January first is often considered the time for “New Year’s Resolutions,” “turning over a new Leaf,” or launching a new “self-help program.” Such things may have some benefits but have generally been nothing more than filler for newspapers and TV shows during the slow time following the holiday season.
However, because I see our country floundering and confused, divided and drifting, I have a recommendation:
How about a change of hearts in America where, for starters, we make truth normative, and children loved?
And even more important, determine as a nation to love God and obey His word, as did Joshua, who famously stated in Joshua 24:15,
“as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!”
What I am calling for is a National Day of Repentance! Genuine repentance! Full-hearted repentance! Others have called for such, and I rally behind their call; but I will go a step further by explaining what repentance is, assuming many do not really know.
When Christ’s forerunner, John the Baptist, came upon the scene in Israel, he preached, “Repent, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand,” which clearly implied that before the blessings and joys of God’s Kingdom could arrive, sinful behaviors had to be confronted and rejected. Many people asked him what repentance looked like, so he gave some examples.
I will do similarly.
Repentance is a change of heart regarding behavior that we might accept, but that God does not. It is an acknowledgment of wrongdoing and a genuine desire to stop doing it. It humbly admits to breaking God’s standard of righteousness, as revealed in the Bible, and accepts the justice of God’s judging those who violate it. It is the cry of a guilty conscience to the only One who can forgive and transform the heart that has been corrupted and polluted by sin.
Repentance ought to be easy, for the evidence of our sinfulness is abundantly clear. Every one of us knows, when we take honest stock of ourselves, that our motives and thoughts are often dark and deeply selfish. And whether one looks at the crime on the streets or the violence emanating from popular culture, Hollywood, and social media, our society is terribly corrupt because we are corrupt. Scriptures state,
“the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,” (Jer. 17:9, NKJV).
There was a time when America was relatively peaceful and “good.” One could walk the streets of most cities without fear, and TV provided generally wholesome fare. Such is no longer the case. As God and Christianity have been rejected, wickedness has increased.
On every hand the message emanating from the nation’s cultural ikons and institutions is that of immorality, anarchism, and violence. Whether in the media, or at the hands of government officials, the innocence that once was the norm in America has been replaced with ungodliness and malice. Scan the channels available from your cable provider and you will find virtually nothing but stomach-turning violence, and gross immorality.
Hollywood is a cesspool of wickedness, and why anyone would allow its filth into their minds and homes, or worse, set their own moral compass by its debauchery is beyond me.
One of America’s most vile failures has been its willingness to accept the lie that we can live any way we like without consequences. Related to that is the notion that death is just to be accepted as a natural and normal part of living your own way. Few lament the multitudes of young Americans who have died because they chose the morally deficient lifestyle offered them.
The idol of “live your own way” is held in such high regard that it eclipses life itself; and those who warn of the dangers associated with worshiping this idol are maligned and hated.
When we preach against sexual activity outside of marriage or against the use of illicit drugs, we are called haters and bigots, though our desire is that people love God and live long healthy lives. While we seek to erect fences around the dangerous cliffs of sin, it is demanded that we shut up and merely supply ambulances and hearses at the base of those cliffs.
The problem is that most people generally misunderstand how offended God is by our sin. We assume that His standard is much like ours, and as long as we haven’t committed one of the “big ones” like murder, He’s okay with us.
He is not!
He is as offended by a lie or selfishness as he is with murder. “What?” you ask. “He views murder in the same way he views a lie? How could God be so careless about murder?”
Sorry, my friend, you have it backwards. He is greatly offended by murder, and He is greatly offended by a lie, as He is with all sin! Do we forget that the “Big Sin” that brought the whole world under the curse, and introduced us to pain and suffering, was Adam eating a piece of fruit he had been told not to eat!
“Little” sin to us, but infinitely offensive to God; and it is His standards that govern the universe, not ours.
You might argue that it’s not fair that if you get hit by a truck you will probably die, but rather than argue the point, the wisest thing to do is to keep off the highway! And you may wish to declare that it isn’t fair that God is just as angry with your “little white lie” as He is with a murderer, but the best thing to do is to just repent for being a sinner! You cannot win against God! We are told,
“For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all,” (James 2:10).
Resolutions do nothing for those enslaved by the pleasures of sin (which, by the way, last only for a moment), and they cannot ameliorate the deadly consequences of violating the eternal and beneficent laws of God. The only way to save lives endangered by sin and to please God, gain genuine joy, and restore the nation to stability, unity, and peace will be a nation-wide humbling before God, turning away from sin, and trusting in the saving work of Jesus Christ, who “loved us and gave Himself for us!”
I have no personal problem with people making resolutions to make improvements in their lives. However, such things are like a candle in a hurricane when it comes to the change necessary to save America.
The only hope for America is the grace of God, and genuine revival!
