven that blessed this nation at its founding.

In Deuteronomy 6 and Leviticus 18 and again by Jesus in the new Testament, we are exhorted to love the Lord our God with all out heart, soul , and might, and our neighbor as ourselves.

Our founding fathers knew that our nation could never be sustained as it was constituted except by a religious and God-fearing people.

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.  –  John Adams

Look around, we are seeing the truth of that assertion today in that our Government no longer governs righteously, and is falling apart in front of our eyes.

Some, I am sure, will read these words and scoff.  But it is those who scoff at the precepts of our Holy and Just God who are the very problem we face.

Others will read these words and understand the truth that underlies them.  It is to you my Brothers and Sisters that this post is written.  We, not individually, but as a people, have abandoned our Lord and His righteousness.  We seek to solve our nations ills by applying solutions born of human effort, solutions that not only exacerbate our problems but that are the problem!

What our nation needs is for God’s people to get on their knees and pray!  Pray that we would be true to God’s calling for our lives, pray for our nation and our leaders, that they would be open to the leading of God’s Holy Spirit, and most of all, pray for national revival!

Our only hope is a nation turning away from sin and unrighteousness and turning to God for salvation and for answers.

So long as we continue as we have been, we will find our situation only worsening, politically, socially, and economically.  We will find our liberties eroding, and the Government’s grip on our lives ever tightening.

Won’t you join me in prayer?  Please, before it is too late!

I would like  to offer you my Brother or Sister in The Lord… The King of Kings  Friendship Award…some call it a Blessing instead of an Award, you can accept it as you feel in your heart to or not.

And if you feel you would like  to pass it on to encourage others in the Body of Christ and in the Family of God..there are no rules or set requirements, you are under no obligation in any way, it’s just my way  of offering thanks for the blessing  you  are by willingly choosing from the heart to walk fully  in the beauty of the person God is conforming you to be by the empowering of The Holy Spirit, which is the  image of His Awesome Son…

Jesus Christ whose Name is above all Names.

via Separated to the Gospel of God.

As believers, we have been called to do our part to fulfill the Great Commission.

This one is simple – to ‘accept’ the award you just add the ABC Award logo to your blog –and then you share something about yourself with your readers and then pass the award on to other worthy bloggers – there’s no limit to how few – or how many – other bloggers you can send this to.

To share something about yourself – you will need to go through the alphabet and choose a word or phrase for each letter and use that to describe yourself – it might be something about you, something you like, or a place or thing you dream about. And that’s all – no long descriptions or detail – just create a new post, add your shiny new blog award badge and alphabet words and let your readers enjoy finding out a little more about you.

So, here’s a little about me, alphabetically:

A	Adaptable	B	Believer
C	Christian	D	Dedicated
E	Energetic	F	Forgiven
G	Gentle	H	Helpful
I	Insightful	J	Joyful
K	Kind	L	Loving
M	Messiah	N	Nothing but Jesus
O	Observant	P	Praise
Q	Quiet	R	Righteous
S	Sure	T	Thankful
U	Unwavering	V	Verity
W	Worship	X	eXcellent Savior
Y	YHWH	Z	This space intentionally left blank

I would also like to nominate these worthy blogs to receive this reward as well:

Freedomborn

From Saul to Paul

Daily Aspects

I want to thank each of these ministries and pray God’s greatest blessings as you serve Him

Reblogged from Pastor Mike Says:

One day, I woke early in the morning to watch the sunrise. Ah the beauty of God’s creation is beyond description. As I watched, I praised God for His beautiful work. As I sat there, I felt the Lord’s presence with me. He asked me, “Do you love me?” I answered, “Of course, God! You are my Lord and Saviour!” Then He asked, “If you were physically handicapped, would you still love me?” I was perplexed. I looked down upon my arms, legs and the rest of my body and wondered how many things I …

Wow! This really brought tears to my eyes. May the Lord bless all who read this.

Having lost a sister recently, this kind of story has a special significance right now. Don’t wait to love.  You never know when your last chance may come.

I believe as a result of further prayer, this time for the Lord to reveal in me something He wants me to change, that mountaintop experience came to an end.

I felt this was the Lord’s doing, though I did not understand why though I knew He had my good at heart.  One result of losing that mountaintop experience was that I found myself giving in to temptation.  It was nothing blatant, not at first, but only delaying briefly before pushing the temptation away and seeking the Lord’s righteousness to replace the temptation.

