Every morning I have a routine which includes a special prayer in which I plead with God that I may have the strength to live every moment of THIS day with Honor, Courage & Integrity. I use the word plead for two reasons. One, I realize my flaws as a man whose made his share of mistakes and poor choices. And two, I realize how difficult it is to manifest these principles at this time and in this “pay to play world” we are living in.

My friend Kim captures it best, “Perhaps because I trusted my instincts and felt something was amiss, something was phony, something didn’t feel right.” She was responding to yesterday’s Matt Patterson article on my blog about the tragedy of the Obama Presidency. But the question is what happened to the “instincts” of so many of us to have allowed such a failure in the first place?

The obvious answer is the systemic surrender of our nation’s founding First Principles. For a country that once “Trusted in God” to be losing more children to gang violence in one city than on all the battlefields in Afghanistan and an Egyptian coup combined…after slaughtering 53 million in the womb, which Texas citizen’s protest by singing Amazing Grace…in the face of well-funded pro-abortion forces chanting “Hail Satan”…something has gone horribly wrong indeed! You realize that First Principles are missing entirely from the minds of young Americans marching arm in arm with Socialists, Communists and other social miscreants in what became known as Occupy Wall Street! But how and why could so many have surrendered so much without even a whimper? 

Hind sight is 20/20 folks. The answer is really quite simple. (1) Communist Sympathizers in our Classrooms and (2) Casper Milk Toast-Phonies in our Churches literally robbed our minds and souls of our First Principles! This is how we have the most under-qualified man to ever hold public office who is the absolute antithesis of First Principles telling us we are “growing” when in fact, “If we call the economy of the U.S. $15 Trillion, and the Obama regime and Federal Reserve dilute the currency by $1 Trillion per year (which they are at minimum), this results in a 6.66% reduction in purchasing power annually (1 divided by 15). Thus, personal income AND spending must increase at 6.66% annually in order for the economy to merely tread water at the consumer level. Any “growth” rate LESS than the dilution rate is therefore ECONOMIC CONTRACTION.”~ compliments of Ann Barnhardt via KD at Market.Ticker.org

We cannot accept these falsehoods, reject these truths and respect ourselves at the same time, it is impossible! We can certainly delude ourselves, which seems to be the path of choice for many of us. But this delusion is like placing sandbags around your beachfront property in preparation for the worst Tsunami in history. And besides delusion isn’t respect, it’s only the minds way of anesthetizing us from the pain of its absence. Remember the devastating Tsunami that struck Indonesia not so long ago and how the animals sensed the danger long before the first waves struck and escaped to higher ground. This is exactly how some of us, including my friend Kim, have known enough to pull our families from the lure of false teachers and prophets to the safety of higher ground while the rest of us are unrepentant “Stronger than the Storm” buffoons taunting the very God who “blessed us among nations” to begin with!

I will warn you that when you come to terms with truth and speak to it, you will lose things you never imagined losing…you will feel pain you never imagined feeling…and you will experience a certain kind of physical fear…a powerlessness I would say (compounded to the extent you find yourself in the minority). But there is a light that comes in to fill the void if we’ve nurtured the heart to receive it…(the following was sent to me by a friend yesterday).

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ’s power may rest on me! That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weakness, in insults, in hardship, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong!” 2 Cor. 12: 9-10.

Christ’s power is made perfect in weakness. That’s rather humorous and it is so God. We, in our self-sufficient, inner- strength, “I got this” self-made attitude, block Christ’s power in us, or we diminish it to a dull flicker. But when we are undone, when it seems like our situation can’t get any worse, when the diagnosis is looking fairly bleak; if and only if we keep our minds on His Word; allowing every vain imagining to be held captive to the knowledge and truth of His word; and if and only if, we keep our availability open to the Holy Spirit’s direction and changing our self-sufficiency to a “Your will be done” attitude, then, and only then, is Christ’s Power free to flow in me and through me to others. If my words of encouragement, Godly counsel, wisdom, words of knowledge or prophecy were effective at all before this metamorphosis then as I yield my weakness to Him, His Power becomes explosive and exponentially more effective. His will, His grace, His power…all in my weakness. Amen!

In the Potter’s Hands,

Michael

“He that respects himself is safe from others; he wears a coat of mail that none can pierce.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, author