I’ve been
trying to figure out how to put all my thoughts on America, politics, and the
human heart into a blog. I don’t know how.
I’ll start
with this. Lauryn Hill addresses what I want to talk about in her song called War in the Mind. She says:
Our present condition needs serious
recognition
Where there is no repentance there can be no remission
And that sentence more serious than Vietnam,
The atom bomb, and Saddam, and Minister Farrakhan
While I was
in Uganda, I heard about the whole mosque in NYC issue. I’ll be honest, my flesh wanted to make it about
“stupid politicians� again. But the Lord quickly revealed to me that it’s not
the people. The Bible says our fight
is against “cosmic powers over this
present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places�
(Eph. 6:12). I then asked the Lord how then do you stand against evil while
truly showing love? Like I sad in my last blog, I know in my brain that I must
love people that profess Islam as their religion. But I’ll ask you the same
question: really, what does that look like? One thing that terrifies me
is that I’ll say that I don’t agree that mosques should be built at all,
because they are built on lies from the Enemy and everyone will think I’m a
bigot. Already, I’m sure I’m getting a ton of resistance to that very comment. But
the thing that scares me the most is that because I’m called to stand on Truth
(and sometimes the Truth isn’t’ the thing people want to hear), the people I’m
saying “no� to, will think I hate them.
God then
spoke to me. And it was a message I didn’t want to hear with my 
ears, but my
heart needed to hear it and take hold of it: “You should stand for Truth by
saying ‘no’ to anything that promotes lies from the Enemy EVEN if it means
persecution. EVEN if they don’t realize that by you saying ‘no’ you actually
love them well because you don’t want them to be fooled by the Enemy.� Then God
told me, “You must say ‘no’ to any mosque, or false religion for that matter,
IN AMERICA even if America shuts down your physical church.� He reminded me
that in China, where the Church is persecuted, the Gospel is spreading like
WILDFIRE. A hard thought came to me, if my church back in Greeley was shut down
by the government, if my freedom of religion was suddenly taken from me, my
freedom to be a disciple of Christ (as far as my legal rights are concerned)
was taken away, I would be forced to live my faith despite
persecution.
What would you do, if
tomorrow, the government said, Christian churches are no longer aloud to
congregate? That if you were caught, you would be stoned, shot, or burned?
You would then be part
of the persecuted church. Would you stand up and maintain your faith as a
disciple of Christ?
My teammate
Kathryn and I were discussing this and she said, “ It’s interesting we always
equate blessing with the amount of stuff, food, or freedom we have…and yet it’s
those countries where Christianity is being persecuted that joy in Christ is
thriving…food for thought- what does it really mean to be blessed? I
mean what if we prayed ‘Bring it on. Give America persecution.’ Don’t get me
wrong, I pray for protection…but again, what does blessing look like? Paul knew
Christ in his suffering. What if we said, ‘Okay God, allow the trials to come
so I can be a beacon of your Love.’�
For the
record, this is super hard to write. It’s a super hard thing to ask the Lord to
allow trials and persecution to happen, but…
Okay
God. Allow the trials to come so I can be a beacon of Your Love.
And
show me what that looks like…
