I am not going to tell you who to vote for or how to vote (at least not on this blog).  However I am going to encourage you to pray for the all the people that are elected.  If you read my post on The Last Best Hope of Man on Earth you will understand why I say that.  We are Christians living in a world that is not.  When we show hate toward a man or woman most of us don’t know,  we are not following the mandate to love our neighbor as ourselves.  Whether it is Obama or McCain Palin or Biden we need to offer up Godly heartfelt prayers for that person.  Remember to pray for you school board, your city government, and state government.  You can not hate people you are praying for.  We also need to love our neighbors that voted for the other side.  We do not need anymore barriers than we already have.  Our mandate is love because it is not a sin to disagree.

Steve

Do you know what it is like to wake up every day knowing you will be labeled a bigot, or a hate monger?  Do you know what it is like to be maligned and cursed? Do you know what it is like to be judged strictly for what others have said? I do.  Why do I? Because I refuse to back down from what I believe, I refuse to accept mediocrity out of other Christians faith, I refuse to give up the truth for something that makes me feel good or makes me acceptable to others.  I don’t go around spitting out hate and carrying “God Hates Fags” signs but I get to enjoy the hatred they do strictly for what I do believe.  I am labeled a hate monger because I believe Jesus is the only way and the Church in America is the only way for America to survive.  I love life and I love people, and I want for every body to like me.  I have however come to the cold hard fact, that I will be hated for what I believe and that is o.k. now.

I grew up in the small Arkansas town of Russell. In this town we were lucky enough to have a school house. It was bigger than most old red one room school houses that you see portrayed on T.V. it was actually 3 or 4,000 square feet so the only reason I can find to justify calling it a school house is because that is what all the adults who went to the school house called it. This functioned as the school for our community until the early 60’s when it was absorbed into the greater Bald Knob Metropolitan School District. The point I want you to see is that it was called a school house because of what went on inside its walls. Until I started studying to write this article it never occurred as strange that my grand mother would say when we were going to church lets go to the church house. She said this because that is what she thought went on inside the building was church. There may be some that still refer to their church building as the Church house, and I know the church I attend started literally in a house.

I want to focus in this article and a couple of follow-ups not on the church house but on the church. In case you don’t already know the Greek term for church used in the Bible is Ekklesia. It means literally “called out ones” In Greece these were the people called out to an assembly. For us as Christians we are called out of the world by Christ, into Christ. It does not have anything to do with a building.

In his book “Pagan Christianity” Frank Viola puts it this way, ”If your were to ask a first century Christian where they went to church they would have no idea what you were talking about.” They would probably look at you like you had 3 eyes. They were the church they did not have to go to where they were. They knew what their identity was in Christ. They understood what it meant to be called out of the world they were living in. This meaning is lost today by a lot of attenders. They believe that once a week they go to church and the other six and a half days the church sits empty. They have no idea what the church really is.

Today there are generally two ways of looking at who the Ekklesia are. First each local assembly is an ekklesia unto itself. Your home church is an ekklesia. That congregation whether a house church or a mega church is a local part of the body of Christ. Second the whole body of believers around the world is the ekklesia making up the body of Christ. This is also known as the “holy catholic church” with a small “c” meaning universal church. This is the belief of my denomination the Church of God (Anderson, IN).

Quoting Form the Church of God Beliefs on the website:

“The message of unity is that all God’s people are one (John 17) and are called to recognize that unity, to relate to each other as brothers and sisters in Christ, and to coordinate their efforts in mission to the world.”

Frank viola says later in his book that The first use of the phrase “go to church” that we are aware of came in a letter written around the year 190 from Clement of Alexandria and other than converted houses and catacombs there were no actual church buildings until Constantine began to build them over cemeteries where the bodies of their martyrs were buried. I know that the popular author Rick Warren says they did not have a building for the first 15 years of their church.

So my first post will end with this: having a building does not make a church.

¹Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. ²Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. ³For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. ⁴For he is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. ⁵Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. ⁶This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. ⁷Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.

On January 25, 1974 Ronald Reagan used the words in the title to describe America and what it meant to the world. 34 years later they still ring true. But that sentiment is not just true today. From the very founding of this country Christians have believed this was a God ordained land. In 1630 John Winthrop gave a sermon titled “A Model of Christian Charity”, and in it he said this,

“We will be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, sothat if we deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world.”

Many Christians today believe we should not get involved in politics at all and some like I did for a while believe that politics is all many Christians are concerned with. I asked the last meeting of our mens mentoring group if they believed politics was influencing our Christianity to much today and one man said this, “Its not that politics are influencing Christianity but our Christianity needs to influence our politics.”

So what can we do as Christians? Let me start with the simplest one first

Pray! 1^st Timothy 2:1-4 says,

¹I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone— ²for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. ³This is good, and pleases God our Savior, ⁴who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.

Yes we pray whether you agree with the leaders or not you need to pray for them. And even if the next president is some one you do not agree with you need to pray for him also. This type of prayer may require you to do some homework you need to know your local and state officials by name so you can left them up. You need to know your congressmen and women from the state level and the federal level. You need to know your senators. Now this means you need to know your district.

