I recently read “if there is one thing we have learned in 2020 is that our nation needs God.” A nation loses sight of God one individual, one family at a time. The old adage “on a slippery slope” speaks to “an idea or course of action which will lead to something unacceptable, wrong, or disastrous.” The things we have learned this year about our nation and about each other is because we have been on a slippery slope for some time. The moral decline of our cultural mindset; the weakening of the church; and the weakening of the family have culminated in 2020.
It is the family that makes the community, communities makes the state, and states then make a nation, etc. The Bible is clear that Jesus and God do not change. Hebrews 13:8 (NLT): “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” Just like in Biblical times, our nation has moved away from God; one individual, one family, one community, one state, and now a nation. We have failed to acknowledge that we have accountability to a Higher Authority. The burden of this for a parent is how to respond so as to protect my children and preserve the nation we are passing on to them.
“What joy for the nation whose God is the LORD, whose people he has chosen as his inheritance. The LORD looks down from heaven and sees the whole human race. From his throne he observes all who live on the earth. He made their hearts, so he understands everything they do.”
Psalm 33:12-15 (NLT)
God desires that we look to Him to learn how we got here and how we get from here. I was recently listening to a politician’s testimony of being raised in church. Now that is certainly something that has changed from the past. He said that as a boy growing up, he and his family were in church whenever the doors were open. He told of a Sunday morning when they awoke to a 3-inch ice storm. His father was out of town and his mother boiled water to pour on the windshield, so they could get to church. Halfway to church, the windshield froze again and when she got out trying to remove the ice, a mishap occurred which caused the driver’s door to be ripped back to the fender by a fire hydrant. When a citizen stopped to ask if they needed his help, his mother replied “we need a ride to church.” They left the car and the damaged door and were the only family other than the preacher at church that day.
I share that story as a picture of how times have changed. I am not saying we should risk life and limb in an ice storm to go to church; however, I am sharing this so that we can self-evaluate how weak God’s church has become in our priorities. We have lost the sense that we should be in church no matter what on Sunday morning. Anything and everything interferes, and we allow it. Could God have allowed us to have a season of not being able to go to church in order to enrich our desire for the same?
“And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.”
Hebrews 10:25 (NLT)
