Divergence

     We're on a roll today getting things done in and out of the house, so I hate to stop just to write. But my head is writing for me. When it happens, it comes to me; I don't go looking for it. I've been lying low on the election results and still hope for a particular outcome. However, it shouldn't have even been close! Over 70% of Americans claim to be Christians, although that's down from 85% in the 90s. So to me, this just got personal, maybe not like you think, though. It's time to put up a new flag. Don't get me wrong, not long before the election we replaced our tattered Trump flag with a new one. But it's time to be put out a Christian flag and get to doing the groundwork that we should have already been busy with. This all is about influence, and if we have none in our personal lives then we can't expect it in our political ones.                    

     There are a lot of issues at play, but the one I hear above all others is abortion. Here is where I'm going to diverge from the majority of conservative, Christian women, and if this makes our paths part then sobeit. I can't afford to consider feelings, especially when I, like Christ, mean to save not condemn. We have lost regard for the blessings of the womb, instead holding our wombs hostage from the Lord and to the number of children we think will be convenient for our families. I'm not talking about killing babies; I'm talking about never conceiving them to start with. I can say with resolve that the seven children I had were for the Lord. As I have written previously, I was never a "natural" at things home and family. If every professing Christian family devoted their lives to the command of fruitfulness and raised the resulting fruit accordingly, the gridlock in our nation would not be possible. The numbers would speak for themselves.

      Mom, who can't have any more children, all I ask is that you join me in a new way of thinking, in a new way of counseling our young women as Titus 2 commands. It's not for us to tell our girls or anyone else's to do what makes them happy when Biblical happiness is defined as fearing and following the Lord. I'm not interested in all the excuses of why this can't be done. As my favorite verse says, "Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established" (Proverbs 16:3). That's totally opposite of today's psychology of figuring it out then making a plan. Set your heart to obey, and God always works out the rest. 

     While you're rethinking family, rethink buying the products and entertainment that provide dark influence. Stop wearing their clothes; stop listening to their music; stop watching their shows; and stop getting your education from them. I, for one, have determined that since my children still have the opportunity in America to "play" to earn a college education and/or a living that I will support nothing less than it be for the Lord in music or in sport at a Christian college or in a Christian environment. 

     Don't confuse this with having an impact on society. Although I do take seriously that our daughter play only Christian music and that our son play football only for a Christian college, I also take seriously that as they have encounters with nonbelievers in their daily lives they do not, "become undercover Christians or rabbit-hole Christians. Rabbit-hole Christians pop their heads out only when they must. Their only contacts with the world are mad dashes to and from Christian activities. They live with the unspoken motto, 'The less contact with non-Christians the better the day.' They pop out to get in the car to run their Christian kids to the Christian school. They listen to their Christian radio, run off to their Christian Bible study, then go to lunch with their Christian friend. After dinner they pop out to visit their Christian friends for Christian fellowship," as described by the "Evangelism Is" book I read on the plane.

      All this "activity" is well and good, but then how do we follow the directions of Paul in Timothy 2:24-26, "And the servant of the Lord must not strive but be gentle to all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that opppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowleding of the truth; and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will." First off, I can say "hanging out" with them would not be Jesus' answer nor did he "hang out" with sinners as people conveniently subscribe to. He ate with and talked with people who genuinely wanted to know about Him. Secondly, we have to make enough margin in our errands and routines that we let God brush us into people. And that's how we influence our communities, not by arguing with people we don't or barely know on social media. 

     We need to "assemble" ourselves back together and move forward no matter the political outcome. There is ground to take today in our own backyards.