God Does NOT Have a Covenant With the United States

God does NOT have a covenant with the United States

I'll repeat for the Christians in the back. God does NOT have a covenant with the United States. The Church in America is really quite pompous I have discovered as I have gotten older. It bothers me to watch some of these folks talk about the covenant of God and America as if God needs us. He doesn't need us.

The only nation God has a covenant with is the nation of Israel and yet we in the US believe that godly morality resides in the West. As if God changed His mind over the years and moved it to us.

How crazy is that when our country didn't even exist when the Bible was written?

When I was a kid it never quite made sense to me how Israel was across the Atlantic but we were the nation of God. It didn't make sense because it's not true.

We as believers have individual covenants with God. The more believers in one area, the higher the God concentration. Like mass immunization creates group immunity. People at large benefit.

America has seen prosperity and protection because of the people of God who live here. The Bible says blessings rain down on the just and unjust. God blesses His people and those blessings benefit all. That doesn't mean God has a covenant with America and we see that fact more and more becuase as the number of believers goes down in this country the crazier it seems.

Donald Trump or any president for this matter doesn't automatically obtain the presence and protection of God because he's in office. That presence comes from actually having a personal relationship with God themselves and to a lesser extent being surrounded by believers, remember mass immunity.

America has benefited greatly from having great men and women of faith residing in its borders. Unfortunately, we a Christians have not been great stewards of the Gospel. We have started to look less like Christ and more like the world.

For that reason it has weakened God's presence not because He is weaker but because we have diminished Him in our lives.

And every time in the Bible that this began to happen with the children of Israel bad things happened. Oftentimes it was that they ended up conquered. The difference in that situation though is that God promises them He would not let them be destroyed.

America has no such promise.

And that is what is so scary. Many Christians act as if the United States is all powerful because God has made it so. That's hogwash. Even with the Abrahamic covenant God has allowed the children of Israel to be conquered multiple times. So how can we be immune?

What I have as a Christian is that God will never leave me or forsake me. That means that regardless of what is happening in or to my country God will always be with me. It doesn't mean bad things won't happen. It means that when they do God will be there as I navigate through it and will bring me out on the other side.

The US stands at a critical point in its history where it's actions and response will be recorded and judged harshly.

For Christians we have to decide whose side we are on. It should be the Lord's and not this awful ungodly rhetoric.

The Unlikely Missionary

DHW

Trump is the Modern Day King Saul

It's still incredible to me that evangelicals are saying that God chose Trump. It's incredible for the obvious reasons:

He clearly has broken every commandment there is but especially the two most important ones, Love the Lord your God with all you heart, mind and strength and Love your neighbor as yourself.

But the least obvious is that God never wanted us to have a king (president, ruler, dictator, tyrant, etc) in the first place.

When the Bible says there is nothing new under the sun there really isn't. I'm reminded when the children of Israel asked Samuel for a king. Samuel was distressed and asked, "What for?" Their response back was "because everyone else has one". Not the greatest of reasons huh?

So he went to God with all this and God said, let them have it, they have rejected me anyway. They asked and He ALLOWED them to get what they asked for. They wanted a king, they chose Saul.

I put allowed in all CAPS because the one thing we get horribly wrong as believers is that because it's in the Bible that's the way God wanted it. However, when you read his Word that is clearly not the case.

God didn't want them to have a king because He was their King. They didn't need a human one. But He let them have what they asked for. And King Saul definitely was not God's choice. (If you want to see God's choice see King David.) As you see later in the text Saul was a mess.

The Lord Rejects Saul as King

Trump was a mess from the start and he still is. Of all the people that God would choose it's NOT him. And God allowed him to be revealed for who he was before this election. But just like the children of Israel wanted Saul, God let you evangelicals have your king.

If you want to know how our story ends just look at how Saul's ended. The children of Israel ended up beat down and conquered in battle. And Saul lost everything; relationship with God, his kingdom, his children and his life.

And the TRUTH is that God stopped picking Kings a long time ago. God made his final pick thousands of years ago when He picked Jesus; the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. There was no more need for him to pick because it is finished and Jesus is Lord.

So, all those who want to stay on the Trump wagon be my guest but stop giving God credit for Your ill-advised decision and stop making Trump your god because you already have One and He deserves your loyalty.

Besides history, God will remember this moment. He will ask you, What did you do for the least of these? Did you put other gods before me? Did you seek justice? Did you search for truth or accept the lie? I hope you have a good answer.

The Unlikely Missionary

DHW

Hagar: The Original Side Chick

Side Chick culture is rampant out here nowadays. It's not only glorified but celebrated.

No women should ever be ok with being on the side. We are all worthy to be the one and only as God intended.

In God's Economy men are one woman men. If you were supposed to have more than one God would have took more than one rib and made more than one Eve.

So even though side chicks are fashionable these days the consequences can be devastating. Take it from the original side chick: Hagar.

Now if you don't know the story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar read up on it here. But in a nutshell, God told Abraham who was a very old man that he would have a child and the nation of Israel would come through that child. His very old wife Sarah didn't see how that was possible with her so she concocted a plan to make God's plan happen. Note: God doesn't need help btw.

So she sent Hagar to have sex with her husband and get pregnant. Which she did.

Now this isn't a traditional side chick story but this isn't unique either. The traditional story is Guy has a wife, he cheats on wife with the side chick and she gets pregnant and has a baby. Hagar's story is more of a lifetime TV movie where couple wants a baby, wife lets husband sleep with lady to get said baby. Surrogate turns out to be crazy.

What is traditional is the outcome. Hagar, the side chick, began to feel like she should be the main chick because she has the baby, the heir, the prophesied child. And she started rubbing it in Sarah's face.

The thing is, she wasn't the main chick. She wasn't Abraham's wife. She didn't have the heir. Sarah was Abraham's wife Hagar was not and the prophecy was with Sarah and Abraham not her.

In today's world this would've been when the side chick would confront the wife and say look what I did for your man that you couldn't. Ouch!

So what did Sarah do, she confronted her husband about it. And what did he do? He chose his wife over Hagar.

The end result, Sarah eventually also has a son. Sarah felt threatened by Abraham's son with Hagar so they are sent away. Now a father and son are no longer together.

This isn't new. It happens all the time. The men almost never choose the side chick. They always side with their wives and because they want to make their wives happy they end up not being in their child's life like they would want to. In God's economy the wife is who they made a covenant with  and have a responsibility to.so it makes sense that the man would chose his wife. And most women don't want a constant reminder of the pain of the side chick relationship. We  don't have to like it but that's the reality.

I chose this three way to highlight because of its present day implications. God made a promise to make Abraham's son's descendants numerous and He kept that promise. Isaac who grew up with his father birthed the nation of Israel. Ishmael who did not birthed the nations in the Middle East. Still today these groups fight over being the legitimate descendants of Abraham.

I can only imagine Ishmael growing up and becoming an angry young man, hating the fact that his younger brother grew up to have the birthright he believed belonged to him. And he and his descendants have lived up to his name.

If this story isn't enough of a cautionary tale I don't know what is. It doesn't pay to be the side chick.

The Unlikely Missionary

DHW