.
By James Wilson
(This is the second part in a two-part article.)
In last week’s column I ended with a question. What can we glean from Israel and her destiny that informs us as Americans for navigating back to our own?
We Americans were founded in covenant with Yeshua’s Father; our documents – from the Mayflower Compact to the sermons on which our political and social institutions are based – give eloquent testimony to the reality. Yet we are not the apple of His eye in the way Israel enjoys; we are not His direct creation. If Israel will not escape His judgment for rejecting His rule we most certainly will not. (Does anyone seriously believe the worst drought in California history – for which there is no natural explanation – is a natural phenomenon? How about the most resource blessed state struggling to make ends meet and put Californians to work?) On the other hand, if we turn to Him for healing – if we ask of Him and of ourselves a thoroughgoing re-set of what made us a nation after His heart – no power on earth will be able to restrain us from greater heights than ever before.
I am not talking about a theocracy, much less demanding every American accept Jesus as the price of national recovery. As my friend Dr. Tony Baron says, “The Church is a lot more powerful when it is not in power.” I am declaring, however, that the hope for America – as is the hope for Israel – lies in the people of God becoming the authentic people of God. That re-identification involves something deeper and more fundamental than a re-commitment to Christian values or electing officials who will overturn Roe v Wade and restore traditional marriage as the law of the land.
It will take a thoroughgoing recognition from a critical mass of the Christians in our land that we are not a self-made people. We Christians should know – and live as though we know – we are a gift to ourselves and all others from the Lord of the Universe. There are no strings attached to this gifting, but any intelligent Being gives gifts to those He finds trustworthy. He gives greater gifts to those He finds worthy of greater trust. Eternal life is a given for all who profess Christ; authority to move mountains and bless others into the Kingdom is fruit of a submitted life and a major escalation beyond individual salvation.
This recognition begins with turning away from the shedding of innocent blood, sexual sin, covenant breaking, and idolatries of all kinds – especially the idolatry of our entitlements and intelligence. It becomes turning toward – for each of us who make that turn – a Lord and Father and Spirit – who alone provides a life of unlimited power and authority whenever we abandon our own power and authority. It is the life described by a Roman centurion in the eighth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel when he declares Jesus can heal his servant from a distance because he is a man submitted to authority and so knows his orders will be potent and executed. It is the life that cemented Americans as a nation and enabled the fight against insurmountable odds for our independence and the birth of unheard of freedom within the structure of the first constitution of its kind.
Many reading my words above will dismiss me as just another religious nut who cannot grasp that we – and Israel – have practical problems that demand linear solutions. That is fine with me. When we serve God as people of repentance – consistent re-focus of our attention on Him and walking out the practical consequences of what He reveals – we always begin poorly. We begin poorly and subject to derision, but we always end well – as did the prophets of Israel, the Apostles of the New Testament, and the founders of our country. When we serve ourselves and our objectives – praiseworthy though they may be and as most of us in the Church and outside it do today – we always begin well and end badly.
I choose submission. I choose to begin poorly and end very well. My prayer is that a sufficient number in Israel and the United States choose likewise and very soon.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times, and Kingdom in Pursuit – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at praynorthstate@charter.net
