Message to America

Mark 1:40-42 – A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing”, he said.  “Be clean”!  Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cured.

The leper called out, “Lord, IF YOU ARE WILLING…” (not “if you can”).  What America needs today is a touch from the Lord Jesus Christ.  We need to be a nation (a people) that asks for that touch, that worships Christ, and falls on our knees and acknowledges him and lives by His standards.

RESOVE (this is our past)

RELATIVISM (this is today)

REPENT (this can be our future)

What has happened in recent decades?  There has been another bailout.  Not by the government – this bailout came from the body of believers in our behavior and beliefs.  Christians have caved in.

If America could somehow speak, what self-indicting words would she say to us?

In our fear of offending newcomers to our country, we have downplayed the sacrifices of those who serve, and who have served, in our country; and who protected our freedom of worship.

In our attempt to be inclusive, we have stopped saying that Jesus is the only way to heaven.

In our desire to fulfill our lust, we have fractured our family.

In our efforts to cover our mistakes, we have allowed 51 million abortions to take place.

In our quest for more and more possessions, we have racked up huge debts which rob us of our joy.

In our attempt to be tolerant, we have discounted the sanctity of marriage.

In our search for the fountain of youth, we have stopped listening to the wisdom of the elderly.

In our desire for wealth, we have communicated in gold we trust.

In our efforts for political correctness, we have neutered the power of our Christian witness.

In our desire to fit in, we have forsaken our first love.

But, if you listen closely, it’s not too late.  You can still hear the faint heartbeat of a country who desperately desires a bi-pass procedure that radically jumps starts within us a faith of our fathers.  Which leads us to a Cross.  Which starts a spiritual revival where Christians…

Have their Bibles open on their lap, instead of just as a decoration on their coffee table.

Where a hand-shake is just as binding as a legal contract.

Where husbands and wives actually mean it when they say, “Until death do us part”.

Where Christians are more prone to fall on their knees than to puff out their chest.

Where there are Bible-believing churches that the gates of hell cannot prevail against.

So, listen to your country.  She desires a restoration that can only come through the power of God.  But it begins with prayer, with humility and with repentance.  And, without those three, God does not promise to heal our land.

So, how is this going to end?   Will we return to our roots as a nation, or will we continue our descent on this slippery slope?  That is up to YOU.  That is up to ME.  That is up to US.  WE will write the ending of this Cliff-hanger through the lives that we chose to live. 

Abraham Lincoln prayed this prayer.  It is ours today:

Lord, we have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven.  We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity.  We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown.  But we have forgotten YOU, Oh GOD.  We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied, enriched and strengthened us.  We have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.  Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace.  Too proud to pray to the God who made us.  It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended power, and to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.

And, Lord, here today, in 2010, may we do the same.  May we say it, and may we mean it.  In the powerful name of the Lord Jesus Christ we pray.  Amen.

(Taken from my notes at the end of a sermon by Pastor Dave Stone of Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, KY, which he delivered on July 4^th, 2010.)