Feed the Hunger Anthology

dependence were declared on July 4, 1776. A new page in human history was written with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

The next great test of ideas, beliefs, and wills would be the Civil War, when brother turned against brother. The catalytic issue was that of slavery. Would there indeed be “liberty and justice for all,” or just for the whites? The Union would ultimately prevail, but it would take generations for the nation to fully heal.

Racial, cultural, and political wounds still exist to this very day.

America is divided as strongly as ever. Marriage, abortion, sexuality, health care, and taxation are some of the primary battlefronts in this ongoing war.

Sadly, believers have also become more conformed to the world than transformed by the Word (Romans 12:1–2). Far too many American churches and Christians have either given up the fight in the cultural wars or surrendered to the enemy. Many are AWOL altogether from the battle.

It is only through authentic revival that America will rise to moral and political greatness again. Without it, America will continue her precipitous moral decline. And like all great nations in history, her internal decay will predict and predicate her external decline.

As Jesus said, “A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand.” A nation that thumbs her nose at morality and turns her back on God cannot long survive. But by contrast, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord” (Psalm 33:12).

On this July Fourth, my exhortation is what Paul wrote to young Timothy: “Fight the good fight of the faith” (1 Timothy 6:12). He also urged Timothy to personally flee from the “love of money” that had caused many Christians in his day to “wander from the faith and pierce themselves with many griefs.” The only antidote was the higher pursuit of “righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness” (1 Timothy 6:10–11).

May God give us an authentic revival that can again lead to political virtue rather than vice. Only then can America—or any nation—rise to true moral greatness in the world!

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