Our REAL problem in America is spiritual…

Man has the tendency to forget that the Lord God is God in heaven, it is He who has created us… not the other way around, we did not create ourselves!

If there is any one problem that we in the U.S. can attribute our current woes and calamities to, it is this one fact, that we as a nation have lost our way, and we have forgotten the Lord our God!!!

Let us heed God’s WARNING to His Covenant people Israel:

Deuteronomy 8

Remember the LORD Your God

¹ “Every commandment which I command you today you must be careful to observe, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land of which the LORD swore to your fathers.

² And you shall remember that the LORD your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.

³ So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the LORD.

⁴ Your garments did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years.

⁵ You should know in your heart that as a man chastens his son, so the LORD your God chastens you.

⁶ “Therefore you shall keep the commandments of the LORD your God, to walk in His ways and to fear Him. ⁷ For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, that flow out of valleys and hills; ⁸ a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; ⁹ a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing; a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper. ¹⁰

When you have eaten and are full, then you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land which He has given you.

¹¹ “Beware that you do not forget the LORD your God by not keeping His commandments, His judgments, and His statutes which I command you today, ¹² lest—when you have eaten and are full, and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them;¹³ and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold are multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied; ¹⁴ when your heart is lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage; ¹⁵ who led you through that great and terrible wilderness, in which were fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty land where there was no water; who brought water for you out of the flinty rock; ¹⁶ who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do you good in the end— ¹⁷
then you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth.’

¹⁸ “And you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day.

¹⁹Then it shall be, if you by any means forget the LORD your God, and follow other gods, and serve them and worship them, I testify against you this day that you shall surely perish. ²⁰ As the nations which the LORD destroys before you, so you shall perish, because you would not be obedient to the voice of the LORD your God.

I’ve included a very good devotional message (see below) from My Daily Bread, about “Toxic Living.” Be sure to read it, as I think it is very relevant to where we are today as a nation, and how we got here.

There are several important points that we can glean from this particular scripture in Deuteronomy 8:

“Every commandment which I command you today you must be careful to observe…”

To the extent we as a nation have taken God out of our schools, the enemy (the Devil) wasted no time and came into fill that void, back in 1963. And by the way, this decision to take God out of our schools was brought about as the result of one woman’s lawsuit in 1963, for which the church remained virtually silent and accepted that decision; and our society has gone downhill ever since!

In an interview on September 13^th in 2001, right after 9/11 occurred, Anne Graham-Lotz (Billy Graham’s daughter) was asked the following question by Jane Clayson, on the CBS Early Show: “If God is good, how could He allow this to happen?”

To which Anne Grahm-Lotz responded: “I say God is also angry when he sees something like this. I would say also for several years now Americans in a sense have shaken their fist at God , and have said we want you out of our schools, out of our government, out of our business, and we want you out of our marketplace.

And so God, who is a gentleman (in response to this), has just quietly backed out of our national and political life, our public life; and He has removed His hand of blessing and protection.
If it is raining and you leave home without your umbrella… whose fault is that?

We need to turn to God first of all and say, God, we’re sorry we have treated you this way and we invite you now to come into our national life. We put our trust in you.
We have “In God we Trust” on our coins, and we need to practice it.”
“And you shall remember that the LORD your God…”

Have you ever wondered why God picked Abraham to be the Father of His chosen people “Israel,” and also the Father of faith?

To find the answer to that question we have to look to Genesis 18, verses 16-19; where we are given the following account:

“¹⁶Then the men rose from there and looked toward Sodom, and Abraham went with them to send them on the way.

¹⁷ And the LORD said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing, ¹⁸ since Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?

¹⁹For I have known him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the LORD, to do righteousness and justice, that the LORD may bring to Abraham what He has spoken to him.”

It is most apparent to me that our one failure in the church is that we have failed to pass the baton of our faith on to the next generation; and that mistake, at least here in the United States was compounded on that infamous day back in 1963 when our courts decided for the American people that belief in God and our teaching about God to our children, was of no importance and was irrelevant to their lives… and what you see today among out politicians and educators is the result.
In the next part of verse 2, we are told the reason why God at times will allow us to suffer lack: “God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.”

Often the question will arise in our lives, when we are beset with difficulties, tragedy, pain and/or suffering, as to why is my life so hard; does God not see what is happening to me… and does He not care?

