Come Home America

Hosea 14:1-4

As you walk up the steps to the building which houses the US Supreme Court you can see near the top of the building a row of the world’s law givers and each one is facing one in the middle who is facing forward with a full frontal view  …  it is Moses and he is holding the Ten Commandments!

As you enter the Supreme Court courtroom, the two huge oak doors have the Ten Commandments engraved on each lower portion of each door.

As you sit inside the courtroom, you can see the wall, right above where the Supreme Court judges sit, a display of the Ten Commandments!

There are Bible verses etched in stone all over the Federal Buildings and Monuments in Washington, DC

James Madison, the fourth president, known as “The Father of Our Constitution” made the following statement:

“We have staked the whole of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”

Patrick Henry, that patriot and Founding Father of our country said:

“It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded not by religionists but by Christians, not on religions but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ”.

Every session of Congress begins with a prayer by a paid preacher,

whose salary has been paid by the taxpayer since 1777.

            The only taxation allowed was not income tax, but a tax to build Christian churches and pay the minister’s salary.

The very first Supreme Court Justice, John Jay, said:

“Americans should select and prefer Christians as their rulers.”

We have left God. Whether or not we say “One nation under God” or whether or not we keep “In God we trust”, we have drifted from this belief. In George Barna’s book, Think Like Jesus, he asked Christians across America these six questions: 1) God is the all-knowing, all-powerful Creator of the universe who still rules that universe today. 2) When Jesus Christ was on earth He lived a sinless life. 3) Satan is not just a symbol of evil but is a real, living entity. 4) A person cannot earn his or her eternal salvation by being good or doing good things; salvation is a free gift of God; 5) Every person who believed in Jesus Christ has a personal responsibility to share his or her faith in Him with other people who believe differently; 6) The Bible is totally accurate in all that it teaches. 91% of professing “Born Again” believers in North America do not agree with all of these statements. Even more shocking is that 98% of all professing born-again teenagers do not agree with these six statements. “When people wonder why the Christian Church is losing influence in American society–which seven out of ten American adults currently contend—the reason is that so very few think like Jesus.” Let us put it in perspective. There are roughly 210 million people in the U.S. Of these 210 million, about 7 million would believe the above statements. We are losing America. It is more than an intellectual assent to doctrinal statements, but a person who has been truly transformed by the power of God is different from the world. These 9% of adults act very different than those of the world. Whereas the vast majority of professing Christians act just like the world. Barna is correct, “Once you see the world through God’s eyes, your mind and heart become so transformed that you “automatically” respond to every situation differently.

The divorce of our nation from God has led to an unprecedented break-up of the family in North America. Boys who grow up without fathers are at least twice as likely as other boys to end up in prison. Sixty percent of rapists and 72 percent of adolescent murderers never knew or lived with their fathers. Even in the toughest inner-city neighborhoods, just 10 percent of kids from intact families get into trouble, but 90 percent of those from broken families do. Girls raised without a father in the home are five times more likely to become mothers while still adolescents. Children from broken homes have more academic and behavioral problems at school and are nearly twice as likely to drop out of high school.

It was said that it would help children . . . only wanted children would be kept. 1973 there were 167,000 confirmed cases of child abuse in the U.S. Thirty years later, there were 1.3 million confirmed cases of child abuse. An increase by over 630%. It has devalued the life of children and has repercussions on every aspect of our children. Pornography and sexual abuse of children has skyrocketed. Now there is a movement to attempt to make it legal for children to “choose” if they wish to have immoral relations with an adult. All this time, we have murdered 40 million babies since 1973 . . . that is 1 child dies every 22 seconds in the U.S., 4,000 each day, 1.4 million per year. Something must stop.

This is the essence of the problem in North America. Unless we come home, the nation will not come home. 2 Chronicles 7:14 starts with God’s people.

There was a father who was distracted with his work. He was trying so hard to get ahead in this world that he neglected his wife and his only son. One day the wife had enough. The husband had to take his son to do whatever he wanted. The boy chose to see his father’s home town. As they road into the town the dad showed him the stadium where he played football. He showed him the road where he and his friends road their bikes. He showed him the house where he used to live. The boy looked up on the hill and asked “what is that building?” Oh, that is the church where I used to go as a boy. “May I see it,” the boy asked. He had never been to a church before. The church was in rough conditions and it was boarded up. “We used to be able to get in the back door,” the father said. They pushed on the door and it flung open. The pews were in disarray, dust was everywhere. Where did you sit, Dad? The boy asked? Let us go sit there. What is that? It is the pulpit Bible, I used to read from it. Will you read it to me, Dad. What is this rope? It is for the bell. Would you ring it for me, Dad? Ring it again, Dad. Ring it again, Dad. Over and over again he rang the bell. The dad began to wipe the tears from his eyes. As they were about to leave the church, they heard car doors slam and truck doors slam. People came into the back of the church and recognized their long lost friend. People embraced and cried. Some of these people hadn’t spoken in years. What are we to do, one of the people asked. The boy said, “Why don’t you have worship like you said you used to.” This church today is a thriving church. And the boy has now grown and is a preacher of the Gospel of Christ Jesus. All because a man went home one day.

Our nation will not come back home until we come back home. There are men who need to come back home to your responsibility as a husband and a father today. There are women who need to come back home to your responsibility as a mother and a supporting wife. Many of us need to come back to Jesus. Come home, America . . . but let it begin in your life.