ARE YOU WILLING TO DIE FOR A FAITH<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
YOU WERE NOT WILLING TO LIVE FOR?
 
Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.  Matthew 7:13 (KJV)
Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Matthew 7:21 (KJV)
And Peter remembered the word of Jesus, which said unto him, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And he went out, and wept bitterly. Matthew 26:75 (KJV)
Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?  2 Corinthians 6:14 (KJV)
If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.  2 Chronicles 7:14 (KJV)
And of the children of Issachar which were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do; 1 Chronicles 12:32a (KJV)
And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching. Hebrews 10 24,25 (KJV)
And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the LORD will not hear you in that day.  1 Samuel 18:18 (KJV)
Now therefore behold the king whom ye have chosen, and whom ye have desired! and, behold, the LORD hath set a king over you. If ye will fear the LORD, and serve him, and obey his voice, and not rebel against the commandment of the LORD, then shall both ye and also the king that reigneth over you continue following the LORD your God: But if ye will not obey the voice of the LORD, but rebel against the commandment of the LORD, then shall the hand of the LORD be against you, as it was against your fathers. 1 Samuel 12:13-15 (KJV)
 
Motivational speakers rely upon sprinkling their famous presentations with many of their favorite axioms, adages and punchy sayings to stir up the emotions of their audience.  The same is also true of such leaders as football coaches, military unit commanders and even some politicians.  One of those time worn phrases is; 'When the going gets tough, the tough get going!'   When such a phrase is thrown out as a challenge to a beleaguered group, it is only effective if the core of that group believes in their own invincibility and they have a vision as to why they should rise to the occasion of overcoming overwhelming odds.  Our military history is replete with heroic stories where a small unit was able to overcome superior enemy forces and thus provide a turning point in the far larger conflict.  Those are the kind of heroics that were behind the creation of such slogans as 'Remember the Alamo!', 'Remember the Maine!' and more recently, 'Remember Pearl Harbor!'  The heroic actions of those who were the principles in such events fueled the fires of victory for a much larger body, even though they might have lost their lives in that great 'last-ditch stand', such as happened at the Alamo in San Antonio.  Were those immortally memorable heroes both prepared for the oncoming battle and did they know the value of their resolute action or were they just willing to fight to the last because it was necessary for them to prove who they were and let those who came behind take note of their accomplishment?  It is the brave that become the model for many of us to follow.   
 
How would history, or the daily sports pages, respond to such a challenge as, 'When the going gets tough, the tough get going!' if that leader had never prepared or worked with his group in preparation to lead them out of the trenches and into the ensuing conflict?  Would a coach be honored for using that motivational tool when he had not demanded that the team exert their last ounce of energy during every training session for weeks, or even months before the big game?  Or could the unit commander expect his troops to be ready for victory if he had not challenged them to sharpen all of their skills to a razor keen edge and regularly exhausted their last ounce of stamina in the development of their combat skills?  The stories about the excruciating pain experienced by the Navy Seals, Army Green Berets and their Air Force and Marine counterparts, as they struggle to be included among those already accorded the honor of being a member of the elite force, focus on the difficulty of preparing to be victorious in what they know will be the coming mission.  The champions and winners know that their training will be required when the next test of their strength and perseverance will be needed.  For them the question is not if they will face a harrowing challenge but it is when and where they will be called upon to give their all. 
 
Unfortunately, the Twenty-First Century Church apparently does not see a similar need for the Body of Christ to be in a state of preparation for the possibility of a coming challenge to its faith.  On a weekly basis more churches are surrendering the tradition of holding three services a week to appease an audience that is more caught up in keeping pace with the world than living the faith they profess.  Most businesses could not afford to remain open on Sunday if the Christians were to consider the day as a day of rest and not one to shop and seek entertainment.  While parents are looking the other way with their own concerns, the universities are tearing away the moral beliefs of their children.  In February 2011, Oregon State University sponsored "Modern Sex Week."  A one week festival of perversity to introduce such topics as: pornography, X-rated material, sexual toys and how-to instructions.   With the loss of godly leadership, it is no longer possible for parents to expect the government and institutions of higher learning to be partners in the training of their children towards strong character and moral life styles. 
 
At the same time, the American church is surrendering to the para-church arena its leadership to be God's salt and light representative to a hurting nation.  The church is looking more inward and the challenge for national godliness is being taken up by those who are willing to live beyond the walls of the church by affiliating with such organizations as Answers In Genesis, Focus on the Family, Worldview Weekend, Family Research Council and American Family Association, to name just a few.  It is these organizations, and not the church, that is at the forefront of the battle to dispel the unbiblical and unscientific teaching of the theory of evolution and denying the presentation of creation as a competing theory;  to maintain the biblical family structure as the core building block of the culture by holding elected officials accountable for their positions on homosexuality, abortion and same sex marriage; and striving to keep sexually dominated programming and vulgarity from the public airways.  It is those people who are publicly fighting to preserve the traditional family standards that understand that freedom cannot be separated from godliness.  Their battle is not only for the preservation of their own liberties but for the liberties of the generations to come. 
 
