1 Samuel chapter 8 conveys to us the process that occurred for the nation of Israel to transition from having God as king and being governed by judges to the people crying out for a king…“so we may be as other nations” (he second half of v. 5). God explains to Samuel that the people haven’t rejected him (Samuel) but rather it is God they are rejecting. However God wants Samuel to let the people know what this King will do. Samuel does as the Lord tells him to and the people simply say, Ok, great, we still want a king to lead us and to fight on our behalf.

When I go back and read chapter 8 I am struck by a few things. But one thing that we can see as a pattern throughout the Old Testament is when the people are sensitive to God’s ways they prosper and when they reject God they suffer. The amazing thing however is that despite the people’s frequent disobedience and willfulness, God remains merciful in that though the people are rejecting His purpose, His desire is to tell them of the consequences of their actions first, thus warning them and giving them the chance to reconsider. You have to think in light of these warnings the people would have seen what was coming and turned around toward the will of God – sadly not.

Recently at church our pastor was talking about some amazing stories from the early and mid eighties full of miraculous manifestations of the power of God. He was sharing stories of God using simple men to do unbelievable things. He talked about some of the movements that sprang up around these manifestations of power and sadly, talked about how we rarely see that sort of power manifest presently, and certainly not on the scale and regularity we saw during previous seasons. I wonder if we have been warned of the consequences of our turning from the will and purpose of God, and like the Israelites, have chosen our own route instead, therefore suffering the consequences God spoke to our hearts about.

We live in a country that was founded as a nation under God – a nation that wanted to allow for religious freedom. We were founded largely by men and women of passionate faith and relationship with God. Yet on the morning news today there was a story about a school that wouldn’t allow a young girl to pass out invites to a party that was being held in a public building since the building was a church. The flyer she was handing out mentioned nothing about evangelism, faith, God, salvation, prayer, the Ten Commandments or any of the other issues that would be considered religious in nature. The school was banning the fourth grade girl from inviting people to a church, period. In the same broadcast there was a report on a city giving publicly owned land to build a mosque. Not the same county but it was the same state.

I believe that most Christians would agree that the spiritual direction of our great country needs to change. I agree, but, at the risk of setting my sight low, it seems that if we could just get to the place of not rejecting God we would be a lot better off than we are now. It seems like over the last century God has been giving us grace and waiting for us to change our hearts and return to Him. It seems that at every one of the crossroads of decision we come to we turn a little further away. The patterns illustrated in the Bible are pretty clear; God warns, and then He steps back. The problem is at the stage God steps back, not only are we left out of the anointing and full blessing of God’s presence and power with us, all the surrounding tribes that have been angry and jealous at the blessings were given are now in a position to come in and by default receive many of the blessings we are missing out on (see Jeremiah 1 v 15-16 for a stark example of this).

As Christians we should pray for everyone to come to salvation, and we are called to reach the lost. As American’s we are in desperate need of a stop gap to pray that our government and nation as a whole would stop rejecting God. Because once He hardens the hearts of the people typically we face the prospect of a severe desert season. That can mean generations of suffering, captivity and eventually, when all that haven’t honored God are dead, repentance. Wouldn’t it be great if we could skip that whole suffering and captivity bit and jump right on to repentance?

This isn’t a political blog, but we do endeavor to listen to God and to try to understand His ways. The prayer cries are needed now more than ever. Our nation was founded by God fearing men and women under God with a rule of law and the ideal of liberty and justice for all. The alternative very likely doesn’t include God or liberty but sadly may involve a justice that we really don’t want to endure. Please pray.

Thanks for reading.