Atlanta Bible Baptist Church

Pastor Ray P. Smith: Well, good morning again. This morning, I want to do something very simple and not new. There has been something gnawing in my spirit for a while, and this morning I want to talk about it. The title of our sermon is "Christians in the Blessed Nation." I want us to think about the blessings that we have as citizens of this country.

I know some of you have convinced yourselves that Pastor Ray is a closet Republican and he wants us all to abandon our thinking for a change. I'm not going to talk about politics this morning, but I do want to talk about the blessedness of being in the nation that God has placed us in. For a text, I want us to look at 1 Timothy 2, the first six verses, and consider God's goodness in having placed us here in a nation that celebrated 250 years yesterday.

"Therefore, I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time."

Father, thank you again for your goodness. Thank you for your mercy and compassion, as we mentioned. Thank you for the freedom of assembly. I thank you, Father, that we have your word. There were those who wanted to keep the world in darkness, and yet when the word of God was translated into the language of the common people, you brought freedom. You brought liberty.

Father, historically speaking, wherever the gospel has traveled in the world, liberty and freedom has followed. It is for freedom that you have set us free. Of course, freedom brings responsibility, and we ask that you would strengthen us. First of all, to be grateful. We live in a nation of ingrates and people who complain a lot about what is wrong, and they forget the blessings that have come about because we have obeyed your word. Strengthen us to walk in gratitude and to walk in faithfulness, and to do the three things that would allow us to bless our nation in your name. Bind the evil one, guard my thoughts, my speech, and all that takes place in the next few minutes. We'll be careful, as always, to give you the praise, the honor, and the thanksgiving. We ask them all in Jesus's wonderful name and for His sake. Amen.

I mentioned to you before someone wrote these words: only in America. They say only in America can a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance. Only in America are there handicapped parking places in front of a skating rink. Only in America do drugstores make the sick people walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front. Only in America do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries, and, of course, a diet Coke.

Only in America do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and then put junk in our garage. I won't call any names, but I do have neighbors. Only in America do we use answering machines to screen calls and then have call waiting so we don't miss a call from someone we didn't want to talk to in the first place. Only in America do we buy hot dogs in packages of 10 and buns in packages of 8. But of course, if you go to places like B.J.'s and Sam's and Costco, you notice that hot dogs come in packs of 24, but the buns come in packages of 16. I still haven't figured that out.

We live in a nation that has a lot of weird things that go on, but we have a lot of freedoms that we can celebrate. This morning, I want us to talk about the freedoms that come about as Christians in a blessed nation. I really want to speak very briefly this morning about these things. Some of us celebrated. We didn't get to sleep last night because even at 1:00 or 1:30 in the morning, people were still shooting off fireworks, interrupting us from preparation for today.

If you have the outline that was sent out, you know where we're going. Remembering our Christian heritage, I think I put this up last year or two years ago. When we think about the founding of our nation, we need to remember that this nation was founded, as Patrick Henry once said, "It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religion, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ." Now, they might throw you out of the place if you say that today, but in the 1700s, Patrick Henry recognized this.

In fact, as they talked and as they labored back and forth in discussion about whether or not they should step away from the rule of England, they talked about this very fact and why we have these things in place as we do. I once asked the question: is America a Christian nation? And the answer is yes and no. No, America is not a Christian nation because for it to be a Christian nation, you would have to have it be mainly Christians. I think it may be fair to assume that less than 30% of all the people in our nation are Christians in the biblical sense.

Nevertheless, I say that America could be considered a Christian nation in the sense that its founding documents were forged and shaped by the Scriptures. I want to delve into that for just a second, though not at this particular time. George Washington said this in his farewell address: "Do not let anyone claim tribute to American patriotism if they even attempt to remove religion from politics." Now today, it's just the opposite. We say we have freedom from religion, guaranteed by the First Amendment. The First Amendment doesn't actually guarantee freedom from religion; it guarantees the freedom to practice religion.

But the ACLU has turned it on its head, and the godless ones who are the anointed in our nation have followed that line and pulled out the Christian faith from every area of our society. We think today that you don't discuss religion or politics, but our first president said you cannot divorce the one from the other. It makes sense because our faith is not something that we hold in a corner. The faith is something that has to express itself in the public arena. In fact, in a couple of weeks, when we go back into James chapter 1 and look at verses 26 and 27, he talks about true religion. True religion cannot be divorced from either conduct or character.

