A Little Follow-Up

Ok, I'm still praying hard for our country. I just think we need it now more than ever. I believe many Christians are feeling the same thing too. Almost not a day goes by, that I don't receive an email or talk to someone that is saying the same thing. I think that most Christians would agree that tough times are ahead for us with the new administration that is in office. Most people reading this will probably already know that I did not vote for our new president. I feel like the first month that he's been in office he has already started trying to push Christians out of our culture completely even if he says he is one. Again, I am not judging whether or not he is a Christian because only God knows that, but I do know that some of the policies that he supports are evil in God's eyes. Some of these policies are abortion (I could do a whole separate post on that and probably will soon), the Fairness Doctrine that will most likely be coming up soon, and the Hate Crimes bill which probably isn't too far away either. I'm really not planning on changing our blog into a diary type of thing or journal, but this is the best way for me to share my thoughts.
I'm participating in the new Beth Moore Bible study about Esther. I love this type of Bible study where we really look at the text in-depth, compare these Scriptures with other Scriptures, and look at the Hebrew words and what they actually mean. Sometimes our English words just don't do them justice. For anyone who isn't familiar with the story of Esther, it's an amazing story of how she became queen. It takes place after the Jewish people were captive in Babylon and then Cyrus tells them they can go back to Jerusalem. Some of the Jews stayed. By Esther's time it was Persia but it was still a very pagan society. The Jewish people were so assimilated that they really didn't stand out in the culture anymore. Sound familiar to Christians today?? I mean the King Xerxes that she was married to didn't even know that she was Jewish. Anyway, an evil man named Haman devises a plan to annihilate the Jews throughout the world. The day the edict goes out is the first day of Passover when all the Jewish people would be reading about Moses and how God delivered his people to the Promised Land. God's pretty cool in His timing, huh? The day they find out they're going to all be destroyed they read about how God is always with His people and protects them and delivers them. God takes the evil edict to bring his people back to Him. They turn back to him with prayer and fasting and God uses Esther to stop Haman. I feel like God's timing is perfect with this particular study too. Thousands of women are doing this study across the country at this exact time that we need it.
The last two weeks, the study has really focused on Haman and how evil he was and then on how the Jews and Esther react to the edict saying they will be killed. What made the edict even worse was that it went out in the first month and the Jews weren't sentenced to be killed until the 12th month. They had eleven months to sit and ponder over their death. One thing that struck me happened on the first day of our study last week was how the Jewish people reacted to the edict. The Bible says that throughout the kingdom the Jews were fasting, weeping, and wailing (fasting always implies prayer). Now here's a quote from Beth Moore, and it's really the whole reason I'm even writing this post.
"The reaction showed the Jews of Persia understood their peril to be associated with their wanderings from God. They had become so worldly and so thoroughly assimilated into Persian culture that they'd lost their protective shield. God had told His people from the time of Moses that He'd protect them and fight their battles for them as long as they worshiped Him only. If they forgot Him, He would still love them but He would not shield them. Instead, He'd use their enemies to turn His people back to Him...When word of the edict announcing their upcoming demise hit the streets, they suddenly realized they had sinned against God and took on the actions of repentant people wishing to return."
Right now, I feel like we as Christians are very much assimilated into our culture. I wonder how many times people have wondered whether or not I was a Christian. We just kind of keep our mouths shut and don't really stand up for what we believe. Or, even worse, we take part in things that aren't Godly at all. I think right now God is giving us a chance to repent and be bold and brave for Him. In Esther, God used an evil man named Haman to turn His people back to Him, and at times it seems like we have our own modern-day Haman right now. It's not just one person that I'm talking about. It's a several people scattered throughout our country that are trying to drive God out of our culture. But here's the really cool part, and what I'm praying will happen in our country. First of all, I do not pray that our president will fail. I pray that what is evil in God's eyes will fail, and what is good in God's eyes will succeed. What is good or evil in His eyes can only be found in His Word. Ok, this is the exciting part that I've been building up to. This week in Bible study I read a verse that was totally new to me, and it is amazing. It's Joel 2:13 & 14 - "Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and He relents from sending calamity. Who knows? He may even turn and have pity and leave behind a blessing..." That's my prayer. That we will return to the Lord as a nation. We must pray that God will forgive us for straying and not taking a stand, then repent, and take a stand for Christ. There are so many problems going on here now, and I know that we will have problems until we die or until Jesus comes again. But isn't it comforting to know that God will forgive us and reap blessings on us. It is to me. His grace and mercy are endless, we just have to trust Him and follow in His ways.