Jesus For President

Yesterday was November 8th, Election Day here in the United States. Many people watched with anticipation to see who was going to become the next President of the United States, including myself. I don’t often have the television on, and I have not followed the political debates and movements of the candidates very much. The politics of this election were so filled with venom and malice that it was hard to tune in to. Yet last night my whole family gathered around the TV to see what was going to happen.

Being a citizen of the United States I am very well aware of what has been going on in recent years. I myself voted for President Obama in 2008, and have spent 8 years regretting that decision. I, like many Americans I suspect, thought that he would bring the kind of change this country was in need of. Well, he did bring change, just not for the better. I have to say I was not super excited about this election after seeing presidents come and go and never seeing results that I was satisfied with. When I saw the candidates whittled down to Hilary Clinton or Donald Trump, I was despondent to say the least.

How many of you watched Donald Trump in the Apprentice telling people ‘you’re fired’? I know I eagerly awaited the show every season for years. Now he is our President. It is kind of a hard reconciliation to move a man from reality TV to the White House. Yet here he is. This has been the most emotional election our country has had in quite some time. And I think this is one of the reasons there is so much discord in our country right now.

 I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.  My brothers and sisters, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you.  What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas”; still another, “I follow Christ.”

1 Corinthians 1:10-12

Two years ago when I got wind that Hilary Clinton might be running I was livid. Hilary has made it clear that she stands firm on the principles of feminism and liberalism; two things I am very familiar with. You see, I came from those beliefs myself, and a was hard core supporter of them for most of my adult life. That is until I realized what these principles really stood for. Hatred, bondage, and murder. There is nothing free about the spirit of feminism and liberalism, and it comes from a spirit of divisiveness and control.

I used to believe very firmly that a woman has the right to make choices: choices for her body and choices for her life. I believed that “the man” aka the white government authorities were oppressing woman and holding them back from their full potential. Being just like a man. That means that when a woman gets pregnant and it might interfere with her life, then there is no problem with “getting rid of it”. Because as we all know, that thing growing inside a woman is not really a baby. Not yet anyway.

So when exactly does that blob or mass or tissue or whatever you want to call it actually become a real human life? I don’t think most pro choice supports can really answer that. I remember seeing a picture of an embryo and feeling pretty confident that it indeed was just a mass of tissue. And if that thing is simply just a mass of tissue, like a cyst or something, then there is no harm in simply getting rid of it.

Once I came into a relationship with Jesus Christ I realized something extremely important. God sees all human life as valuable. I never did. I could barely get myself to like people, let alone myself. So if my own life was invaluable, then how could I see someone else’s life as valuable? How could I see an innocent being who doesn’t even get a choice in the matter as viable?

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Genesis 1:27

All the time I was screaming for my rights to love who I wanted and do with my body what I wanted, it was not because I thought I was worth something. It was because that was what I was fed through the conditioning of women in our society. We have removed God from our schools, our government, and even our churches, in favor of having our rights asserted and voices heard. Yet we are all so busy wanting to be heard, that we have drown out the most important voice of all: the voice of the Most High God. The one who created each one of us and who died to give us the most important right in existence. Himself.

As much as some woman are willing to fight for the right to abort an unwanted child, there is twice the amount of pain, shame, and self hatred already stored up inside of her. Women are taught to hate each other and hate ourselves. We are taught we need to be perfect, and when we don’t achieve it we must punish ourselves for it.  Most women are so mixed up about who they are because they don’t have a foundation of the Father built up underneath them to help guide them on a steady course. Instead there are totting upon the foundation of a lifetime of lies we have been fed.

So we walk around feeling worthless, yet needing to prove we are better than the rest. We hold our heads up high to prove we are strong enough, yet we crumble because we actually can’t do it on our own. We were never made to. And that mass of tissue we have decided didn’t belong, was as much a part of us as God is. Yet we continue to remove as much of God from our lives as we can, in order to fit in with the standards society has handed us.

Behold, God is my helper; the Lord is the upholder of my life.

Psalm 54:4

So knowing all this, I knew I would never, ever vote for Hilary Clinton. In my mind she is the absolute epitome of all the hate and evil that has perpetrated against women for years. And not only against women, but against marriage, family, and the innocent unborn. We can keep trying to take what is unnatural and make it normal, but we can never make it right. God has created us with certain truths that are ingrained into our DNA. The devil has done everything he can to twist everything towards his favor.

God is love, community, family, faith, compassion, respect, and so much more. The devil will never stop trying to convince us otherwise though. And the best way to do that is to attack everything that God stands for. The beauty of his attack comes when he gets people so angry that they lash out and attack each other. Instead of recognizing the real enemy for who he is, we start seeing each other as the enemy. And all the hatred and wrath that the devil deserves gets poured out into our fellow man instead.

The spirit of fear and division is running rampant in our country right now. I recognize that there are many, many unhappy people with the results of this election. Some because they truly believe Hilary Clinton is the best candidate, and some because they believe by voting for Trump they voted for “the lesser of two evils”. I, myself felt the same way when I cast my vote for Donald Trump. But those who have taken God out of this equation can’t see the bigger picture of this situation. It isn’t about who is President: it’s about who God is.

The Lord roars from Zion, and utters his voice from Jerusalem, and the heavens and the earth quake. But the Lord is a refuge to his people, a stronghold to the people of Israel.

Joel 3:16

God has spoken so clearly to me about this issue. We have focused so much on man that we simply cannot even see God anymore. We have confined God into a box where He just deals with certain areas, such as religion or miracles. We have also assigned Him certain roles, such as judge, provider, and holy. We then refuse to see God for anything else than those tiny areas we are willing to allow Him into. Seeing the truth of who God is can be too painful for us, because it  causes us to question our own worldviews.

If we are full of fear for our future, then we have not seen that God is trustworthy and safe. If we believe that we are going to be overrun with evil, then we do not know a God that is bigger than any evil. If we believe that the world is going to end, then we do not know a God that would move heaven and earth for each one of us. The whole point of this political campaign was to distract us away from the bigger picture of this world.

This election has made one thing very clear to me. The devil does not have the last say. He has raised up his choice in leaders and brought his people to back her. They have threatened and screamed and played dirty, and yet still, the devil did not win. God has raised up the least likely of them all, and it is through this we are going to learn the real lesson. Man is not sovereign, and evil is not to be feared. We need to stop deifying man, and even our very own lives, and start realizing we are here for one thing, and one thing alone.

The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe.

Proverbs 29:25

Love is what  created each of us. Love is what brought us here. Love is what conquered death and stormed the gates of hell. Love is what brought us freedom to be with God, right here and now. And it is only that same love that is going to make in difference in this world or in our lives. As soon as we are willing to lay down every weapon we are holding and embrace what God has for us each day, we are not going to stop waging war in our own hearts and minds.

God wants to show us that for all of our hard work we have nothing to show. For all of our shows, we have still come short of the main attraction. And until we are willing to allow God to be the real star here, we are going to continue to fall short of who we were created to be. Let His perfect love cast out all fear from within us about what the future holds, and instead let it take root into our hearts and sprout seeds of joy and trust.

We can trust in Him. He is worthy. The God that shut the mouths of lions and stopped the sun in the sky, is the same God who is in all and over all right at this very moment. Embrace that truth. Hold on to it tightly, and never let it go. He loves you, dear one. You are worthy it all to Him. He is never going to let you go. Never.

But the Lord is the true God; he is the living God and the everlasting King. At his wrath the earth quakes, and the nations cannot endure his indignation.

Jeremiah 10:10