You live out of your convictions and you practice out of what you truly believe. In fact, someone has said, "What I really believe is what I do, not what I say." And so, Washington was saying if we're going to be in a nation that practices right, then it's because we have to make sure that religion is a vital part of what we do. When we think about the foundation of our liberties, I just want to talk about the First Amendment. The First Amendment says this: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, or to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

Now you said you left out the first part: "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion." The point is the founding fathers did not want to have a state religion, and that's the part that the ACLU has seized on. But you look at the First Amendment and the five core freedoms that are found in the First Amendment: the freedom of speech, the freedom of press, the freedom of religion, and the right to assemble. Now, you look at these four things and the right to assemble, and if you are astute, you will recognize that what the founding fathers have done is they've ensured that the church will be able to have vitality.

You see, the church is free to speak about Christ and to preach the gospel. The church is free to put together Bible tracts, some of which are in the tract rack there. We're able to freely assemble. We can print off Bibles. They burned Wycliffe at the stake for printing the Bible because the Catholic Church did not want the Bible in the hands of the people because then they would lose their grip on power. But see, when you have the freedom of the press, each of us can have access to the gospel of liberty.

With the freedom of religion, we're able to practice what we believe without the fear that we would be oppressed like the Chinese government suppresses people. They put millions of Uyghurs in camps and they smash them. They destroy them as families and as individuals and deny them citizenship. But here it's just the opposite. We have the freedom to peacefully assemble and we're not afraid that the government will run through those doors with rifles and guns and shut us down. The founding fathers put all of these things in place to ensure that the gospel went forward.

When I say we're a Christian nation, it's not because everybody here is a Christian, but because of the influence of the Scriptures on how we have shaped ourselves as a nation. The reason that it's difficult to get other countries to adopt our way of life is that we try to export democracy around the globe and it meets with failure. You know why? Because in order to have a system like ours, you have to embrace one single solitary truth which the founding fathers did.

Let me do one more quote. Thomas Jefferson said the First Amendment created a wall of separation between the church and the state. That's my favorite one. But that wall is a one-directional wall. It keeps the government from running the church. But Jefferson said it makes sure that Christian principles will always stay in government. Now, we don't practice that today, but that's what the founding fathers believed. When we think about the future of our loved ones which is at stake, John Adams said this: "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people. Period. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Our constitution will not work apart from morality and religion. Why is that? Because our founding fathers embraced this one principle. It is simply that men and women come into this world depraved. They understood that people coming into the world don't come into the world with the best versions of themselves in place. They don't come into the world as a blank slate that is impressed upon by society. Society doesn't turn out degenerates. Society allows degenerates to express their degeneracy.

The founding fathers understood that because people come into the world depraved, then we have to have a system that ensures that depravity does not express itself. You see, if you have a king and the king has a depraved heart, then the king will eventually turn into a tyrant because absolute power corrupts absolutely. If you have an aristocracy where only the rich have the power, you have a system where the rich rule over the poor and oppress them.

But what they put in place was a system of checks and balances built around Isaiah 33 where they looked in the scriptures and they said, "Yahweh, God, is our judge. God is our lawgiver. God is our king. He will save us." And when they looked at that, what they realized in looking at the entire Old Testament is that God, when he took his people, he built into their culture three different functions: prophet, priest, and king. The king was to be an executive, the priest was to deal with the laws and teach the people the laws, and the prophets were like judges who called people back to a correct understanding of the law.

Those three things they put into our constitution so that now you've got these checks and balances. You've got a president who's able to be the executive, but you know the president is limited in what he can do. He can never become a tyrant because, in the first place, he can never have more than two terms. He can never become a tyrant because there are some things that the law says are relegated to Congress. He can't do those things. He can't go too far, but he has the power to shut down the laws that the Congress puts in place so that those who run the show are unable to run roughshod over people.

Then they even have our bicameral system. We have a Senate and a House of Representatives. In the Senate, each state has exactly two senators so that it doesn't matter if you're California versus Montana. The big states versus the states with just a few people, because you all get just two senators, so there's equality built there. Nevertheless, you've got the House of Representatives where the states that have more people get more representatives. You've got the interests of the people and the majority represented, but the majority can't run roughshod over the minority because there's equality in the Senate. They put this in these checks and balances in place to make sure that there's equality in our government.