But as it always is with temptation, that was only the beginning.  The camel’s nose was in the tent, and slowly and inevitably, he (the devil) began to insinuate his lies and trickery into my thinking.

Soon, I found myself allowing tempting thoughts to linger longer.  not long after that, I found myself seeking temptation and beginning to justify “just a little sin”.  After all, with all the temptation I find myself under, surely a little sin is understandable.  After all, it would be only a little taste, right?

And that is how it always begins.  It’s just a little taste at first.  but then it’s a little more, and before long I would find myself languishing in it longer and longer.  and all the while convinced that I’m doing the best I can under the circumstances.

In the past I have always imagined that I was apart from God because, as everyone knows, God cannot tolerate sin.  And this is true, He cannot.  What I never took into account though is that Jesus has already forgiven ALL of my sin and God never moves away from me.  It is only I who have moved away from Him.  Satan will whisper about how God must be disappointed in me, that He must be disgusted with me.  Of course, the worse I felt, the more I would sin, spiraling ever downward.

Now I know, my Lord is NEVER disappointed in me, my sins are forgiven and I am holy in His sight, always!  The only one that moved was me.

This descent into temptation has been a real learning experience for me.  I have been able to see myself as I let temptation have more and more power over me and finally understand how I have had periods of time in the past where I was apart from the Lord for years at a time.

Now I understand that I don’t need to go down that path any more.  I can return to my Lord at the first sign of temptation or after the temptation has begat sin in my life.  But why would I want to wait?  It is the Lord that satisfies my every hunger and thirst.

So, I ask myself, why do I want to stop sinning?  Is it because I fear that God will punish me if I continue to sin?  God’s word says,

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.  1 John 4:18

Or, do I seek to stop sinning because I feel guilty about my sin?  God’s word says,

Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.^[g] 12 He says,  “I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters;  in the assembly I will sing your praises.”  Hebrews 2:11-12

Jesus certainly is not ashamed of me, so why would I feel ashamed of myself?  Am I better than He?

Those have been the big motivators in my life, fear and guilt.  But not everyone is motivated to stop sinning because of these things, another reason people want to stop sinning is that they want to make sure they don’t miss an opportunity for God’s blessing.  God’s word says,

Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.  His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.  Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.  2 Peter 1:2-4

God has already given us all that we need for life and godliness.  In expecting further blessing, am I saying that maybe God missed one?  That if I just get rid of this one sin, maybe He will realize His error and bless me with some new blessing that He withheld previously?

Or perhaps we expect that if we get rid of sin that God will reward us, either in this life or in heaven.  But God’s word says,

…and constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain.  1 Timothy 6:5

The Bible says that if we expect gain from our godliness then we are depraved and deprived of the truth.

Many people will pursue one or more of the courses I have outlined above, even as I did for many years.  But be honest, have they worked?  No!  They have not, because they cannot!

What I have finally had beaten into my head is that my Father in heaven loves me and accepts me just as I am, sins and all!  When Jesus was on the cross and said, “It is finished!”, that is exactly what He meant.  From that point on,

ALL, every last one, of my sins have been FORGIVEN!

I cannot make God like me more than He already does by not sinning because every sin that I commit is as far from God as the east is from the west, behind God’s back, and never to be remembered again and never to be held against me! (see Psalm 103:12, Isaiah 38:17, etc)

As I learned today, all of my attempts to remove my guilt or shame, or my attempts to make God happier with me by keeping myself from sin, have only kept me in bondage to sin and prevented me from getting to know the depth of God’s love for me, the depth of His acceptance of me, the depth of His forgiveness, and the true immensity of the work that Jesus did on the cross on my behalf.

I have had the privilege of listening to Aaron Budjen of Living God Ministries on the way home from work for the past several weeks.  Aaron’s teachings are straight from the Bible, but with all the religious trappings removed.  His voice is refreshing, and many times, challenging, as I find myself having to reconsider things that I thought I knew, through prayer and reading of the scriptures.

On the Living God Ministries website is a radio archive of all the radio shows that he has produced.  This morning I listened to Aaron’s series on Overcoming Sin.