Well the answer to that question is yes, of course He sees and of course He cares; but God’s priorities are very different from ours.

God is not so much interested in our being happy and comfortable in this life, as He is about our being trained and taught in the ways of faith, that we may be fit for His service; that we may learn to wage war against the enemy of our soul (Satan); that we may charge the enemy’s gates, and be about our Father’s business, which is to reach this world for Christ; and also that we may learn to put on the mind of Christ, and be molded into His image… as Jesus Christ is our model and our example in all things pertaining to this life! And it is also in Jesus, who is called “The Last Adam,” that we may learn our purpose and the reason for our existence… and that is that we may do the Will of the Father in earth, as it is in Heaven!

The overwhelming and all important message however, of Deuteronomy 8, and also God’s warning I might add, is that we NOT forget the Lord our God, and that we not begin to take credit ourselves for His many blessings, that He has given to us!

The sin of ingratitude is a very egregious sin, in God’s eyes; and add to it the sin and also the insult to God of our taking credit ourselves for all of His blessings, as though we could have done it without Him.

This is a direct offense to God, in that not only are we not honoring Him as God and are not thankful to Him; but to add insult to injury, we also begin to think of ourselves as gods, and we ignore the one true God!

I can only hope and pray that what God said in Romans does not happen to us here in America, where God grew so weary of the hardness of their hearts, that the scripture says “He gave them over to believe a lie!”

That certainly does seem to be the direction that our nation is headed; and that is why it is so critically important that we pray and intercede for our nation, for God’s grace and mercy… that He forgive us of our sin, as a nation, for having removed the land marks of his laws from our society and culture, and for having forsaken His ways… to follow our own!

Let us continue to pray for America that we find our way back home, as a nation; and that we humbles ourselves and repent; that we restore our Constitutional Republic; and that we clean house and remove those people from public office, who have secret agendas, who lie to us and are taking our nation further away from God!

Let us pray for the right kind of “Change,” that brings our nation back to God! Selah

Shalom,

Skip Barland

From: RBC Ministries [mailto:donotreply@rbc.org]
Sent: Sunday, June 27, 2010 9:10 PM
To: theskipper@cox.net
Subject: Our Daily Bread — June 28, 2010

June 28, 2010

Toxic Living

READ: 1 Samuel 13:7-14

Samuel said to Saul, “You have done foolishly. You have not kept the commandment of the Lord.” —1 Samuel 13:13

Picher, Oklahoma, is no more. In mid-2009, this once-bustling town of 20,000 went out of business. In the first quarter of the 1900s, Picher was a boomtown because of its abundant lead and zinc. Workers extracted the ore, which was used to help arm the US during both World Wars.

The town faded as the ore began to run out—but the biggest problem was that while the lead and zinc brought wealth, they also brought pollution. Because nothing was done to deal with the pollution, Picher became a toxic wasteland, and the government condemned the land.

What happened to Picher can happen to people. Prosperity can look so good that it’s hard to think about possible downsides.

Actions that are detrimental to long-term spiritual health are accepted, and unless the problem is corrected, destruction follows.

It happened to King Saul. He began as a good king, but in seeking success he failed to see the damage he was doing.

Turning his back on God’s commands, he acted “foolishly” (1 Sam. 13:13) and lost his kingdom (v.14).

In our attempts to find success, we need to watch out for spiritual pollution that comes when we fail to follow God’s clear scriptural guidelines. Godly living always beats toxic living. —Dave Branon

The Lord has given us commands
And told us to obey;
Our own designs are sure to fail
If we neglect His way! —Bosch

No one can be a real success without God.

To read today’s Our Daily Bread online visit our website.
Copyright © 2010, RBC Ministries, Grand Rapids, MI 49555 USA. Written permission must be obtained from RBC Ministries for any further posting or distribution. RBC Ministries produces a variety of Bible resources, which are available for the asking. RBC Ministries is not funded by any group or denomination, and support comes voluntarily from its members and friends. Write rbc@rbc.org for more information.

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Author: SPARKS FROM THE ANVIL OF LIFE

This is an open forum where we look into and investigate the Rhema Mysteries of God's Word; and also other issues of importance for our day and time. View all posts by SPARKS FROM THE ANVIL OF LIFE