Because they recognized that men are depraved, they put in place a system that has checks and balances so that it's difficult for anyone to rise to ascendancy in our nation. That is under attack today. What we have today are people who want to throw out our constitution. They want to change our constitution. They want to change our traditions. They want to do away with all the things that the founding fathers put in place to make sure that there is equality.

When we understand that this government is built for a religious people, then it should not surprise us that the biggest attack that we have starts off with religion. David Noble, in his book "Understanding the Times," had this picture. I talk about realizing the perils of our day. You see these young people, whether they're in elementary school or in high school or whatever, and they're out there on the playground in the land of ideas. You've got the Voltaire tree, you've got the Darwin tree where the origin of species is that we're descended from monkeys. You've got a Karl Marx tree where Marxism and Leninism is running the show. These kids, they can learn about all of that stuff, but what's off-limits? The one thing that's off-limits, the most dangerous thing, is religion.

Why is that? Because religion teaches that there is a God. Religion teaches that there is absolute right and wrong. Religion teaches that we are all personally, individually responsible for our choices. If you're going to let people think that, they say you can't post the Ten Commandments in the public arena. Why? Because people might read them, and if they read them, they might think they're supposed to obey them. And if they're supposed to obey them, then they won't be immoral, they won't be indecent, they won't stop lying, they won't stop doing the things that we love doing. We love our sin, and so you have to get rid of all of that.

In Noble's book, he put together a chart. He's got nine or ten different categories. The updated version expanded it to six categories, but I just wanted to talk about the foolish ideas that we see in our society just for a second. Some of us feel that the issues of the day are political and we say it's Democrats versus Republicans. That's not true. The issue is not Democrats versus Republicans; the problem is worldviews, because how a person sees the world determines how they behave and respond to the things that happen in their world.

When you look at theology, we've got secular humanism which is atheistic. It says there's no God. And if there is no God, then we're the masters of our own fate. And as you see the Marxist-Leninists, like the mayor of New York City and people in some cities around the nation, you've got people who embrace a Marxist-Leninist approach to life. Marxism-Leninism says it's us against them. It's the rich versus the poor. Marx taught that the reason you have struggles in the world is that you've got rich people who have everything and they won't share it with the poor.

And so the poor with their poverty, they have these struggles. And it's a class struggle. So what you have to do is you have to redistribute the wealth. You have to take from the rich and give it to the poor. You say, "Well, that's Robin Hood." Yeah, Robin Hood was a thief. But that mindset, they don't say take from the rich. What they say is tax the rich. They say the rich need to pay their fair share because, you know, Elon Musk shouldn't be a trillionaire when you have all of these people in poverty. Take some of that money and then give it to the people who don't have as much. Redistribute the wealth.

That's the mayor of New York's whole approach. Tax the rich, but then let's have free childcare, free busing. Let's freeze the rent. Who's going to pay for it? Well, we're going to take it from the rich and let them pay for it. And people say, "Yeah, that sounds fair." No, it's not fair. Jesus said you're going to always have poor people with you. Why? Because the playing field is not level. The playing field has never been level.

It doesn't mean that you're not as valuable as a person as another person. It just means that there are inequities in life and you just got to deal with that. You have to deal with the hand that you've been dealt. But in our society, we're angry with people who have a bigger hand than us. It's like the man who came to Jesus and said, "Lord, make my brother share the inheritance with me." Jesus said, "Who made me a judge over you?" But then after the guy went away, he said, "Look, be careful. Guard your heart against all forms of greed because a man's life does not consist in the abundance of things that he possesses." You're not worth more because you have more. You're not worth less because you have less. You're worth the same before the God who created you.

And that's why the founding fathers said we've been endowed with unalienable rights. The rights don't come from the government. They never have. The rights come from God. And the purpose of government is to safeguard the rights that God has given us. That's the correct use of government. Oh, but that's being turned on its head today.

Sociologically, they want a non-traditional world state. Look at what they are fighting against: the abolition of home and church and state. Marxist groups talk about redistributing the wealth, but they're talking about redefining the family so that a family is not a man, a woman, and the children that they both produce. They say a family is people that come together who love each other, and it doesn't matter if they're heterosexual or homosexual. They say we have to turn this thing on its head. You got to get rid of the home, that's why they're driving women out of the home. You got to get rid of the church, that's why they say you can't endorse candidates as a church.

