JESUS IS THE ANSWER!!!
It is a fact of life that BAD THINGS do happen to good people, even to Christians!
So how does a Christian react in the midst of negative circumstances, especially when according to all visible sight/sense evidence that we can see and that can be felt all around us, there is no reason in the natural to hope?
If you are like me, I find that my first reaction when confronted with negative and hurtful circumstances, most times anyway, is just exactly the same as the world’s reaction, of those who still are living outside the Christian faith paradigm.
The truth is this sort of behavior, for me anyway and I dare say for most of you, is quite natural! It’s not something that we had to learn.
None of us had to learn how to react that way, in our flesh, but rather it comes quite naturally for ALL of us and it is common to all mankind to react in this way, and it has been that way from the first day we were born into this world.
It’s becoming increasing obvious, and it was especially and painfully made true from the events of this past Friday, that this world in which we all are living today, is becoming more and more dangerous.
Whereas we’ve seen this sort of thing many times happening in other countries across the world, almost nightly in the evening news, we are now seeing it happen more and more right here at home, in our own neighborhoods and communities.
Where, except from hell, does this sort of behavior come from, as happened this past Friday in Danbury Connecticut, where literally the unthinkable has happened, when someone (who is little more than a child himself, at twenty years of age) went into an elementary school and murdered 20 kindergartners and eight adults?.
Where in the world does this sort of behavior come from and how does something like this happen here in America?
It seems at times like this many people are asking the question how does a loving God allow something like this to happen?
Well that same question was asked of Ann Graham Lotz (Billy Graham’s daughter) after 9/11; and I believe the same answer applies here:
Regarding the Events of 9/11:
On September 13, 2001, in an interview with Anne Graham Lotz, by Jane Clayson on CBS’ Early Show, the following question was asked: “Where Is God?”
Jane Clayson: We’ve turned to your father, the reverend Billy Graham, so often in times of national crisis. What are his thoughts about what happened on Tuesday?
Anne Graham Lotz: I turned to him also. In fact, I called him last night, after you all called to arrange for this interview. He’s reacting like a lot of Christians around the country, we’re all praying.
I think about those people you just showed. I wasn’t sure I’d be in control when you came on because it just provoked such emotion to see these people carrying pictures of their loved ones and knowing they don’t know if they’re alive or dead.
And at a time like that, I know the families and the friends of the victims can hardly even pray for themselves. They don’t know what to say or how to pray. I want to say to them – families and friends of the victims, that there are thousands of people in this country who are carrying you in prayer right now. We’re praying for you with hearts filled with compassion and grief and just interceding on your behalf, asking the God of all peace and the God of all comfort to come down in a special way into your life and meet your needs at this time. My father and mother are also praying like that.
Jane Clayson: The pain is incomprehensible for so many of these people. At a time like this it is so easy to lose faith. How do you keep faith, Mrs. Lotz at a time like this?
Anne Graham Lotz: I think it is almost easier to have faith because we have nothing else in some ways. I’ve watched as this nation has turned to prayer. We’ve seen prayer vigils. And in our city, we have prayer vigils. And so I think it is a time to turn to God…. Our nation has been hit and devastated by this day of terror and now I believe it is our choice as a nation as to whether we’re going to implode and just disintegrate emotionally and spiritually or whether we’ll make the choice to be stronger. I think right now, we have the opportunity to come through this spiritually stronger than we’ve been in the past because we turn to God.
Jane Clayson: I’ve heard people say, those who are religious and those who are not, if God is good, how could He allow this to happen?
What do you say to that?
Anne Graham Lotz:
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 said, God, we want you out of our schools, our government, our businesses, we want you out of our marketplace.
And so God, who is a gentleman, has just quietly backed out of our national and political life, our public life, and has slowly been removing his hand of blessing and protection from us.
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 our trust in God on our coins, we need to practice it.
Jane Clayson: So many people have called this an act of war. Has he (your father) expressed anything about what a proper response for an attack like this should be?
