How many wake-up calls will it take?

In the previous post, I expressed the opinion that considers the current dilemma in American politics (ie, the election free-for-all which has the most corrupt, power-hungry egomaniacs winning positions of great power instead of wiser, experienced, proven leaders who possess God fearing integrity) to be a wake-up call from the one true God who, in His abundant mercy, continues to hold back the full bowl of his judgment on us so more may repent and believe.

² "Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. ³ Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you." (Revelation 3: 2-3)

Many, including myself, have expressed this same response to such an opinion, "But haven't we been through almost eight years of wake-up calls already under Obama?"

Indeed, the last eight years have been one long trumpet blast, and people are waking up to the reality that Obama is not the great messiah they thought he was.  Blacks looked to him for improved racial relations, more opportunities, and better outcomes.  Instead he poured kerosene on the fires of racial tension and fanned the flames of hatred to new highs for my lifetime.  Crime in black communities has grown worse as a result of his policies, and many blacks are speaking out against him.

The poor expected him to raise them up out of the mire, but instead he only increased their dependency upon government entitlements.  The number of welfare recipients increased exponentially, while the economy crept along, unable to keep pace with government spending.  Surely people are realizing that his policies only made the poor poorer.

College students thought he was the hip, happening, king of hope, so they gladly voted for him as a way of changing the course of history.  Now those college students are unemployed or underemployed and drowning in school loans.

Progressives saw him as the savior of  the U.S. health care system, but Obamacare has crippled the healthcare system in America which is now less efficient and exorbitantly more expensive overall than ever before. Of the small number who are actually getting free or less expensive coverage, a large percentage are either not getting the treatment they need due to decreasing availability of services or are wondering what good free healthcare really is when death seems imminent anyway as hate crimes and terrorism escalate all around them.

So yes, some Americans are waking up to the reality that Obama is not the answer to all their problems.  But are they also waking up to their need for God and falling on their knees in repentance, or are they only growing angrier as hatred and bitterness swell inside them?  Even those of us who believe in Christ and strive to keep Him Lord over our lives are becoming frustrated, resentful, and less aware of our own need for repentance.  Instead of running to the Lord and finding all our hope in Him, we have gleaned hope over the past eight years in the belief that someone better ("because surely it can't get any worse", we reasoned) will be elected in 2016 who will begin undoing all the damage Obama's administration has done.  Now we're exasperated to discover that the candidates taking the lead for each political party are both the antithesis of what a leader should be and could possibly be even worse for our country than what what Obama has been.  Have all these wake-up calls driven us to our knees in prayer or are we still trusting in human systems, political powers, fickle people, and man-made things?  Are we double-minded, trying to put our hope in both the things of this world and the things of God, or are we wholly devoted to God?   

⁵ Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? ⁶ But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” ⁷ Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ⁸ Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. ⁹ Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. ¹⁰ Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. (James 4:5-10)

When we are double-minded, we doubt God and are dangerously unstable.  We become overwhelmed and stressed out "like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind." (James 1: 6-8)

We cannot and must not trust fallen humans to fix our problems or to give us hope.  The political system is not the remedy for our nation's epidemic.  The root of all our problems is a cancer of the soul, and only God can heal and restore us from the inside out.

Surely it is not wrong to hope and pray for a righteous, God-fearing leader who respects the Constitution and has the humility to recognize that all he has was given by God and should be used for God's glory, not his own.

¹⁴ “When you come to the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,’ ¹⁵ you may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose. One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. ¹⁶ Only he must not acquire many horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the Lord has said to you, ‘You shall never return that way again.’ ¹⁷And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold. 

¹⁸ “And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. ¹⁹ And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, ²⁰ that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel.  (Deuteronomy 17: 14-20)

But there is a fine line between praying for wise and honest leaders and depending upon those leaders to do what only God can do.

¹⁹ And all the people said to Samuel, “Pray for your servants to the Lord your God, that we may not die, for we have added to all our sins this evil, to ask for ourselves a king.” ²⁰ And Samuel said to the people, “Do not be afraid; you have done all this evil. Yet do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart.  (1 Samuel 12: 18-20)

America certainly needs to repent from the highest rung of the corrupt political ladder to the most humble and faithful minister of the gospel.  But first repentance must begin with me.  Too often I have crossed that line, misplacing my hope.  May we each personally begin placing all our trust in God alone and pray for revival to sweep across our nation.

In God, whose word I praise,
    in God I trust; I shall not be afraid.
    What can flesh do to me?  (Psalm 56:4)