If you listen to or read the news, there is no doubt it can have an impact on you. Americans are bombarded day in and day out about the horrible condition of our country. We see, hear or read story after story about how bad our President is, how bad Congress is, how bad God is, how bad the things that we always knew as good and right are. It was difficult, for example, for me to find one good news story this morning as I perused my news sources. If you start believing all this, it will have a very negative impact on your life’s outlook. It will affect your mentality. It will affect your relationships. It will change the way your brain processes information. And that’s the game of Satan, which the media and leftists are playing.
There has been a great increase in the number of emails I receive saying in various ways that America is doomed. These emails, with good documentation, point to stories and statistics that, at least in their writer’s minds, point to the demise of America. The moral condition of our nation; the hatred that is espoused by those claiming anyone who disagrees with them are haters; the appearance that those who are seeking the obstruction and overthrow of the Constitutional basis of America are in the majority and they are winning; the lack of the “Church” to focus on spreading the gospel and it’s tremendous life-living instruction-all these things point to an America in decline. Yes, they do. We live in perilous times.
A few days ago, Chris and I visited Jamestown, Va., one of the first colonial settlements in our country. These men came to America on a 4 ½ month journey packed like sardines in small “ships.” They carved out a civilization through hard work, facing tremendously negative elements. The pilgrims on the Mayflower had it even rougher a little more than a decade later. The French Huguenots in Florida actually faced execution by the Spanish for their religious beliefs. I’m sure there were times when these courageous people thought the world was ending, but they kept on, having enormous faith in God. The Jamestown settlers were required to attend prayer services twice a day. Point is, they were bloomers, not doomers.
America is an ideal, even more than it is a country. Being American means that you are free to do and be, to worship, to speak, to enjoy the fruits of your labor, to dream and to invent, to lead or to follow. Yes, our country is facing a terrible time. If we, however, face these times as doomers, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. For me, so long as there is God, there is hope. Remember Elijah after the miracle on Mt Carmel became filled with fear and told the Lord in 1 Kings 19:10, “and I, even I only, am left: and they seek my life to take it away.” He, having little hope, thought he was the only prophet of God left alive, but God had preserved 7,000 who had not bowed to Baal. America is going through a rough time, but it has before. It’s the remnant of good people who need to focus on God’s work and once again turn the world upside down.
