If My People

"If My People..."

2 Chronicles 7:12-15

2 Chronicles 7:14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

ILL -

Introduction: Today's message is one that I believe we need to hear, that all of the church needs to hear and that I pray that all of America will hear soon. In 1984 at a prayer breakfast in Dallas, Texas President Ronald Reagan said, "If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a nation gone under." We are nation that has systematically, willfully and deliberately gone about seeking to remove God from public discourse and dialogue, remove all signs and vestiges of His influence on our culture and its institutions and vilify anyone and everyone who dares to call America back to God. We have jettisoned the very truths that gave us our moral underpinnings and we should not be surprised at the place we find ourselves in today. This has not happened overnight and it has not taken some of us by surprise. Many of us have been predicting this for years. It has been strategically and incrementally, step by step, piece by piece. There has been and continues to be a deliberate pattern of infiltration in our government, in our courts, our educational institutions and sadly and most tragic, in our religious institutions. The foundations of our great country are crumbling before our very eyes. We have a crumbling religious foundation. Here is a sign of just some of the erosion that is taking place. One of the things that technology allows us to do is to stay better informed than we ever have been. Something very important and very telling is happening in Oregon this week. It is the General Conference of the UMC. Here are some of the things that this once great denomination is dealing with:

"We are here because God has called us to serve in this denomination, and our souls are fed by the theology in which we've been raised," the 111 United Methodists write in what they call "A Love Letter to Our Church." The signers come from across the United States, and one signer is from the Philippines. They identify themselves as "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer/Questioning, and Intersex" in the letter.

Their letter comes a week after 15 clergy and clergy candidates in the New York Conference took a similar step of coming out together. It also comes just two days after the Rev. David Meredith, a United Methodist pastor in the West Ohio Conference, married Jim Schlachter, his boyfriend of 28 years. http://goodnewsmag.org/2016/05/111-clergy-clergy-candidates-come-out-as-gay/#sthash.5z9EcMFi.dpuf

One of the things that the UMC do every year at their conference is to take communion. This same group set up their own alternate communion service and two UMC bishops participated. To add fuel to the fire they performed and (unofficial) ordination of a practicing lesbian minister! We have a crumbling educational foundation. Our public schools have become the proving grounds for all kinds of social and societal engineering. Christian children cannot pray but Muslim children cannot be discriminated against for wearing burqas and bringing their prayer rugs. Just this week the transgender issue hit our public school systems like a tidal wave when our President's DOJ sent a letter to all public schools mandating allowing any person to self-identify and use any (restroom/locker-room or dressing-room they choose)

Can I share a little bit of information than you can find in any biology book? If you were born with an XY chromosome you are male and if you were born with an XX chromosome you are female and no amount of surgery or cosmetics or gender identity or anything else will change how God created you. We have a crumbling political foundation. In just the span of 50 years we have gone from men like John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan to what we have running for office today. Gone are the great statesmen of the past and they have been replaced with men and women with little integrity and almost no convictions.

"It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible." -- George Washington

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." -- John Adams

"As the safety and prosperity of nations ultimately and essentially depend on the protection and the blessing of Almighty God, and the national acknowledgment of this truth is not only an indispensable duty which the people owe to Him." -- John Adams

"The Bible is the best of all books, for it is the word of God and teaches us the way to be happy in this world and in the next. Continue therefore to read it and to regulate your life by its precepts."