They want to abolish the state. That's why you got people who say that America owes them. We have to make reparations to them because we have so much and they have so little and it's not fair. And so we owe it to them to take our wealth and give it to them. In fact, I was listening to a lady in England. As they were discussing the heat, she said it's America's fault because, you know, they burn all those fossil fuels and they pollute the environment. And of course, now you've got greenhouse gases and climate change, so it's America's fault. Now, the fact that they got rid of fossil fuels and they're trying to use solar panels to cool down things and it's not working too well, but 90% of all of the homes in America have air conditioning. So it's hot here too, but we're dealing with it. But the world feels that way: redistribute the wealth.

But notice biblical Christianity teaches the emphasis is on justice. The emphasis is on freedom. The emphasis is on law and order. That comes out of the Scriptures. God is sovereign and God ministers through those He's placed in authority, so that we have to respect those in authority, 1 Peter says. But they want to throw out authority. They want to defund the police. They want to say the president is wrong. They don't trust any politician, let alone submit to them.

Notice that secular humanists say we can solve our own problems. They embrace socialism and Marxist-Leninist philosophy says take from the rich, redistribute to the poor, and then engage or put in place a communist state. Now, what's the deal with communism? Communism says everybody has the same. Whittaker Chambers in his book "Witness" says a farmer behind the Soviet iron curtain said, "Cows hate communism." Why would the farmer say that? Because he said when the farmer owned the cows, he took care of the cows because you milk the cows, you feed the cows, you make sure the cows are healthy. But you know, when communism takes over, you don't own the cows. The state owns everything. And if you don't own the cow, you ain't all that concerned about how well the cow does. The cows don't do as well under communism. And that's not just true of cows; that's true of people.

And because that's true of people, then those who are ascending, so it seems, in our society who call themselves Democratic Socialists of America, they want to go and push a socialist communist agenda which fights against the biblical view of stewardship of property. God has given me what I have, and I am to manage it for His glory and for your benefit. In fact, if I manage it in a way that God says to manage it, you know I will create an abundance. And when I create an abundance, I will have something to give to those who don't have. It won't be that the government will take my stuff and redistribute it to people who don't want to work for it. It's just that because I have an abundance and I see a need, I'm willing to meet the need. That's what the Scriptures call us to do: to distribute, to give, to share, to care. That's biblical. But see, that's not the tenor of our society at the moment.

Our responses to living in this blessed nation: there are three things that we need to do to change the tide, the direction. Number one: we have to lift up our country in prayer. Listen, don't complain about the state of the nation if you aren't praying about the state of the nation. Don't complain about the person who sits in the White House if you aren't praying for the person that sits in the White House. Don't complain about the politicians that make the laws if you aren't praying for the people who make the laws. We have to pray for our country.

Now, you look at verses 1 and 2 of 1 Timothy and he says, "I exhort first of all supplications," that's asking God; "prayers," that's a general word for worship; "intercessions," that word literally means to ask on the behalf of someone else; "and giving of thanks." Those four things are to characterize my approach to God always. I ought not to just come to God with a list of the gimmes. "God, I need this. I want that. I pray about this." God says, "I know what you need before you come." So when you come, come with an attitude of worship. Recognizing that He's high and He's holy. And because God is high and holy, then when I come before Him, I want to acknowledge that He's high and holy. He's higher than the government. He's higher than the people who are rowdy. He's higher than the people who make the unjust law. I appeal to Him because He's the highest of the high, and I pray for other people. I want to pray for our nation. And listen, you know yourself, our nation needs all the prayer it could get. Pray, pray, pray.

A couple of quotes: Samuel Chadwick said this: "The one concern of the devil is to keep Christians from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but he trembles when we pray." E.M. Bounds says, "Little prayer, little power. Much prayer, much power." And so when he says what the church needs today is not machinery or better, not new organizations or more novel methods, but men and women whom the Holy Spirit can use, people mighty in prayer.

The Holy Spirit does not flow through methods but through men and women of prayer. God will shake our nation. He's done it before. Historically, you remember what it was like in 1864 when slavery was the law of the land, and do you know how many of your foremothers and forefathers prayed to God that their offspring would not be born into slavery? And because of their prayer, God shook the nation and He set us free. He turned the heart of those who lead using our Constitution, because the Constitution says all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with unalienable rights. And so the process was put in place where people could fight for the right to walk in freedom as the God who created them granted them.

James says the earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power. "You have not because you pray not." Secondly, we have to live right. We have to live righteously and lovingly before people. You know what he says in verses 2 and 3? He says that we ought to pray that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life. The key to having peace in your community is to have people in your community who know how to pray. It's in calling out to the only wise King who is able to turn the heart of those who lead.

