Month: November 2016

How We Feed our Enemy

November 21, 2016

One never expects to get insight from a drive through the Moroccan desert, but often life can surprise me in the most unlikely places! It was one of those boring drives where the scenery never changes—brown desert sand pitted with volcanic rock droning on mile after mile. All was quiet in the car—the driver and interpreter in the front, my friend Gale Sherrill and me and in the back. That’s when Driss, our interpreter, held up a local newspaper and slapped the huge picture plastered on the front page, and asked, “Do you know who this is?”

It was a Moroccan newspaper written in French. I had no clue who the gorgeous woman on the front page was. I nodded my head, “No.”

Amazing the Ideas that Come on a Lonely Road
One Road leads through the Sahara Desert

“This is a transvestite.” He slapped the newspaper again and again as he made his point. “This is what fuels all the radical Islamic groups across the globe! We think we are being modern when we promote transgender behavior, but in reality we are aiding ISIS by showing our moral decay, which feeds their drive to conquer us.”

Although we were discussing Morocco, the same is true of any country, especially the US where moral decline has progressed at an accelerated rate over the past 50 years. Driss was right. When we accept immoral behavior as a society, we invite the enemy to engage us in a warfare where we cannot win. But where did it all start? How did we get this way? I believe that the seed of embracing immoral change began in the American Educational system around 1895. That was the time John Dewey (the Father of Modern Education) began his work to transform education in America. Dewey wanted  the public schools to be the conduit to promote social change in America, and not just any social change, but social change that would separate us from any Judeo-Christian beliefs. The classroom was to be used to teach the children how they were superhuman, god like people who, with the right education apart from religion, would choose to be upright moral citizens. The new emphasis of the classroom was to be social at the exclusion of any and all Christian references or moral teaching.

In all of the seven Mountains that make up our culture, Education was the only venue seized by men with a godless agenda soon after our country’s inception. So, what do we do now that we are 125 years down the road?

  1. We must realize that we are in a cultural war. We will have to take a stand and losing is not an option.
  2. We must develop a strategic prayer plan. This has to be a new plan that will embrace spiritual warfare at a new level.
  3. We must make prayer for unity among Believers a top priority. This element alone is one of the most crucial. If we are to win, we will need the full cooperation of all who call themselves Born Again Believers.

In his resistance to Hitler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer tried tirelessly to get the German church to resist the changes Hitler was imposing on them. The church was so divided that finally Bonhoeffer started what amounted to another denomination called, The Confessing Church. But the start was too late and never gained the approval of the leadership of major denominations. Let it not be said of our country and our generation that we could not rally the forces of righteousness against the evil tide that is trying to overtake our culture and ultimately our country.

 

 

Why Can’t the System Change?

November 12, 2016

Twice a year, I take prayer teams to Washington, DC to pray at strategic landmarks for this nation. One year the group I took participated in “The Call, ” a gathering of over 100,000 people in the area located between the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument, known as The Mall. People stood in the hot sun for hours as one person after another called the group to repentance then prayer. At one time, some women took the microphone to tell their stories of a past abortion and how that decision to abort their baby had drastically altered their lives. Each one related how her life had spiraled out of control after the abortion. The effects were a long list of destructive behaviors that ranged from having multiple partners, inability to keep a job, rocky family relationships, restlessness, drugs, prostitution, illnesses and compulsive lying. Their lives were out of control and they didn’t know why. What they had done was legal so what was going on? They were unable to get a grip on life until they realized the root cause of their issues and repented for the abortion.

Intercessors join in prayer at "The Call" in Washington, DC
Prayer at the Mall in Washington, DC – The Call

The life stories of these women were compelling. They were not overly emotional but shared with a frank honesty that compelled the listeners to look for root causes within our own lives.  Two days later I met this group of women at the airport while they waited on their plane to take them back home to San Antonio. I talked with them and learned more about their lives. Their testimonies had impacted me and gave me a lot to ponder. I thought of the women whom I knew who had abortions. Many of them were like the Cry Out America women, their lives out of control and they had no clue as to why.

The same is true of our educational system. In the past godless decisions were made that led us on a downward spiral and there has been no repentance offered for those decisions. Our education system is out of control and no one knows what to do or how to make changes to counteract those decisions. The innocent children in our classrooms are the ones who suffer and ultimately our nation. Classroom discipline in many schools in almost nonexistent, children who cannot perform at grade level are often passed to the next grade level, and many graduate from high school who cannot read, write or do simple math problems. We have set ourselves on a self-destructive course and no one knows what to do about it. What if the simple act of repentance could turn things around? What if we could look at our history and realize where those decisions were made that turned us against a loving God? Wouldn’t it be a simple thing?