Next we need to respect our Nation!

Many people today bring up only the bad our country does. They are looking constantly for the wrong doing and misdeeds that lurk behind every rock. I’m not going to stand here and tell you that we never need to see the wrong, but if we are going to survive we must stop dwelling on the ill’s of the past and see the good that lies all around us. Last year the United States gave individually $300 billion to charities around the world, 300 billion dollars not from the government but from each and every individual. No other country on earth can do that, and still yet we hear how the world hates us I want you to hear a clip from Ravi Zacharius. Ravi travels the world and talks to many people who do not hate us.

That church was not started by Americans but it was made possible by American blood. Ever since this country was founded we have gone all over the world in defense of the underdog. Whether you like this war or not there are people that now have the freedom to worship that may have never known Christ beforehand. Yes we have given up many sons and daughters so that the true Son that died to save the world can be shared and lives can be truly free.

Finally we need to Participate in our government.

Many people have said America is to far gone or there should be a separation of church and state. There should not be and the only place that quote is found as far as building a country is concerned is in the Communist manifesto. As for our founding fathers they believed that God should be fully entrenched in our government.

Here are a few examples

The entering President takes his “OATH OF OFFICE” with his right hand on the Holy Bible, and concludes his vow “So help me God.”

Congress opens with prayer which was always Christian until the last twenty years.

In 1777, the Continental Congress voted to spend $300,000 to purchase Bibles for distribution in the nation.

THE STATE CONSTITUTIONS OF ALL 50 STATES MENTION GOD.

John Adams wrote in 1798:

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

President Thomas Jefferson:

“I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.” - 1781

At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin said,

“God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?”

Finally while not a founding father, Abraham Lincoln said this:

“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven… But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.” - 1863

The information you find when you start to pray for our leaders will help you in this area also. You will find on their web pages information on how they vote. You need to call and email them so they know you are alive and you are watching.

Ronald Reagan said this,

“You can call it mysticism if you want to, but I have always believed that there was some divine plan that placed this great continent between two oceans to be sought out by those who were possessed of an abiding love of freedom and a special kind of courage.”

I want to leave you with this. The United States while only 232 years old has the oldest republic in the world. But one day that republic will fall whether we like to think that or not. But the Kingdom of God will never fall and your citizenship in that kingdom will last for all eternity. Yes America may be the last best hope for the world but Christ is the last best hope for America. If you do not know him today you need to know he is always available you don’t need to go to the front of a church to an alter you can pray right where you are whether it is today or some other time my hope is that you come to know the saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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I grew up in the small Arkansas town of Russell. In this town we were lucky enough to have a school house. It was bigger than most old red one room school houses that you see portrayed on T.V. it was actually 3 or 4,000 square feet so the only reason I can find to justify calling it a school house is because that is what all the adults who went to the school house called it. This functioned as the school for our community until the early 60’s when it was absorbed into the greater Bald Knob Metropolitan School District. The point I want you to see is that it was called a school house because of what went on inside its walls. Until I started studying to write this article it never occurred as strange that my grand mother would say when we were going to church lets go to the church house. She said this because that is what she thought went on inside the building was church. There may be some that still refer to their church building as the Church house, and I know the church I attend started literally in a house.

I want to focus in this article and a couple of follow-ups not on the church house but on the church. In case you don’t already know the Greek term for church used in the Bible is Ekklesia. It means literally “called out ones” In Greece these were the people called out to an assembly. For us as Christians we are called out of the world by Christ, into Christ. It does not have anything to do with a building.

In his book “Pagan Christianity” Frank Viola puts it this way, ”If your were to ask a first century Christian where they went to church they would have no idea what you were talking about.” They would probably look at you like you had 3 eyes. They were the church they did not have to go to where they were. They knew what their identity was in Christ. They understood what it meant to be called out of the world they were living in. This meaning is lost today by a lot of attenders. They believe that once a week they go to church and the other six and a half days the church sits empty. They have no idea what the church really is.

Today there are generally two ways of looking at who the Ekklesia are. First each local assembly is an ekklesia unto itself. Your home church is an ekklesia. That congregation whether a house church or a mega church is a local part of the body of Christ. Second the whole body of believers around the world is the ekklesia making up the body of Christ. This is also known as the “holy catholic church” with a small “c” meaning universal church. This is the belief of my denomination the Church of God (Anderson, IN).

Quoting Form the Church of God Beliefs on the website:

“The message of unity is that all God’s people are one (John 17) and are called to recognize that unity, to relate to each other as brothers and sisters in Christ, and to coordinate their efforts in mission to the world.”

Frank viola says later in his book that The first use of the phrase “go to church” that we are aware of came in a letter written around the year 190 from Clement of Alexandria and other than converted houses and catacombs there were no actual church buildings until Constantine began to build them over cemeteries where the bodies of their martyrs were buried. I know that the popular author Rick Warren says they did not have a building for the first 15 years of their church.

So my first post will end with this: having a building does not make a church.