Devotional Guide
For the week of July 4, 2004
THIS FREE LAND
The importance of equality
To Read: 2 Kings 22,23
To Know:
"Hear this, you heads of the house of Jacob and rulers of the house of
Israel, who abhor justice and pervert all equity, who build Zion with blood
and Jerusalem with wrong. Its heads give judgment for a bribe, its priests
teach for hire, its prophets divine for money; yet they lean upon the lord
and say, 'Is not the Lord in the midst of us? No evil shall come upon us.'
Therefore because of you Zion shall be plowed as a field; Jerusalem shall
become a heap of ruins, and the mountain of the house a wooded height."
(Micah 3:9-12)
When Alexis de Tocqueville surveyed the young United States he was forcibly
struck by the equality of conditions prevailing in the land. The French
visitor wrote, "The more I advanced in the study of American society, the
more I perceived that the equality of conditions is the fundamental fact
from which all others seem to be derived, and the central point at which
all my observations constantly terminate." Equality, Tocqueville concluded,
rested on two pillars, liberty and religion. Religion gave Americans a
sense of futurity and a belief in the value of things outside themselves.
When faith in God goes, self takes center stage among us. Self-perfection
is the present American quest. When God finally goes, the unbridled self
will be free to do what self always does; namely, get other selves out of
its way. It will mean an ever-increasing divorce rate, the continued
destruction of the defenseless in the womb, and utter disregard for right
and wrong.
The name of God is being systematically censored from public mention. To be
more specific, a gag order regarding the God of the Bible is issued from
many of our courts. Since 1776 we have been one nation under God. Powerful
forces now want us to be one nation out from under God. The name of God
infuses the documents that bind us together as a people. Our great historic
speeches appealed for God's help by pleading with the Lord to bless the
nation. After God is vanquished from America's schoolrooms and public
places, what will insure our equality in these United States?
To Ask:
Father, help us to understand how to live as a great evangelized nation.
07054$-07054
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