By LARRY P. STOVER | Praise Park Ministries Church of the Nazarene

I am always amazed as to how our nation tries to legislate everything. Washington always has a plan and believes it is the perfect strategy for the woes of America. The more they get their hands into something the more complicated it becomes and entangles the residents of our great nation that much more.

We have tried to legislate morality. Passing out free “birth control” has not been a very responsible solution. The “Kinsey Report” out of Indiana University was actually falsified in an attempt to charge the “sexual revolution” of America. Try convicting someone of rape. It seldom happens as criminals have more rights than the victims. Isn’t everyone a consenting adult these days?

Abortion is out of control. No one wants to talk about the emotional issues related to it until after the fact, leaving women crushed under a load of guilt having been convinced that their “fetus” was a blob and not a human being. I have spent 45 years helping women cope with the disaster we have legalized. No proponent of the procedure will ever convince me that it is the best viable choice.

God has a message for America today as we celebrate our “birthday.” We love to give it lip service. Psalm 33:12 reads, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.” There is a movement to make “God bless America” our new national anthem. We even put it on our license plates.

Our founding fathers were much more into “Godly principles” than we are today. Those beliefs were in all our documents. They are engraved on nearly every building in Washington, DC.

Presidents refer to “Almighty God” in their Inaugural Addresses. They end speeches with “God bless America.” We hear it just enough to placate the minds of believers who are too nominal in their beliefs to realize just how much we have eroded Christianity from this nation.

You see, the real problem is not necessarily what we have done with God, rather, it’s what we have done with Jesus Christ. Liberals will tolerate the idea of God because we have so reinvented the term and his nature that he has little impact on the directives coming from our national and state legislatures.

There is an ideological war going on in America today. It’s all about the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, the savior of the world.

We are told that Christian principles are too hard and restrictive. There must be some other way to heaven so we have invented hundreds of ways to attain eternity with God. Liberals scream at evangelical Christians declaring that they are intolerant, bigoted and the real problem in American society. We will all be on a “hate list” someday!

We are now regulated as to how we can use the name Jesus. My military Chaplain friends can no longer close a prayer “in the name of Jesus” without being scrutinized or reprimanded.

If we keep waiting on Washington to fix anything, we are all in trouble. Only Jesus Christ can fix the mess we have made of America. We can’t legislate that change either. It has to come from within. There must be a life changing encounter with Jesus Christ that enables us to become the person God created us to be.  We need a revival in our land as we celebrate our national birthday this week.

Isaiah chapter 60 reminds us that when Israel was a fallen and destitute nation, in a state of rebellion, turning a deaf ear to the voice of God, they sank into spiritual and political destitution. Blinded by the voice of the liberals among them, they were trampled by the Assyrians and the Babylonians. Isaiah sent a message of revival to the people. They woke up to the ignorance of their pluralistic and complicated lives and realized that they had left God out of the equation, and the nation repented. Hope was restored!

America has left Jesus Christ out of our equation. Because of it, we are in a spiral of self-destruction going out of control and nowhere. Our hope is in the Lord. When America has a fresh encounter with God, and reestablishes their relationship with Jesus Christ, and gets back into spiritual focus, this country will become, once again, “Simply Beautiful.”