I urge anyone who is reading this to listen to the series on overcoming sin.  For me it was a transformational experience.  And perhaps you have found what I have written today to be controversial, or even threatening.  In that case, I especially urge you to listen to the series.

My goal for the past thirty-two years has been to get a handle on sinning, but no more.  As of today, my goal is to trust God in everything and to have a deep and personal relationship with the One who loved me enough to die for me.

I read her post this morning and commented on it, but in thinking about it afterwards, I realized that I have more to say, and I wanted to share it here.

First, as I mentioned in my comment on Bernadette’s post, the song, “Jesus Take The Wheel”, is the story of my walk with the Lord.   I’ve had some truly mountaintop experiences in my walk, but eventually things begin to slip, and eventually, I find myself on that sheet of invisible black ice, out of control and crying out to the Lord for help.  Or to use Carrie Underwood’s words, “Jesus, please take the wheel!”.

The fact is, I was on one of those mountaintops a couple of months ago.  My heart was filled with constant songs of praise and I was talking with the Lord constantly throughout the day.  But slowly, that experience began to slip from my grasp, and temptation began to be a more frequent visitor in my thoughts.  At first, I was zealous to sweep those temptations away, but over time it becomes easier to listen to them, and now I occasionally find myself toying with the idea of listening to them.

There is no black ice on the road, not yet.  But the weather is getting colder and it’s beginning to look like rain, or maybe even snow.

When I read Bernadette’s post this morning I seemed to be looking into a mirror.  I could clearly see the progression from mountaintop to black ice road, which is probably where I would have ended up again if the cycle had not been broken.  The Lord, having broken the cycle, has offered me a unique opportunity for reflection.  Through reflection, I am sure I will be able to discern what I need to be doing differently so these yo-yo like shifts are ended permanently!

And I know that at the heart of what I need to do is the prayer, though not in desperation, “Jesus, please take the wheel!”.  Now, to make sure I don’t take the wheel back.

So, I have decided to just share some of my thoughts as a blog post.

Firstly, as some of you may already know, I have recently completed a three-day fast, which was the topic of my last post.  But the spiritual lessons did not end with the first fork fulll of food to enter my mouth last Tuesday evening.  Far from it!  In fact, I am learning more each day about the Lord, about my body, and about dependence.

First, my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and is not my own, but was purchased with the precious blood of Christ. ( 1 Cor 6:19-20, 1 Pet 1:19)  Therefore, I am to glorify God in my body and in my spirit, which are God’s.  My body is not my own, but God has given me stewardship over it.  I need to learn to treat my body with the respect due a possession of my Lord.  I need to feed my body with good and nourishing foods, and to refrain with foods (or quantities of food) that are not healthy for my body.  I see doing this as a form of obedience to the Lord.

Another thing while on the topic of food, sometimes, especially at work, I will use food as a stress reliever.  In other words, I depend on food to deal with stress, when I should be relying on my Lord.  A minute or two of prayer and fellowship with the Lord will always be better than a handful of nuts or a granola bar, and it’s fewer calories to boot!

As much as I loke talking about food it’s time I moved on or I will have to change the title of this post.

So, when I think of Jesus’ love for me I am completely overwhelmed by it.  It is difficult to fathom a love so deep that one would endure what Jesus endured for me.  If someone blindfolded me and slapped me and spit on me and insulted me, and I knew that they would soon subject me to torture that would lead to my death, knowing that I had the power to stop it, I certainly would not endure such treatment.

But my Savior did.

My Savior did that, even knowing that with a wave of His hand every one of His tormentors would have fallen dead at His feet, because if He had not, I would have no means of salvation, no means of knowing His love for me.  Is it any wonder then that when I am alone in prayer that I kneel as if at my Saviors feet?  Almighty God, creator of heaven and earth, Lord of billions of galaxies and trillions of stars gave everything for my salvation.  How can I give Him less than my everything as a minuscule token of thanksgiving?

Here is another.  Christmas is just passed and we all celebrated the birth of Jesus.  And every year I have the same thoughts of God in flesh.  As astounding as the idea is of God, the almighty God, in human flesh, even more, how astounding is the idea of God in the body of a helpless baby?  I seem to be nearly able to comprehend God in an adult body, but god, a helpless babe is asking too much of this limited brain!  Gods sacrifice on our behalf did not start with the events that led up to Jesus’ crucifixion, it started with Jesus’ birth!