August 11, 2005

 

But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

--James 3:17-18

 

James Dobson, founder and president of Focus on the Family, is someone that I admire very much. He wrote these words in a letter once:

 

“If we don’t speak out, we will not be permitted to exercise our beliefs in private. The church will not be allowed to protect its precepts. Our Christian enclaves will be invalid. We will either speak now or submit in silence. … The Judeo-Christian ethic still lingers like rare perfume in the popular culture. At what point, will we be willing to defend what we believe? Will parents object when their children are routinely indoctrinated in homosexual ideology or occultism in the public schools? Will we object if the state tells pastor’s what they can or cannot say from the pulpit? Did you know that in Sweden one evangelical pastor who preached a sermon on Sodom and Gomorrah was convicted of ‘verbal violence’ against homosexuals and was sentences to a 4-week prison term for preaching against homosexuality in Sweden? Will we object if the state assumes ‘ownership’ of our children and tells us how to rear them or at least, where to turn them over to a village in order that the village might raise the child? Will we object if every church has to hire a homosexual to satisfy a quota obligation?”

 

Then, Dobson concluded with the words of Martin Niemoller, a German theologian and pastor during Nazi Germany under the dictatorship of Hitler. He was arrested, imprisoned, and placed in solitary confinement during this time. After the war and his release, he often concluded his speeches with these now famous words:

 

“In Germany they came first for the Communists and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me—and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

 

We must speak out! We must stand up! We must be salt and light! We have a responsibility to our society. And we must not let man’s wisdom leak into our churches or homes. Seek the Lord and ask Him to help you stand up and speak out today and from now on for what is right and good in His eyes. Pray that God would give you His wisdom in this day and time.

 

STAND UP, SPEAK OUT, AND SEEK TO HAVE GOD’S WISDOM SO THAT

OTHERS WILL READILY RECOGNIZE YOUR CHRISTIAN WORLD VIEW AND VALUES.