My Battle

  I'm going to tell you something you already know. It's horrible out there. Depending on when you  read this, Isis will have just blown something up or  Hamas will have blown something up or maybe  the PLO will have a  resurgence and blow something up. Syria is unstable, or maybe it's Libya this week. Some guy in a suit is giving a speech somewhere about how if you just vote for him he can fix it all, and he sounds a lot like the last guy that  said  that he  would fix it all.  Groceries cost more than they used to, and the price of gas is going up. The dollar is on the decline, or maybe the yen is on the rise, or both. A police state is being assembled around us. Some government  somewhere  has passed a law that takes more money from you and gives it  to somebody else.  Somebody else is, as we speak , is writing a law or voting on a law that will remove some of your liberties.  Our schools are crumbling. Somebody shot somebody somewhere last night.  Perversion is everywhere and is protected by law.  Immigrants are flooding the countryside, and that may or may not be a bad thing, depending on who you ask.  Inflation is rising, or falling, depending on who you ask.  We may or may not be destroying the environment , depending on who you ask.   There is an expert  under every rock , with a solution that is either the direct opposite of the last guys solution, or more of the same slightly reworded.
  Let me be very clear; if you are saved, none of this is your problem, and none of this is your fight.  This is their world, not ours, and they are making as big a mess of it as they can.  They think they are smart, and all their  history proves is that they are not.  They have the  music they want, and the  movies they want, and  the dress standards they want, and they don't really care what God thinks or what you think. For a child of God to become overly concerned about the affairs of this world, especially the ones over which he has  no control is folly.  Not only do we  not have any control, or any real input, but we don't even really have a stake in the game.
  We have been called out of this world and given a job to do. That job is not to run for office or register more Republicans or improve public morality or feed the starving children of Africa or end the slave trade or write laws  intended to  curb the incurable lusts of the  unregenerate.  We have not been tasked  to fight against gun control or shut down the abortion mills. Our task, as ambassadors of Christ is not to defend the Constitution or to change the culture. Our job is to glorify God by preaching the  gospel of Jesus Christ in every venue  afforded to us.
  The Bible  tells us in 2 Timothy 2  " No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier".   So China adjusts their trade policy?  So  Cuba invades Key West? So a Martian lands on the White House lawn? So what? People will worry and people will fret abut tomorrows headlines just as much as they  worried and fretted about yesterdays headlines, and you and I  have just as much ability to  influence those  headlines today as we did yesterday, which is to say, none at all. We have just as much responsibility to fret and worry and be manipulated by the fearmongers today as we did yesterday, which is to say, none at all.
  Now I am a big fan of the Constitution, and I enjoy the liberties it allows me to preach the gospel.   But my brothers and sisters in Christ have lived victorious Christian lives without one for almost two millennia.  For me to fret and worry that Obama (or the puppet to follow) is  going to stop this thing is a good indicator that I don't understand what this 'thing' is.  People served God during Nebuchadnezzars reign  just as much as people served God under Joseph Stalin just as much as people served God under Ronald Reagan.  As much as I sympathize with the idea that we fight for our liberties, the liberties are not the end in themselves, and if they were snatched away tomorrow, we would still have the same job to do.
  I  didn't get saved until 1995 but somehow I  vaguely recall how American evangelicals were meddling in politics in the late 1980's. Good men got sidetracked and stopped preaching the gospel to lost people, opting instead to spend their time attending Moral Majority luncheons and trying to get smut off of television. Prayer breakfasts were held ad ininfitum where  politicians looking to  get votes promised men like Robertson and Falwell the sun moon and stars if they could just persuade their people to pull the level for them versus the other guy.  They used us like a pimp uses a prostitute, and millions of people marched into hell in the meantime. 
  As we  trudge on into yet another election cycle, let me admonish you to keep your focus. Vote or don't vote, I don't care. Just remind yourself that we are pilgrims and sojourners, and this is not our home, and this is not our fight.