In an ever more secularized society, it is urgent that Christians redouble our commitment to the personal integrity that enables our public witness. As I noted yesterday, sin always affects more than the sinner. To stand publicly for Jesus, we must first spend time privately with Jesus.
How should Christians respond when Christians sin? We need to separate the message from the messenger, hold each other to the standards of Christ, and balance grace and consequences. To the last point, I wrote that “sinners can be forgiven, but they must seek restitution.”
As I noted yesterday, Christianity offers the hope of moral transformation for those who follow Jesus and submit to the Spirit. To this, I would add that Christianity offers a unique hope of such transformation.
What God said to the children of Israel he says to us today: “If you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish” (Deuteronomy 8:19).
Clearly, the greatest service you and I can render our nation is to be catalysts for spiritual and moral awakening before it is too late.
The New York Times reports that “extreme cold killed Texans in their bedrooms, vehicles, and backyards.” What we saw last week is not an isolated case: scientists are warning that an overall rise in extreme weather is creating new risks to America’s aging infrastructure.
Our electricity and water crisis in Texas calls us to gratitude for electricity and water. The coronavirus pandemic calls us to gratitude for life and health. The recession calls us to gratitude for the financial resources we still possess. The January 6 attack on the Capitol calls us to gratitude for the democracy it threatened. The growing threats against religious liberty call us to gratitude for the religious freedom we enjoy.
And the finitude of this life calls us to gratitude for the greater life to come.
Rush Limbaugh died yesterday at the age of seventy. He is being remembered today in ways that align fully with his political and cultural influence. Whether you considered him a vital voice for freedom or a danger to our liberties depended entirely on your perspective. To some he was a hero; to others, a threat.
What no one can question is that he used his influence to advance his vision for our country.
Name your “thorn in the flesh,” the temptation or trial you are facing today. Give it to Jesus. Ask him to heal it or strengthen you to bear it. Pray for him to redeem it by drawing you into greater dependence on your Lord.
Seek God’s strength for finishing well, and you will finish well.
Today, let’s focus on a key lesson we need to learn for the sake of our churches, ministries, and cultural influence: we must respond immediately and objectively to claims of impropriety.
Yesterday I noted that one evangelical response to cultural opposition is to defend our religious liberty, a valuable and urgent task being performed by some of the finest Christian legal organizations in America. However, to our critics, we are merely seeking the “right to be wrong.” As a result, we must also persuade our skeptical culture that we seek the “right to be right.”