So pray so that we can lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. You say, "Pastor, you just don't understand, it's rough in these streets." Of course, it's rough. But when Paul wrote this to Timothy and said pray for those in authority, who was he talking about? He was talking about Nero. You know, Nero, he would take Christians and he would dip their bodies in wax, light them on fire, and hang them up in his gardens to light them at night. That's how cruel he was. And Paul is saying pray for that man.

If Paul could say pray for Nero, surely we can pray for the president. He says in verse 3, "This is good and acceptable in the sight of God" when you pray for those in authority so that you can live right. We have to righteously and lovingly live before people. I told you before, some people don't come to church. You know why? Because they know some folk that come to church. We have to live right.

I saw this in my archives and I pulled it out. Someone says the paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but we have less. We buy more, but we enjoy less. We have bigger houses, but smaller families. More conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees, but less sense. More knowledge, but less judgment. More experts, but yet more problems. We have more medicine, but less wellness. We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too much recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast.

Whenever I see some of these young people flying down the expressway, I say, "Well, she's bored, he's bored." And apparently, they don't have to spend as much for gas as I do. Anyway, we drive too fast, we get too angry, we stay up too late, we get up too tired, we read too little, we watch TV too much, we pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions but reduced our values. We talk too much, we love too seldom, we hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life, but not life to our years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We've done larger things, but not better things. We've cleaned up the air, but we've polluted our souls. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudices. We write more, but we learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, but we communicate less and less. We're not better off as a society because our values are screwed up.

Values need to come out of the Scriptures. You know what Ephesians 5:1 and 2 says? "Follow God's example in everything you do because you are his dear children." You know God has given the written word for instruction, and he's given the living word for instruction. The living word is Jesus. You look at Jesus and you imitate what he did. And you look in the word and you do what the word says, and then you live right. He says live a life filled with love for others, following the example of Christ who loved you and gave himself as a sacrifice to take away your sins. He looked at you and he saw your need and he moved to meet the need. That's how he lived his life. Now imitate Him and live like that because that sacrifice was like sweet perfume to Him. God was pleased with what He did. You say, "I'm not Jesus." Well, no, but you've got Christ in you.

1 Peter 2 says be careful how you live among your unbelieving neighbors. Don't say, "I don't care what they think." You better care, because God cares. And God wants to use you to reach them. God so loved the world that He saved you and He put you right there next to them. You say they get on my nerves. Well, the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. He'll produce that in you if you get out of the way. Stop being selfish. Stop being a Jonah and give up your prejudices.

He says be careful how you live among those people. Even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they'll see your honorable behavior. It ought to be that people would say, "Well, you know, I don't think I've ever heard her say a single unkind thing about another person. Her faith must be real." They ought to be saying that about you. "Well, you know, I can't believe how patient he is. He doesn't get upset with people." It ought to be saying that about you and me. If they're saying, "Well, you know, he calls himself a Christian," then we're not what we should be. Our behavior should be honorable, and when they see it, they will believe and they'll give honor to God when He comes to judge the world. So I need to live out my faith so that people see the faith and then they see the God who put the faith in me.

The third thing is I lead people to Christ. If you want to change your community, if you want to change your house, if you want to change this neighborhood, how do you do it? You share the gospel. You reach people for Christ. You give them more than money.

I was on this website, and those of you that are younger, you probably already know about this. It's coolkids.org. They teach children how to manage money and to think about the future. He says the optimum age is between 7 years old and 12 years old. They've got this chart. It says, you know, if you start out with $5,000, if you put $50 a month in—that's like two family meals at Popeyes—for the next 50 years, you'd have a million and a half dollars. Now, you can't reach in your pocket and pull out anything close to a million dollars. But he's saying if you start these young people down the road of financial literacy and they can see the value of laying aside just a little bit at a time, they wind up with a lot. And see, the gap between those who have and those who haven't gets smaller. So he and his wife devoted themselves to financial literacy among kids. That's a great thing. In fact, that wouldn't be a bad thing for our church to invest in our young people and teach our young people the value of investing.