The linkage between Christianity and freedom or liberty is well documented throughout the Bible, the writings and speeches of our founding fathers, congressional hearings, Supreme Court proceedings and presidential proclamations.  They are so wide spread that it would take volumes to cite just a few of them.  However, several from the Bible are: John 8:32 (KJV) "And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." and Romans 8:2 (KJV): "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free form the law of sin and death."  Patrick Henry's patriotic oration contained the following: "Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battle alone.  There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations; and who will raise up friends to fight our battle for us."  In April 1802, Alexander Hamilton revealed the importance of the connection between Christianity and the Constitution with the following excerpt from his speech: "I now offer you the outline of the plan they have suggested.  Let an association be formed to be denominated "The Christian Constitutional Society," its object to be first: the support of the Christian religion, second: The support of the United States."  Research of such things as the 1853 Senate Judiciary Report and the March 1854 House Committee on the Judiciary reports reveal the conclusion that the nation was created as a Christian nation and had those who fought for freedom envisioned that if Christianity would ever be forced aside, they would have ceased fighting and the nation would have died in child-birth.  The Supreme Court has a number of decisions, with numerous precedents, declaring that the nation was founded as a Christian nation.  One of the more researched cases was the case of The Holy Trinity vs. the United States in 1892.  And the list goes on, almost without end.
 
Those who have chosen to enlist in the small army of para-church faith defenders know that there is a day coming when, if they are not victorious, our nation will experience the persecution of Christians, much like that which is being experienced throughout the world of Islam.  The Christians in Egypt, Indonesia, Somalia, Darfur, Nigeria, Iran, and numerous other nations, are those who today are experiencing life at the tip of the spear that is being driven towards the heart of the Christian faith.  Even though they have little, as we count material blessings, they have much as we count willingness to stand for their faith to the death.  It is hard for us to imagine them, without all of the advantages of our 'Christian' experience with untold books, commentaries, radio, television, retreats, study programs and beautiful churches, to be called upon to be the Twenty-First Century martyrs for the faith of those who have blazed the trail for the cause of Jesus Christ. 
 
The view of God is much like the presence of a variable one-way mirror between God and man.  When our nation was formed in the Eighteenth Century, the mirror was very transparent as our leaders fully recognized the necessity of God's presence for the well-being of the new nation.  As the nation has moved into an anti-God mode wherein all public recognitions and portrayals of God are to be removed, the one-way transparency of the mirror has diminished such that God can still see man very clearly but when man looks towards God the mirror is reflecting back the god they are seeking – their selves.  As the old adage says, 'Be careful what you wish for, you are liable to receive it.'  The dimming of the glass in God's direction is also why churches are forming unholy alliances with faiths whose religious writings call for their destruction and also ignore God's direction as to who to associate with and to choose as leaders. 
 
As we rushed downhill through the Twentieth Century and are now crashing in the Twenty-First Century, we have lost sight of the fact that God does not need us, we need God.  We think we can shed, or rid, ourselves of those old-fashioned Christian activities, once practiced by our fore bearers, like worship, tithing, holiness, righteousness and obedience.   The abandonment of those practices has been tried in days gone past and in every case the people found themselves without hope, plunged into slavery, or lost in a wilderness of despair.
 
While the well-defined seven cardinal sins; anger, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony, have always been with us they have never been as evident as they are today.  The nation is suffering from an overdose of each sin.  For instance, to take just one example for each: anger has become dominant in both child abuse and road rage; greed underlies much of the illegal immigration issue as businesses seek to exploit the illegals as cheap labor; sloth is at the core of much of the abuse and corruption in our welfare system; pride has become a major wall that separates the elected class of the nation from the electorate; lust is being fueled by an insatiable diet of perverted entertainment; envy is the source of financial ruin as we no longer can live within our means; and what needs to be said about gluttony in light of the national war declared on overweight children and adults.  Hardly an issue of a national newspaper can be read without at least one story covering each one of those sins.  The rising ascendancy of these sins in the nation's daily life can be traced to the decadency of the Christian religion in public life.  The Apostle Paul wrote a letter in which he warned of the effects of spiritual blindness: Ephesians 4:17-19 (KJV): "This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness."
 
As we eliminated sin by redefining the meaning of words, we opted to follow the fateful practice of King Saul in Chronicles, when he chose to offer sacrifices to God instead of obeying God.  His blind desire to become his own priest and to respond to God in his own fashion instead of obeying the rules that had been set out before him proved to be the instrument for his own downfall.  We are following the same principles today.
 