Anne Graham Lotz: No. I’ve tried to be very careful. I don’t ever answer for my father. But I believe in the next few days you’re going to be seeing him and hearing from him and perhaps he will express some of those things.
Jane Clayson: As a spiritual adviser, how would you define the feelings right now?
Anne Graham Lotz: I was watching television the first day and interviewed a construction worker who had been an eyewitness through all of this in a building next to the World Trade Center. He said, I’ve seen planes hit this building, people falling out of the sky. He said, my heart is in my throat. I feel like I would say the same thing. You almost don’t have thoughts to articulate. Your heart is in your throat. You can hardly stand it. You’re numb.
For myself, I fall back on my faith in God and the foundation, speaking of those buildings, as an illustration of America, our foundation is our faith in God and the structure we build on that foundation is what enables us to endure something like this.
…I believe God also knows what it is like to lose a loved one, He gave his only son on a cross. He knows what it is like to see a loved one die a horrific death.
He’s also emotionally involved in our pain; he has the answers for us; and he can bring comfort beyond any human understanding.
Jane Clayson: There’s such a feeling of helplessness among so many. They don’t know what to do beyond giving blood, beyond writing a check to help those in need. What would be your recommendation as a spiritual adviser?
Anne Graham Lotz: I thought Governor Keating said it right when you asked him. He said pray. I believe we need to pray. As Christians, we need to pray for people who can’t pray for themselves right now. I believe we need to call out to God and ask him to forgive our sins and heal our land. God is greater than sometimes we think of him and he can solve this, give us answers, give us wisdom, and lead us through this in a way that makes us stronger as a nation; but we have to turn to him.
Jane Clayson: This event has changed us forever. I know you believe that. Going forward, as a nation, what do you say about that?
Anne Graham Lotz: Well, I pray that God will use this event to change us forever in a positive way. And that will strengthen our faith in him.
I thought of all those people who have died in this tragedy. It doesn’t matter right now what political affiliation they had or what denomination they belong to or what religion or what the color of their skin was or their stock portfolio.
What matters is their relationship with God. I would like to see Americans begin to focus on some of the primary things and some of the things that are more important than just, you know, entertainment and pleasure and making more money.
Personally I think God is giving America an opportunity to repent and turn back to Him.
Let’s be very clear on this one point, that God has nothing whatsoever to do with any of these horrid events, not a one of them; but what has changed is that because of our own disobedience and hard headed rebellion against His ways and His laws, as we read in the Bible, God has been forced, because of our own actions and our own disobedience, to remove His hand of protection and blessing from our nation.
In fact He has done this at our insistence, or at least at the insistence of our elected politicians, under this de facto Corporate system in Washington DC, who have virtually legislated God out of most every area of our society and government… and so my question is, what did we (who are Christians) expect would happen?
All I can say is, if ever there was any evidence that there is truly a resident evil that exists in this world, whom the Bible describes and names as the Devil, and which also the Bible teaches that he is the mortal enemy of all humanity, then certainly last Friday’s senseless massacre should have removed any and all doubts of his existence. .
The fact is this sort of violence is today on the increase, here in our country. The truth is, it has been that way in the world for quite a long time, and it is only recently that this evil is making its presence known here in America.
This has been going on for quite some time, and even today things are getting progressively worse, as America has virtually taken God out of most every area of our society and our government.
We no longer teach our children about Him in our public schools, as our Founding Fathers once mandated.
Oh how far we have strayed from where we once began, where the first official act of Congress was to print Bibles for our public schools, for that very purpose.
Instead, what we are teaching our kids today, in our public schools, is that God is totally and absolutely irrelevant to anything that is of any importance in their life; and it is in that vacuum that Satan has come in and has taken over!
This has happened not only in our schools, but also in our society and in our government in general… and truly what we are seeing today is the result of our nation having turned away from God!.
As even this president has said, when on national television Obama said before the whole world that we are no longer a Christian nation!
