Revival Requires a Return to Righteous Royalty

We've been here before. In America we seem to be particularly vulnerable to worshiping our government instead of the One who truly has endowed us with our unalienable rights. We can look to history, with an honest and sincere desire to see the truth, and discover how our forebears were delivered from a precarious and foreboding time much like we are immersed in today.

Samuel Adams gave his American Independence speech shortly before the fifty-six Founders signed the Declaration of Independence. In this prophetic speech Adams said, 

“We have explored the temple of royalty (regarding many previous appeals to King George), and found that the idol we have bowed down to has eyes which see not, ears that hear not our prayers, and a heart like the nether millstone. We have this day restored the Sovereign, to whom alone men ought to be obedient.... From the rising to the setting sun, may His kingdom come.”

 The direction is clear. Who will lead the way? Those of us who have experienced the forgiveness, healing, and deliverance of the Lord as a result of our personal repentance and surrender to Him through Jesus Christ know the way back to where we belong. Let's echo the cry of the prophets throughout our great land once again...

"Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces; now he will heal us. He has injured us; now he will bandage our wounds." - Hosea 6:1

“Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth; For I am God, and there is no other." - Isaiah 45:22

Is there someone in your life that you can nudge, inspire, redirect toward the One True God today? Become a part of the revival of America.

American Greatness Springs from Humble Leadership

President Abraham Lincoln’s words in the dark days of the Civil War speak to us today: 

"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever known. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins and to pray for clemency and forgiveness." - Abraham Lincoln, Proclamation of a National Fast Day, March 30, 1863.

As we pray for revival in our land, let's ask the Lord to raise up the kind of humble, God fearing leaders like Abraham Lincoln that have challenged us as God's people to obey God's call to prayer...

"If my people, who bear my name, will humble themselves, pray, seek my face and turn from their evil ways, I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin and heal their land." - 2Ch 7:14.

 A humble, honest look into HIStory reveals the truth that God responds to this kind of prayer, and just as He did before, HE will make America great again.

Precursor to the American Covenant

 

When things go wrong it seems the smart thing to do is stop, look for the cause, make corrections, and get back on course. It's obvious that things are going wrong here in America. As a nation and as individual citizens, we no longer live together like we believe that we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator with the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We no longer see the role of government as being limited by a constitution to protecting those rights, but we increasingly see government as our enemy, threatening on many sides to take away our rights. It seems it's time to stop, make some corrections and get back on course.

But just where is the course? To rediscover the course that America should be on, a good place to start might be to re-examine our earliest agreements as they are the precursors of our American Constitution. Here's a glimpse of the Mayflower Compact, the first written, signed agreement between Christian and non-Christian citizens of the new colony of Plymouth...

"Having undertaken, for the Glory of God, and advancements of the Christian faith, and the honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia; do by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one another; covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic; for our better ordering, and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience."

The Mayflower compact is the first American covenant, between God and a group of men and women beginning life together in a new world. These forefathers and foremothers were bound together by a covenant to glorify God because they assumed that as individuals, they all existed for the glory of God. This belief was so strong that both Christians and non-Christians understood and accepted this truth...

"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the expanse proclaims the work of His hands." - Psalm 19:1

The course is clear. A rededication to the American Covenant is the best hope for a revival of the vitality of our dear republic. But before nations make such course-corrections, individual citizens must make a personal covenant to live for the glory of God...

"Whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God" - 1 Corinthians 10:31

Thus, to pray for revival in America is to pray for a personal rededication to living in both words and actions for the glory of God, and to pray for the salvation of lost souls that they may be freed to enter into the personal covenant that is the precursor to the American covenant.

 

The Interposing Hand of Heaven

 

"I take a particular pleasure in acknowledging that the interposing hand of Heaven, in the various instances of our extensive preparations for this operation, has been most conspicuous and remarkable." - Washington, Letter to Thomas McKean, President of Congress, November 15, 1781

George Washington's reflections on the most conspicuous and remarkable providence of God in the events leading up to the surrender of Lord General Cornwallis at Yorktown are the result of the following divine activity...

1. If General Washington had not decided to leave New York and march to Yorktown when he did, Cornwallis would have been reinforced.

2. If Robert Morris, the generous and capable merchant, had not used extraordinary means to raise money to pay Washington’s troops, they would have gone home rather than to Yorktown.

3. If France had not sent a fleet from the West Indies (unknown to Washington), which arrived just in time to defeat the British fleet sent to relieve General Cornwallis at Yorktown, Cornwallis could have escaped. In this battle, the French fleet, under Admiral de Grasse, soundly defeated the British, cutting off all sea routes.

4. If a sudden tornado-like storm had not stopped Lord Cornwallis in his last-minute attempt on October 16, 1781, to cross the York River and escape to New York, the war would have dragged on. - Marshall Foster, The American Covenant, the Untold Story.

