Our Country

Electoral Votes Following 2000 Census

I've been feeling a bit depressed - about our country's direction, usurping of the democratic process and the hopelessness a friend lived with that led to an overdose of prescription medication. I was reading about book that looked to prophecy with foreboding for our country, when I read what one reviewer wrote.  Sorry, I do not have his name for attribution:

"America is a Christian nation and until we get back to these roots there is no hope for our country." False.  Hope does not come from our government, from our country being based on Christian ideals, or from having a godly president (though none of these are bad things). Hope comes from God and as the church spreads His gospel around the world. Don't put your hope in our country or government aligning to certain ideals or us getting back to being a more "Christian" nation. This is idolatry. Seek the good of our country for sure, but don't make our country the great good.  God is our greatest good and our only hope.

Boy, did that cause me to rethink! God did not accept me as His child when I got ‘good enough.’ That’s not going to happen for anyone. He accepted me as I was when I turned to Him as my Lord and savior. A country can’t do that, only people can. What applied to Israel as a nation may not apply to the United States of America. Christianity is not confined to the USA, either. We do not have the right “brand” of Christianity any more than any other nation.

We do have a responsibility as Christians to follow God’s commands in our own lives. Our Lord gave the foundation for those commands:

Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:36-40)

We are not to remove ourselves from our national citizenship:

They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's. (Matthew 22:21)

For me, that rendering under Caesar includes voting my beliefs, writing my representatives at state and federal levels to express my approval or disapproval of pending legislation, paying attention to debates and demanding from those representatives explanations in order to make decisions based on biblical principles I hold dear.

It is also my responsibility to share God’s word, but it is not my responsibility to judge how it is received. It may take a while for the seed to sprout, as our Lord said:

And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour: other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours. (John 4:37-38)

God does not need us to enthrone Him in America, or in any other nation,  but in our own lives. God is sovereign. Before Him every knee shall bow, in His time.

Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. (2 Thessalonians 2:5-6)

I love my country, but God comes first.