What America Really Needs

2 Chronicles 7:14 “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

Last weekend, the church has left the building, as Pastor Kyle took the Sunday service to the outdoor patio of the Brookhurst Community Center in our city of Anaheim, California to begin this new sermon series. He reminded us that the City Church campus and buildings are a great center for our ministry, but we, the people of God, are the church … the body of Christ. Though the church is apolitical by nature, allowing you to vote your conscience in this free nation, he states that when you truly know God holy Word, Will and Way, then you will know how God wants you to vote for your nation. For God’s plan is not man’s politics, but the politics of Heaven. We live in a fallen world, which sin has permanently infiltrated this side of eternity. There will be times I our lives when things don’t go well, work out according to plan.  

Micah 6:6a, 8 “With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

What America, and each of us, needs is a spiritual awakening. We need to wake up to a renewal of biblical principles because we can change our lives through the power of the Holy Spirit. As pointed out by the opening Bible verse, the revival doesn’t start with unbelievers, but with God’s people. The church needs to stop blaming others and making excuses for the shape of our culture today. Where did we lose it? Christians were called to influence our society for Christ, but instead allowed materialistic secular humanism and the hedonistic existentialism of the sinful flesh desires, the God-rejecting world system and demonic spirits the lead this country away from the kingdom of Heaven’s moral and ethical values and, in many cases became a part of it. When God gives us spiritual principles, they apply across all ages and nations.

2 Corinthians 4:4 “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

Kyle gave us three contributing factors to this departure. (1) Prosperity – When things are going good, we tend to “check out” and fail to acknowledge God, thinking that we don’t need God anymore. (2) Technology – Do you remember when you used to just sit and take it the beauty of God creation and think. Nowadays, we cannot even be alone for five minutes without “plugging into” electronics of such form. We love the things of the culture rather than the things of God. (3) Hard Times – statistics show that spiritual decline is directly related to financial decline. When things go south we ask: “Where are you God?” Where does true contentment come from? 1 Timothy 6:6 “Godliness with contentment is great gain.”

Mark 1:15 “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”

Kyle closed with two keys to recapture the spiritual awakening we need. (1) Fall in love with the things of God again. Be a leading voice in our culture to be an influence in society and for people being saved. If people are not being saved, we are not doing our job. (2) Humble yourself and pray again. Remember the grace that God has given us, so rekindle the fire. As a fully committed Christian, we may not be able to change our country, but we can change ourselves and affect the world around us for Jesus Christ. Because, what America really needs is God.

 Corinthians 5:18-21 “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

In Christ, Brian