Fear & Loathing

For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. -- 2 Tim. 1:7

Somewhere around September of last year, when it was becoming clear that Barack Obama was going to win the election, I began to notice that fear and loathing had replaced joy and hope in the minds of a lot of people (including me, at times). This is due to a lot of factors: the ridiculous decline in the Dow, job losses all around, and not least, the radical leftism of our new president. I have recently become convicted about this, as the verse above has been rolling through my mind a lot in the past two weeks. After all, what does it say about me as a Christian if I place more emphasis in my life on the disasters that have befallen our nation than on Jesus, the Lord of Heaven and Earth?

So while I am still concerned that the America that emerges from our current crises will be a vastly different America than the one I love and want to raise my children in, it is not, ultimately, to America, it's ideals, and its historic nature that my primary allegiance lies. It is rather, to God and God alone in whom I must place my trust, remembering that it is He who sets up kings and tears them down. I have decided to focus my energies and thoughts on what remains unchanged: God is still sovereign and still ultimately rules this country and its people. My mission from Him is still the same-to make Jesus famous in all the earth regardless of cost, trial, or personal inconvenience. If the country moves further into the darkness and toward less freedom, then the glorious freedom of the sons of God and the light of Gospel must begin to shine all the brighter. There is a day coming when there will be a new heaven and new earth, in which righteousness dwells, when the Lord will descend from heaven with a shout, and so we will await our Savior from there, rather than from Springfield, or Washington, or any such earthbound place.