Praying for revival is inviting the interposing Hand of Heaven to  break into the chaos and conflict of our nation once again. Such a request should be natural and urgent when it comes from the heart of believers who have experienced the providential Hand of God in their own lives...

"If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land." - 2 Chronicles 7:14.

Where in your heart, your home, your community, and your nation do you urgently need the interposing Hand of Heaven today?

Our Only Real Hope

 

Alexander Solzhenitsyn , in his acceptance speech for the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion (May 1983), summarized our present state well when he said...

"We are witnesses to the devastation of the world, be it imposed or voluntarily undergone. The entire twentieth century is being sucked into the vortex of atheism and self-destruction . This plunge into the abyss has aspects that are unquestionably global, dependent neither on political systems, nor on levels of economic and cultural development, nor yet on national peculiarities... Different parts of the world have followed different paths, but today they are all approaching the threshold of a common ruin.

Solzhenitsyn ended his sobering address in London by directing us toward the only hope for the reformation our world, a revival of our relationship with God...

"Instead of the ill-advised hopes of the last two centuries, which have reduced us to insignificance and brought us to the brink of nuclear and non-nuclear death, we can only reach with determination for the warm hand of God , which we have so rashly and self-confidently pushed away. If we did this, our eyes would be opened to the errors of this unfortunate twentieth century and our hands could be directed to set them right. There is nothing else to cling to in the landslide: all the thinkers of the Enlightenment can give us nothing."

As we pray for revival in America, we must be ready and willing to obey the Lord's command to help others reach with determination for the warm hand of God...

"Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit." - Matthew 28:19

Who can you introduce to Jesus today? 

One Nation Under God

French sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) traveled to the United States in 1831 to study its prisons and returned with a wealth of broader observations that he codified in “Democracy in America” (1835), an unbiased reflection on the great American experiment in self-government. De Tocqueville cited the First Connecticut Code as an example of the strong connection between faith and civil law in America.

In May of 1650, the General Court of Connecticut adopted what became known as the First Connecticut Code. The code was the result of work undertaken by Roger Ludlow, who, in 1646, set out to amend the preexisting Capital Laws of 1642, which were mostly borrowings from those of neighboring Massachusetts. In De Tocqueville's own words... 

"Nothing is both more singular and more instructive than the legislation of this period; there above all one finds the password to the great social enigma that the United States presents to the world in our day. Among these memorials, we particularly distinguish, as one of the most characteristic, the code of laws that the little state of Connecticut passed in 1650."

De Tocqheville noted that the legislators of Connecticut occupied themselves first with penal laws; and, to compose them, they conceived the strange idea of drawing from sacred texts... 

“'If any man [after legal conviction], shall have or worship any other God but the Lord God,' they say to begin with, 'he shall be put to death.' There follow ten or twelve provisions of the same nature, borrowed from the texts of Deuteronomy, Exodus, and Leviticus. Blasphemy, sorcery, adultery, and rape are punished by death; insult done by a son to his parents is struck with the same penalty. In this way they carried the legislation of a rude and half-civilized people into the heart of a society whose spirit was enlightened and mores mild; so one never saw the death penalty laid down more profusely in the laws, or applied to fewer of the guilty."

When he considered the development of civil laws here in America, De Tocqueville cited the actions of the pilgrims' belief that they were citizens and subjects of God first, and of the king of England second...

"Thus it is often difficult, in running through the first historical and legislative memorials of New England, to perceive the bond that attaches the emigrants to the country of their ancestors. One sees them at each instant performing an act of sovereignty; they name their magistrates, make peace and war, establish police regulations, give themselves laws, as if they came under God alone."

America has always prospered when we all agreed and lived as "One nation under God". Praying for revival is praying for a personal and nation return to the indispensable Biblical truth...

"For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ" - Philippians 3:20

The Happiest Society Never Forgets

"Finally, let us not forget the religious character of our origin. Our fathers were brought [here] by their high veneration for the Christian religion. They journeyed by its light, and labored in its hope. They sought to incorporate its principles with the elements of their society, and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions, civil, political, or literary. Let us cherish these sentiments, and extend this influence still more widely, in the full conviction, that that is the happiest society which partakes in the highest degree of the mild and peaceful spirit of Christianity."- Daniel Webster (1848). “Speeches and Forensic Arguments”, p.56

Daniel Webster said, "Let us not forget". Our forgetfulness has caught up to us. The evidence is overwhelming. He noted the connection here between happiness and partaking the mild and peaceful spirit of Christianity.

"He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children, that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments." - Ps 78:5-7

Isn't it yet time for the family and the church to come together and remind our children about the works of God? Isn't it indeed the works of God that they are studying throughout the day in school? Is there any subject under the sun that is not a work of God?

May the Lord have mercy on me and my generation for our failure to obey His command to teach our children the testimony of God that is revealed in all of His mighty creation...

"The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship." --Psalm 19:1

The peace and happiness we have lost can be recovered and offered to the next generation if we will repent and obey today.