On July 25, I asked on X, “ In your view, which of these factors is the single most important for the well-being of America? Having the right elected officials? Having a healthy church? A strong economy? Secure borders?”

The response was amazingly consistent: More than 86% said, “A healthy church.” (“Right elected officials” got just 6%, “secure borders” just over 4%, and “strong economy” got about 3.5%.)

You don’t often see that kind of unanimity online, especially on a social media site like X (formerly Twitter), which is known for its feisty and aggressive exchange of views. It’s also important to remember that a certain percentage of non-Christians responded to this poll, making the results all the more striking.

This, of course, does not mean that the other issues are unimportant or that Christians should drop out of the voting process. To the contrary, one of the big problems we have in America is that many Christians simply don’t vote.

But the truth be told, if we who claim to be followers of Jesus were as passionate about prayer as we are about politics, America would not look the same today.

The same can be said about studying and applying God’s Word, about living out and sharing our faith, about being disciples and making disciples. If we could put the same energy into those spiritual disciplines as we do into political debates, we could shake the nation.

Dispelling Darkness

After all, if there are multiplied tens of millions of true believers here in America – God knows our exact numbers – if our light shone more brightly, wouldn’t that affect the nation?

Jesus said that we, His followers, are “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14-16), meaning that it is our sacred calling to illuminate the otherwise dark world. Surely if we became brighter lights the nation would not be so dark.

In the same way, He said that we are the “salt of the earth,” speaking at the least of our roles as the moral conscience and divine preservative of the nation. That’s why He said, “But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot” (Matthew 5:13).

Isn’t that an apt description of what has happened to the Church of this nation in recent decades? To the extent we have lost our saltiness – our distinctness, our biblical conscience, our ethical standards, our theological clarity – we have become useless, more of a laughingstock than a world-changing movement.

That’s why, for many years now, I have said that my greatest concern in America is not so much the presence of darkness (as much as that does concern me) but rather the absence of light. (And, I might add, the bland and lackluster taste of the salt!)

Setting Priorities

In my 2022 book The Political Seduction of the Church: How Millions of American Christians Confused Politics with the Gospel, I asked, “If the Lord Himself tasked you and me with the assignment of bringing positive, lasting change to America, drawing up a strategic list of seven priorities for us as followers of Jesus, what would be on your list?”

This was my list:

• Personal and corporate repentance and turning to God for spiritual renewal.
• Prayer and fasting.
• Evangelism and church planting, with an emphasis on making solid disciples.
• Getting our families healthy and strong, pouring into our spouses and kids.
• Serving the hurting and the poor and the most vulnerable in our communities.
• Positioning ourselves more deeply in the major sectors of society, from education to business and from media to entertainment, demonstrating how God’s ways work best.
• Staying politically involved by being informed, by voting, and by supporting those called to frontline political activity.

Your list might look somewhat different, especially based on the particular calling on your life. But I would hope that, overall, if Jesus is your Lord and you believe in the power and priority of the Gospel, that your list would include many of these same items.

Who knows what would happen if we truly honored the words of Jesus, who exhorted us to seek God’s kingdom and His righteousness first and foremost, with everything else, including our daily needs, falling into place (Matthew 6:33)?

Curing What Ails Us

In 2021, a ministry colleague urged me to seek God afresh for the “why” of our ministry. Why did we do what we did?

He was familiar with our three “R’s” – Revival in the Church; a gospel-based moral and cultural Revolution; and the Redemption of Israel. But he felt that there was an urgent “why” behind all this, and I needed to hear it for myself from the Lord.

In prayer the morning of October 8, 2021, I hurt the Lord’s voice shouting in my inner- ear, “Get My Church healthy!!”

That was our ministry why! (Of course, I was not foolish or arrogant enough to think that I was the one to do this. Rather, I was called to participate, with a countless host of others, in this sacred mission.)

In response, I journaled this: “God’s heart is sick because the Church is sick. America is sick because the Church is sick. Israel is still lost because the Church is sick. And so, this is how the three R’s all work themselves out: Revival leading to Revolution. Revival leading to Israel’s Redemption (the Church provokes Israel!).”

The good news is that, despite so much carnality and compromise in the Church today, God is moving in many hearts and lives. In Jesus, the best is yet to come!

The great news is that we don’t have to wait for anyone else to do anything. We can get alone with God, get on our knees or our faces (or whichever spiritual posture suits you best) and cry out to Him, “Lord, help me to get spiritual healthy, whatever the cost or consequences.”

That is a prayer He loves to answer.

This article was originally published by TheStream.com.