Same as it ever was…

Come let us walk together in the scriptures that we may cleanse our mornings and set our hearts aright before it is too late…Dear brethren, consider the soul who rises with the sun but fails to lift their heart heavenward in prayer. Such a one begins the day unarmed, naked before the wiles of the enemy, vulnerable to the snares that lie ahead. ~ Charles Spurgeon, 4 Morning Habits That Anger God

It is not sentiment but an implicit reality that the conditions of dawn and communion with God go together. ~ Oswald Chambers, Devote the Dawns to God

It dawned on me this week after a sister shared a horrific story of her being hacked and frauded, shortly after I had finished the above message from Charles Spurgeon on the importance of starting each day in the Word, that our days are made in the pre-dawn hours, and our lives are shaped and determined by our communion with God in these hours. And then, the following morning I read what I took as clear affirmation, Oswald Chambers’ Devote the Dawns to God. I guess I had assumed that everyone started their days this way, but then realized that many commuting fathers, and mothers getting kids off to school, etc., aren’t as able or likely to find the time. I am here now to urge everyone to make the time for exactly the reasons Spurgeon lays out.

God has our perfect attention in these critical early hours. The world is stopped, the house is quiet. Its just God and me in solidarity. Think of the earthly father/son relationships where the father is always there for the son, at every game, etc., compared to those where the father never seems to find the time. Our Father is ALWAYS there for us. It is we who never seem to find the time for Him. And often times it takes a crisis, and then we run to Him. I am telling you, in fact I will make you the following promise; If you will start each and every day in prayer and give your undivided attention to His scripture, and seek his guidance and will for you, you will see your life begin to change and develop in ways you never imagined…from ordinary to extraordinary. Doors will start to open, connections will be made, relationships will be nourished, sporadic happening-based happiness will give way to the (wait for it) joy comes in the morning!  

One of my favorite writers, Maureen Mullarkey, introduced me to a quote in her recent Trump’s election/Thanksgiving piece which brilliantly describes the bullet America, and the entire world just dodged…

The Endarkenment is the pathological disorientation that convulses a society after it has extinguished all sources of meaning . . . . It is the triumph of wish over facts, the infantilization of top echelons of the social pyramid—of hyper-credentialed, globally mobile people, welders of power and wealth and media, who, on a routine basis, confuse their self-important imaginings with the world itself. It is the widespread descent of everyone else, now deprived of teachers, preachers, and role models, into a cognitive underclass, prone to the most bizarre theories about how things work. ~ Martin Gurri, Trump, Thanksgiving, & the Puritan Mind

That, my friends, is the portrait of a world that evolves when moral people allow themselves to be ruled by immoral, Godless, psychopaths! And as Kevin D. Roberts frames it…

We are militarily and strategically weaker, fiscally endangered, and SPIRITUALLY ENERVATED. ~ Kevin D. Roberts, Hillsdale College,  Populist Conservatism and Constitutional Order

EN-ER-VA-TED: Lacking physical, mental, or moral vigor.

God has given us a second chance. President Trump could install a cabinet of superhero all-stars, the likes of which the world has never known, but if the church continues to shirk its leadership role and remain silent and irrelevant on the social issues of our time, then we will have chained our own children to the hell of Endarkenment. If we, as the Body of Christ, continue to put Him last in our days instead of first where He belongs…we will reap the whirlwind. Mark my word.

“Example is not the main thing in influencing others…it is the only thing.” ~ Albert Schweitzer

Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the LORD thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. ~ Deut. 31:6