Pushing God Away…Hmmm… Maybe Not Such a Good Idea

Why are we pushing God out of our lives?  I mean God, the real founder of this great nation which we are blessed to live in,  from whose values and morals our government was based.  If talk of God makes you uncomfortable, I make no apology.  Rather than sacrifice God’s message so you feel good, I am going to speak with boldness and pray your discomfort brings about awareness.  Warning!  I’m going to do so for several days.  There is a great deal to be learned from the loss of God in America.

For those of you who have trouble believing that there is a God, or that God is active in the world today, I am here to tell you that not only is there a God, but that God has been active in the world from the beginning.  God does not change, which means, my dear friends, that God must STILL be active in the world today.

The problem is NOT that God is not active.  The problem is that WE are not active.  What’s more, we have not been active for a very long time.  I am as guilty as anyone else.  I stood by while society whisked God out of our schools like dust balls on a hard wood floor.  Have you taken the time to notice the changes in the schools since God was removed?

I do not need to go into lists of details, simply said, prayer was banned in 1962. In 1969, a mere seven years later, we had the Age of Aquarius and Woodstock. “Peace not war”, “Make love not war,” (which translated means, “sex, not war”).  Meanwhile the far from peaceful protests led to the shooting death of students May 4, 1970 at Kent State University.  In 1973, relaxed dress codes followed, which were then followed by dumbing down of education, and on and on and on.

As the dress code disappeared, modesty flew out the window, and under the drumbeat of “free love” teenage pregnancies began to multiply.   The scandal and public shame of a birth out-of-wedlock dimmed as more and more young men and women started living together without a commitment of marriage.

I saw the changes, and I didn’t like them.  But did I do anything?  No.  I’d like to use the excuse that I was just one person, what could I do?  However, by burying my head in the sand, I contributed to the corruption of the very American values I had hoped to preserve in my own children.  Today, those values are “outdated,” “foolish,” and tossed aside.  In place we have abortion clinics to rid young women and girls of unwanted pregnancies which result from actions which replaced those “foolish” values.

It was the silence, hiding from the truth, and the inaction, that brings us here today.  We want God out-of-the-way.  He accedes to our choice and gives us exactly what we want — his absence.  Again, this is nothing new.  God does not change.  Time and time again God’s people have turned from God to the worship of their own creations — idols of prosperity, power, pride, money, self-aggrandizement, and sexual immorality.  Time and time again, God’s people have believed they were gods themselves, needing nothing and no one else.  They rode the wave of self-reliance, and ignored God’s call to remembrance, repentance and faithfulness.  Eventually God gave them the absence they wanted.  Eventually, when things got bad enough, the people would turn back to God and beg his forgiveness.  God, forever the same, would forgive and begin a new relationship with His people.

Are we any different?  I think we are at the point of seeing what our self-reliance has brought us.   We wanted acceptance more than we wanted God.  We wanted “peace” and “love” to be defined our way instead of God’s way.  We need the peace of God is IN us, and the love of God to flow FROM us, not the other way around.  Governments cannot make people peaceful and loving.  We can’t make any group of people peaceful and loving.  We cannot even make ourselves peaceful and loving.   Only God can make that change; and he does so one soul at a time.   Then His love flows freely from us.  It is the love of God that breaks down barriers of hatred, tears down walls of tyranny, and rescues souls from prejudice.  God’s love will do it. But, unfortunately for us, we have pushed God out of the picture.  Maybe it is time to invite Him back?  What do you think?