However, there is something we can do that's even greater than financial investing. We can shape them for eternity, and to do that, we have to give them the gospel. If you help somebody accrue two or three million dollars and at the end of their life they die without Christ, what would it profit them to have gained the whole world and to lose their soul? On the other hand, if you have someone who maybe lived on social security the rest of their life because there wasn't a lot there, if they know Christ and the pardoning of their sins, they have all of eternity to enjoy the bounties of God. So if you could offer somebody money or if you could offer somebody eternal life, which would you give them? Well, you could give them both, that would be great. But if you give the one, material things, and you don't give spiritual things, you've not helped them ultimately. That's the thing.

Leading people to Christ is the most important thing we can do. That's why verses 3 and 4 talk about God our Savior who desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. There's one God and one mediator between God and men. The only person that's ever going to get anybody right with God is Jesus Christ. The only one. And so what we want to do is we want to make Christ known.

A man was criticizing D.L. Moody because of the evangelistic methods that Moody used, and Moody said to him, "Listen, I like the way I share Christ better than the way you don't share Christ." People need to hear the gospel. The sad truth is that most Christians do little or nothing to present a witness for the Lord Jesus Christ while the unbelieving world is shouting out its message. What do we do? We go to church, we sit in the church, then we get up and we go outside the church and they don't see anything of Christ in us. We're praying for people. We have a hit list of people who don't know Christ that we're looking to pray for every day and share the gospel with once a month and see come to Christ. We're strategic about that because we believe in reaching the world for Christ.

If all we're doing is saying amen to the sermon inside the church and then doing nothing when we go outside the church to witness, then we're not really making a difference. 95% of all Christians never try to lead anybody to Christ in their entire lifetime. 1 Peter 3 says who will want to harm you if you are eager to do good? Even if you suffer for doing what's right, God will reward you for it. So don't be afraid. Don't worry. Instead, worship Christ as Lord in your life. Live out your faith. And if you are asked about your Christian hope, always be ready to explain it. Learn to share your faith, learn what to say. And as you are living out your faith, you have opportunities to talk about your faith, but you have to do it in a gentle and respectful way.

The story was shared of a little girl who turned to her mother and said, "Mommy, there's something about the preacher's message this morning that I don't understand." The mother said, "What is it?" The girl said, "Well, he said that God is bigger than we are. He said God is so big he could hold the world in his hands. Is that true?" And she said, "Well, yes, that's true." The little girl said, "But Mommy, he also said that God comes to live inside of us when we believe in Jesus as our Savior. Is that true too?" And again the mother said, "Yes, that's true."

And then the little girl thought it through and she said, "If God is bigger than we are and he lives in us, wouldn't he show through? Wouldn't when we walk around, wouldn't people see Christ in us?" If I really know Christ in the pardoning of my sins, then won't he show through my life? Won't people see Christ in my life? If God is on the inside of us, He will show through to the outside. If the fire of Christ is burning on the inside of me, then that fire will spread to the outside and it'll touch those around me. I have to constantly look for opportunities to witness, to testify, to invite people, to encourage people, to point people to Jesus Christ so that they can know Him. And when I do that, I can bless the people around me. I can bless my neighbors, I can bless my friends, I can bless my associates, I can bless our communities, I can bless our city, I can bless our state. And you know what? I can bless our nation if I share the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Father, thank you so much again. Thank you for your love for us. Thank you, Father, for putting us here in this nation at this time, for such a time as this. And Father, even as we see the encroachments of those who espouse secular humanism, they believe that you're not real and they believe that man is able to solve his own problems. They don't believe in depravity. And so they don't see the need to have the checks and balances that the forefathers put in our nation's constitution. They don't see the need to rein in the excesses of sin and depravity. They think that we can solve our problems if we get a little smarter, if we take a little bit of the money from the rich. They don't understand that the key to living holistic lives is found in the Scriptures. And we need to walk it out and talk it out so that people know that it's real and that they embrace it.

Deliver us, Father, from the petty minds that make the issues of the day about politics. It's not about politics; it's about a worldview that says there is no God. And we know that there is. Help us to share the gospel. Help us to live the gospel. Help us to speak boldly about the claims of the gospel. You care about human life, you care about justice, you care about righteous living. Father, we want to represent the interests of our King. Strengthen us, and I pray if there's anyone here who's never surrendered the knee of their hearts to Jesus Christ and they don't own Him as the Lord and Savior of their lives, may that end today. May they recognize that you placed them here in this great nation with the opportunity to hear the truth of the gospel. Thank you for putting them here. Strengthen them to receive Christ today. And Father, I pray that you would strengthen us to share the gospel, to live out its mandates, to make our great King and Lord known. We ask in His name and for His sake. Amen.