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In 2011, Let Your Light Shine! When Christ came to us the first time, John the Baptist and the other Jews living at the time were looking for the Messiah to come and set up a physical kingdom. They looked to His coming to rid them of their long captivity to the corrupt government of Rome. They were surprised when Jesus came to set up His kingdom, and it was not an earthly one. John had stood up and told the King to be moral, to stop committing adultery and was now in prison for it. He sent some of his disciples to Jesus to ask Him if he was the Messiah. He had done what God asked and was perhaps looking to Jesus to tell him. "Soon I will be King and you will be free". Instead Jesus told him about the blind seeing and the deaf hearing. He was asking John to believe in the works He was doing as proof that He was the Messiah. Some of us may have made the same mistake this past election of thinking like John the Baptist and looking to Christ to set up an earthly kingdom. We wanted the laws in our land to become righteous and obedient to God's word. And to many of us our hope was crushed as we looked down a long corridor filled with more bodies of the unborn. What did Daniel hope in when he was captive in Babylon? He remembered that his captivity was to be for a limited time period. He stayed faithful to what the Lord wanted him to do and he prayed three times a day for seventy years. Through his and his friends witness, an entire nation came to Christ. God is the same as He was in Daniel's day. And God will end our captivity to the world's unrighteous systems, but in His own timing. In the meantime, He wants to change us into the likeness of His son. He wants us to invite others into His kingdom, and while we are here, he wants us to help widows and orphans, the sick, and the hurting. Daniel, and John the Baptist have a lot in common with Christians living in modern times. We must never forget that Christ's kingdom and government is within, not without. In the United States we are NOT a Theocracy (a nation ruled by God) although at our nation's beginning, we were very close to becoming one. By not continuing to hold His will and His word precious, we have let democracy bring into our nation foreign religions which do not worship the same God we do. Laws that support America's Republic and our Democratic form of government will continue to leave Christianity behind as more and more religions like Wicca, Hinduism, and Islam have been recognized. No matter how many battlefields we operate in, a shift has now occurred. Our government is now a secular government that rules instead of a people who are ruled from within by God with His morals and values. Those in power are now rewriting justice, mercy, and love. They are making a God in their own image rather than honoring ours. The only way Christians can win is to pray and preach the gospel to all people both here and around the world. And live it from within on a daily basis. And we have the hope always of our Lord, Jesus Christ, returning for His Bride, who is waiting for Him and conforming herself to His image and no one else's. We must choose carefully our battlefields because the government of God is within and He writes His law on people's hearts who have given them over to Him to possess. Too many Christians have allowed a secular world to mould and shape their thinking and it is time to understand the true battle is not only for minds, and justice, but for eternal souls. Many are perishing in darkness, and deception. Christians have lost their footing because leadership is trying to have them gain back a government here on earth that will never bend its knee to Christ. Our focus must return to living the way that Daniel and John the Baptist did in their times among heathen governments. They followed the Lord, did what was right in His sight, and were faithful to His purposes. In 2009, Let Your Light Shine! Kathy Black
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