I ask you, was he, Obama, speaking for the nation when he said that?
I can tell you this, he certainly wasn’t speaking for me; but I do fear that what he said has been proven to be all too true, as virtually (at least it appears on the surface) that the Christians in our nation have all but abdicated any position of authority or responsibility when it comes to our government’s leadership.
The obvious result of our lack of involvement has been that our country has been in a continual state of decline now for quite a number of years, to where we are seeing more and more evidence of that decline in thing like what took place this last weekend.
As unthinkable and as horrible as this mass murder was, in the lost of 28 innocent lives, 20 of which were young children, let us consider for a moment how God must feel about the over 50 million unborn babies, whose lives have been snuffed out over these last forty or fifty years, where this de facto U.S. Corporation not only endorses the murdering of unborn children, but it is paying for it; and still today it continues, at a rate of over a million babies per year, who are being exterminated through abortion?
Not only that, as if that were not bad enough, this de facto U.S. Corporation is even today exporting this practice to other countries as well.
As a nation, are we not accountable for these actions?
According to God’s Word we are.
Something is horribly and seriously wrong here, folks; but then again none of this has happened overnight.
No, rather we have gotten here through a process that has been developing and getting progressively worse over time.
The question is, what do we do and how do we change this trend?
Well to answer that question, certainly we cannot look to the same unbelieving and pagan world that caused it, and more specifically, here in America, we CANNOT look to this unbelieving de facto D.C. Corporation, in Washington DC, for our answers… when it was actually our blindly following their lead, to begin with, that has gotten us into this mess!
Our country has been a prime example of what happens whenever the spiritually blind are being lead by the blind, where if we aren’t careful and we don’t change our ways and repent, just as the Bible says will happen, we ALL will fall into the ditch!
No, the answer to what ails America today will not be found in anything material, and it most certainly is not going to be found in a changed economy either, as obviously many believe to be the case; but rather the answer to what ails our nation starts with the spiritual; and it is because of that fact that it has to be the Christians in our country who act to correct it, and not the unbelievers.
The first thing that has to happen is that WE, who are Christians, have to pray and ask for God’s forgiveness for making such a mess of things; for being so apathetic; when after having abdicated our responsibilities to maintain a righteous and God fearing Government, in the form of a Constitutional Republic, as it was left us by our Founding Fathers, we have instead, over time (over the last 140 years), we have allowed unbelievers to come in and take over.
Again, my questions to the Christians, who are reading this, is what else did we expect would happen?
It is that very behavior, that we are seeing here, that is evident in our rebellious attitude, which is common to ALL of us as a part of the human race, that is the nature of what the Bible calls sin; and as the Bible teaches, it is that very sin nature, which all of us have, which flows through our blood, and which we all have inherited from our father Adam, that has caused our estrangement and separation from God… and it is for that very reason that Jesus came, because we ALL need a Savior! .
The first step on this road home, towards our reconciliation with God, is REPENTENCE, which starts with each one of us, as Christians, through faith and obedience to God’s Word (the Holy Bible), and through our study and meditation in His Word, we allow the Holy Spirit to rewrite the code of this world’s programming, that has been so ingrained in us from our youth, and we instead repent, which means literally that we change the way we think.
This is what God has promised us in 2 Chronicles 7:14, that if My people, who call themselves by My name (Christian) would humble themselves and pray; turn from their wicked ways and seek my face; then I will hear their prayers and I will heal their land.
Please pray for America; pray for a spiritual awakening among God’s people, in our churches across our land, the likes of which happened at our nations birth; and pray also for a revival to sweep across our land as well, to reach all the unbelievers.
We desperately need to see a move of God in our nation, or we won’t make it… we need a miracle!
Yes we do need a miracle, but I have it on good authority, having read God’s Word and believing His promises, that miracles are God’s specialty; and that as Jesus said “ALL things are possible if we believe,” meaning if we are in faith… which means we are both obeying and believing! Selah
SB SALT AND LIGHT MINISTRIES 