The most popular solutions to our social ills are to just 'fix' the problem and to forget about the need to correct the wrongful living that created the dilemma.  We now have the government trying to be a partner in the practice of murdering babies in the womb by supporting the abortion industry instead of finding ways to prevent unwanted pregnancies.  They think that abstinence is not fair.  The solution to the illegal immigration problem is to seek some form of amnesty and not to have the illegals return to their home of origin and properly apply to immigrate through the front door or our nation.  Instead of supporting the Defense of Marriage Act the president has unilaterally decided, in the face of centuries of practice that marriage is a union between a man and a woman, that his Department of Justice will no longer defend the Act in court proceedings as he has decided that it is not constitutional. 
 
Where have we gone wrong on just these three examples and how does a national anti-god worldview find its way into the more popular solutions?  In the case of abortions, the culture has bought into a lie, popularized by the widespread use of the pill, that uninhibited and free sex should be enjoyed without any consequences.  So if it just happens that the lust of the moment results in the creation of a new baby the mother-to-be has been told that she does not have to protect her unborn but has the freedom of choice to rid herself of the inconvenience that resulted from her ungodly conduct.  While the president sees the DOMA law to be unconstitutional, he believes that any woman has a constitutional right to a pill that will lead to the death of her fetus.  Under the most recent Health and Human Services ruling, no medical provider can be excused from dispensing the life taking pill because of their own conscience.  So, in the case of the killing of the unborn, it would appear that the nation's lust for free sex and a complying president, the anti-God road is just one example of God giving us what we wanted.  Just like God told Samuel. 
 
Since the last two presidential elections in the Twentieth Century, the attention of the electorate has been focused on style and not substance or character.  This became evident when the occupant of the White House lied under oath and it became public knowledge that he was involved in sexual activity in the Oval Office.  To our shame that activity became acceptable and recently a London study has concluded that the increased popularity of this sexual practice has replaced smoking as the leading cause of death by throat cancer.   Unfortunately, the main-stream-media championed those who campaigned for radical change without providing evidence of their proven leadership capability.  Today, as we are faced with turmoil throughout the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, our nation has lost its position as an international leader and has been trying to play catch-up instead of being in front of the burgeoning problems.  Most of the news media is reporting the source of the trouble to be the desire of the citizens of these nations to have democratic rule.  In fact, one of the largest underlying problems has been the skyrocketing cost of food.  At the same time, the United States government is subsidizing the production of corn for bio fuels, which removes that acreage from the production of corn for food.  Were it not for the narrow focus of a losing green program the better choice would be to raise crops to feed the hungry since converting corn to bio-fuel is essentially a zero sum game, played for political purposes and not providing energy independence.   
 
We are faced with a sea-faring problem that is almost identical to what faced our nation over two hundred and twenty years ago, yet we have not found the same courage to quell that problem that our founding fathers found.  At that time, our nation's commercial shipping was being plundered by Barbary pirates and our sailors were being taken into slavery.  It was determined in 1794 that we had to raise a navy to protect our sea-faring interests and to cease paying bounty to gain the release of our sailors.  This finally led to the battle on the Shores of Tripoli, as recounted in the United States Marine Corps song.  Today we have the world's premiere navy and cannot find the wherewithal to halt the seizure of American vessels and the murder of American crewmembers.  We have become so bound up in political correctness, diversity and multi-culturalism that it is not possible to identify certain violent skirmishes as terrorist acts.  What we need are experienced leaders who understand the times and have the courage to act accordingly.     
 
As the clouds roll over America's biblical knowledge and worldview, Christians are being blinded to the truths of the Bible and therefore losing the ability to discriminate between good and bad.  The socialist one-world government crowd is able to march forward with their duplicitous programs by codifying many of their various steps for implementing one-world rule.  Those without a biblical worldview are handicapped from being able to discern between short term safety and long term slavery when they seek to trade freedom for security.  At some point they will have neither.  Strangely, the forward push is seen in such places as the increasingly unconstitutional conduct of the Homeland Security Department under the guise of better airport and air travel security.  The latest is a push towards taking DNA samples of all flyers by means of mouth swabs.  While the American public remains focused upon their pleasurable pursuits and worldly activities, they are inattentive towards these unconstitutional encroachments upon their freedoms and liberties.   
 
In conclusion, the day to prepare to defend your faith is today and not when you reach the point where you are faced with the choice of defending your faith in the face of persecution.  At that time you will not have practiced your response sufficiently to trust the One who you profess to be your God.  If He is not your God today He will not be your God then.  Unfortunately, as I have grown older and find myself attending far too many memorials services, funerals and burials, I sense that too many pastors and preachers are trying to 'push' the persons being recognized closer to heaven than they ever walked.  God's Word tells us that most will not make it as the way is straight and narrow and few will find it.  The task is simple: humble yourself, turn from your wicked ways, seek God's face, and pray for forgiveness and strength.
 
It is now or never!