Posted by
Eutychus on Friday, November 10, 2006 7:03:55 PM
A brother in Christ placed these comments (an excerpt...go to the link for his
full comments) up on FreeRepublic:
According to the election results, Americans don’t care about liberal judges, higher taxes, or the War On Terror. I was confident that Americans knew better than to believe the illusion of the liberal media and Democrat candidates who ran pretending to be conservative. We lost because we’re listening to the wrong voices. MSM hates the military, they hate moral leaders, they hate cops, they hate Christians, they hate conservative values. Why do we listen to them? Why do we read their stuff? We should know better. We need to start listening to sources that are sympathetic with our world view, and reject the opinion of those who are hostile to what we believe.
Conservatives, (Christians,) are not going to change society through politics or elections. Christians will now only change the political, moral direction of society by getting people saved. Once people are changed through salvation, they will begin to think right, vote right, and ignore the wrong voices.
Christians are not going to accomplish this by operating like we have in the past, through passionless, unconvincing, powerless, proofless, religious words. There is a resentment for religion in America, and it is well deserved. America needs to experience the real presence and miraculous power of God, and average Christians today do not have that. We need that same thing that was on Jesus where he didn’t have to chase people around with the truth. All he had to do was make eye contact with an oppressed person and their hearts would instantly break. It was the Holy Spirit who made that possible. We can have that too, because Jesus said He would pour His Spirit on all flesh and we would do the same works that He did.
To get an observable presence and power of God, we need to pursue the presence of God ourselves, (its called prayer and worship,) and quit the habitual sins (Foley & Haggard) we use to fill the emptiness and wounds in our souls. Those wounds were created through cruelty, frustration, and disappointment. They can only be filled and eventually healed with the presence of God, and not only once a week at a church that doesn’t preach the full gospel.
Its hard work, that’s why we don’t do it. But will our nation survive any other way? This is the diagnosis of what happened 2006, and the prescription to heal our land.
Pursue the presence of God.
Quit habitual sin.
Get the observable power and presence of God.
Win souls.
Saved minds think right, vote right, and ignore the wrong voices.
Moral and political direction is corrected.
By Heaven, my Godly values will be reinforced.
My wife and I, along with another couple, have been praying for the president, for our other political leaders, the nation, the war on terror, our troops, the SCOTUS nominees, etc., for over 6 years now (we meet weekly to pray, sometimes twice or three times a week as we draw close to an election). After Tuesday's results, we got together Wednesday night, and agreed that what America needs isn't so much the victory of a political ideology, but a spiritual renewal. What we need isn't the victory of conservatism as a political ideology, but revival.
For too long, Christians have depended (mainly) upon the ways and resources of the world (mailing lists, advertising, precinct walking, get-out-the-vote efforts) to change the nation. I don't reject political tools in election years, but Christians need to realize that in spiritual battles, we have spiritual resources, and we need to be bringing those resources to bear against the problems of our nation and world as least as much as we bring in the resources of modern politics -- actually more.
The problems in the world are not political, but spiritual. We (I mean Christians) have largely fought the "culture war" as if it's primarily a political battle. We need to fight these battles on our turf -- as spiritual battles, using spiritual weapons.
As for our weekly prayer times, we will still pray for Pres. Bush, our leaders, the WOT, and the like, but the focus of our prayers will now switch to the need for the outpouring of God's Spirit on the nation, and the need for revival. If America experiences another Great Awakening like in the days of Jonathan Edwards, all the problems will right themselves.