Saturday, November 26, 2016

When one is an orator...---"Will He find faith on the earth?"

The Devil himself uses our own words to implicate and condemn us. Some of the danger of a Christian education is that our words and God's words overlap to strangle our faith. "Hath God not said?" The devil exalts us and the devil debases us and uses our excellence as his yoyo to drag us from self aggrandizement to complete exhaustion.

Sometimes I wonder if we are not the reincarnation of the worms that consumed Herod in the midst of his oration. Only eternity will say the veracity of that assumption. All I can say is that our words are very often more grand and exalted and we are not as guilty of giving God the glory as giving ourselves the glory. We use religion to justify our own pagan strongholds and we are sadly deficient in the graces and gifts that God has given us these words to develop.

How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? Hebrews 2;3
My own heart aches when I read the actual cross examination of William Jennings Bryan in that beautiful expression of the spiritual struggle played out in the courts during the "Scopes Trial" which was dramatized in the movie and book Inherit the Wind.Participation in the political process and the compromise of scruples is not a new phenomenon, I can see. I don't think we can tell our children this enough. If you are a person of Christian convictions, they will all be challenged, throughout your life. A great Christian example of this is William Jennings Bryan, the politician and author and lawyer. I am sorry that I didn't research him more before my children were mostly grown.

He seems an example of fighting the good fight in the forum of secular and political contentions. How much of the world are we allowing into our hearts is far more significant than that of what is outside? But if we represent God, He just may allow us to be as Daniel and the Hebrew boys in the fiery furnace of politics and public discussion. Help us to remember that God is greater than our fears. Cursed are we when we make our own flesh or any other, our arm. God give us grace to stand and having done all to stand, in Jesus' Name. Amen

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