Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. 2 Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
Psalm 90:1-2
If you are to live through a major earthquake or tornado, or hurricane, you’d better be anchored to a solid foundation of some sort. When my family lived in Southern California, earthquakes were a common occurrence. Most of them were not devastating, even if they did do some damage to some structures. We were able to survive one of the more powerful earthquakes in Southern California. It is known as the Sylmar earthquake. We happened to live in Sylmar at the time. Fortunately for us, we were renting the house we were living in because shortly after 6:00 AM that morning, the house had become uninhabitable, and we were on the road looking for a place to stay until we could find a new place to live.
For the past thirty-seven years, before leaving Southern California, we were fortunate enough to live on very different soil. It was a solid clay base. It was nasty to work in if you wanted to dig in your yard to plant a garden, but when an earthquake came, it was a great place to be. I don’t know how many earthquakes we lived through during those thirty-seven years, but it was a lot. And, our house was never damaged; no broken windows, no cracked stucco, no furniture or dishes falling and breaking. That was a great place to live during an earthquake. We lived on solid ground.
This earthquake story is an apt analogy for all of life’s “earthquakes” or unanticipated, undesirable events. And life is full of unanticipated, undesirable events.
There is an ultimate solid rock that is much better than the solid ground we lived on in Southern California. That rock is the creator and sustainer of all that is.
Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. There is the one who made it all and sustains it all. When our lives are built on that rock, the unanticipated, undesirable events don’t destroy us. Our lives are established on a foundation more solid than any material existence.
Much of the world is currently going through the greatest shaking I have seen in my lifetime (and I am getting to be old by most anybody’s standards). The idea of “truth” was thrown out several years ago with the ascendancy of postmodernism. In this worldview, all values, beliefs, lifestyles, and truth claims are considered equally valid. Thus, we have my truth and your truth. My truth is good for me, and your truth is good for you, even if these truths are completely contradictory. This kind of thinking has become the “normal” way of seeing things.
No wonder we are experiencing so much teenage suicide. How is a young person to get their life established when there is no “real reality” on which to build their lives? We are throwing our children into a vat of jello and telling them to swim. There is no foundation, and one can drown in jello. Many do!
James speaks to this problem when he writes,
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. 6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
James 1:5-8
When nothing is trustworthy, one cannot trust. There is no solid foundation on which to live one’s life. But when we live with the reality that “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God,” we are living on an eternally solid foundation. God is the arbiter of truth, and it is absolute. His truth is truth, and someone else’s truth is a lie.
As long as a people reject truth as truth that applies to everyone, society will be in chaos. A great deal of the world is in this state of denial of absolute truth; thus, it is in social upheaval.
Nations have gone to politics to resolve their cultural problems. Political solutions to cultural problems will only result in tyranny and bloodshed. These cultural problems, like the battle for “equality” for the LGBTQ+ community, or equity and diversity, and intersectionality, will not be resolved by politics without tyranny. Politics are the power play, and whoever has the ascendancy will force their agenda on the minority. Politics is downstream from culture. Culture is downstream from religion. So, the source of the problem and the solution to the problem are upstream in religion. From the perspective of a Bible-based Christian, the solution is the proclamation of the gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit that produces massive numbers of new disciples of Jesus. Jesus-followers are counter to the current cultural environment. That has been true for most of history in most of the world after the death and resurrection of Jesus.
The United States of America became the great nation it had become due to the essential agreement regarding the truths of Christianity. That is not to say every American was a heartfelt born-again believer. It is to say that most were at least cultural Christians. Because of that essential agreement, we, as a nation, had a pretty solid foundation for moving forward in peace and strength. We will not see that again until there is that essential agreement about the truth.
What can we do to advance the blessing of God in the United States? In broad terms, we can seek God for a revival of the church and the conversion of the vast percentage of those far from God outside the gospel in the United States. Specifically, this means the church has to become a praying faith-filled church. It means that every believer accepts the responsibility to share God’s word with their social network making disciples of all whom God will call and draw to himself. Politics won’t fix us directly. Only when the culture becomes essentially Christian will politics begin to reflect the morals and values of the kingdom of God.
We are God’s ambassadors to declare the truth. God the Father is the teacher who leads people to Jesus as Lord and Savior. (John 6:44-45)
Christ first came into my life at the age of 5 during a series of evangelistic meetings in our tiny country Quaker church house in Gate, Oklahoma. Since then it has been a process of “Stumbling forward by grace, through faith in Christ.” I experienced a significant personal revival at the age of 19 and have been much in love with the Lord ever since…five decades-plus.
My passion is to enjoy the Lord by encouraging others to make progress in their lives…living life successfully. I do that primarily through my disciple-making efforts and through my writing.
I spent about 20 years in public ministry and at the age of 40 decided that I had allowed my passion for ministry to impede my prior duty to my family, so I stepped aside. I found a new career as a financial advisor and now make my living serving my financial planning clients.
I now consider myself to be a bi-vocational minister of the gospel.
