Wednesday, August 29, 2012

31 Days to a Happy Husband by Arlene Pellicane

This is a super fun book.  Ideally you are supposed to read a chapter a day for 31 days.  But it was such a delightful read I finished it in an afternoon and evening and that was with a visit to a friend in the hospital and a visit to my in-laws thrown in.

But it isn't just fun.  Arlene has lots of practical ways to enrich your marriage and keep those home fires burning.  She focuses on five main areas of married life.  Each day deals with just one topic each covered in its own chapter.  At the end of each chapter is a question to get you thinking and an action item for applying the topic of the day.  

For newly weds or old veterans, who doesn't want to enrich their marriage a little more?

It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!

You never know when I might play a wild card on you!



Today's Wild Card author is:


and the book:

Harvest House Publishers (August 1, 2012)

***Special thanks to Ginger Chen of Harvest House Publishers for sending me a review copy.***

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Arlene Pellicane is an author, speaker, and formerly served as the associate producer for Turning Point Television with Dr. David Jeremiah. Her audiobook and website Losing Weight After Baby has helped many moms achieve their physical and personal goals. Arlene and her family make their home in southern California.



Visit the author's website.

SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION:

What does a man need most from his wife? Arlene Pellicane has identified five keys that will give wives a new appreciation and understanding of how to love and care for their mates along with practical instruction to motivate and equip wives to provide their husbands what they long for.



Product Details:
List Price: $12.99
Paperback: 208 pages
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0736946322
ISBN-13: 9780736946322


AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:

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Are You Still Dreaming?
The year was 1999 and my big moment had finally arrived. I stood holding my father’s arm, ready to make my grand entrance into the church. James and I had decided to have one of his favorite seminary professors marry us. Ours was only his second wedding to officiate, but we didn’t care about his inexperience.
Just as I approached the door leading into the sanctuary, I was shocked to hear the sound of our professor’s voice, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to bring James and Arlene together in holy matrimony.” The only problem was, I was still standing in the hall with all the bridesmaids. Our professor mistook a break in the music as his cue to begin the ceremony.
I couldn’t believe my eyes or ears. Our dear professor got all the way through his introduction before realizing his error. When he got to that famous line, “Who gives this woman to be married to this man?” there was complete silence. Our friends and family didn’t know whether to laugh or be mortified.
At this, my aunt started playing the piano, and I was thrust through the door of the church to join my ceremony in progress. I never thought in my wildest dreams that I’d miss the beginning of my own wedding, but it sure has given us many laughs over the years.
Do you remember the day you said “I do”? I hope the ceremony didn’t start without you. Remember walking down the aisle, feeling like the happiest woman in the world? Your heart was full of dreams for the future. Are you still dreaming today?
Keep Honeymooning
So many couples told us after we tied the knot, “Just wait until you’ve been married a few years. You won’t be so lovey-dovey anymore.” But there was one lone voice who gave us the opposite advice. “Never let the honeymoon end,” he said. “It’s much easier to keep love alive than to try to revive something that has died.” We vowed to follow his advice.
Fast-forward the tape twelve years to our aha moment. James and I were teaching a young-marrieds class at our church. On the first day of class, we noticed there was not a centimeter of space in between these newlywed couples. Wives were superglued to their husbands’ sides. Eyes were locked, hands were held, hair was twirled. I looked over at my James who was sitting about a foot away from me. We, the sage teachers, needed a refresher course on touch, affection, and romance.
Most likely you know what I’m talking about. The heat of passion turns into the warmth of companionship. But that warmth, if we don’t take time to stoke the embers, can slowly turn into a cool disengagement between husband and wife. And before you know it, you’re two roommates sharing a home, a bank account, and children.
I don’t want that dull fate and neither do you. Three kids later and in our forties, James and I are learning to flirt again. The good news is you can relearn how to do all the things you used to do when you were dating. Except that instead of being lovers on cruise control, you might have to step on the gas pedal once in a while for the ride of your life.
Time to Dream Again
I remember driving down the freeway and seeing a pickup truck with these bold words printed on the back window: “Happy to be here, proud to serve.” I’d like you to imagine those words hanging in a frequented place in your home. When you can say about your home, “Happy to be here and proud to serve,” your husband will want to hurry home every day because it’s the place he feels most valued and loved.
This book will help you create that kind of place for your man. It’s divided into thirty-one daily readings grouped into five simple sections that will help you demonstrate to your husband the love that hooked him in the first place. The titles for each section form the acrostic DREAM. After all, the marriage of your dreams doesn’t have to be a fairy tale that will never come true. You can experience the kind of marriage most people dream about by following these five guidelines:
  D = Domestic Tranquillity—Your husband needs a
peaceful haven (Days 1-5).
  R = Respect—Your husband needs to be honored in
his own home (Days 6-11).
  E = Eros—Your husband needs a fulfilling sex life
(Days 12-19).
  A = Attraction—Your husband needs to be attracted
to you (Days 20-26).
  M = Mutual Activities—Your husband needs to have
fun with you (Days 27-31).
Ask any husband if he would be happy having these five things in greater measure, and I can assure you his answer will be a resounding yes! And you just might find yourself enjoying these things too.
Notice Him, Nurture Him
It doesn’t take much time or effort to see that our culture is pessimistic about marriage. A happy marriage seems more like a fairy tale that Pollyanna dreamed up fifty years ago. Today’s wives are complaining left and right about their husbands’ many shortcomings. In fact, many women would never pick up a book like this. Why should a wife make her husband happy when he’s not making her happy? I like what host Bob Lepine of Family Life Today says, “Our role is not to figure out how to fix our spouse. Our role is: How do we reflect Christ in the marriage?”  1
And check out this insight from one husband:
When a woman is engaged to be married, she pours all her nurture into her man. She holds him, kisses him, and talks sweetly to him. They have fun together, do interesting things together, and enjoy the physical affection of first love. Then after they marry and have kids, all that nurture that went originally to the husband is suddenly transferred to the children. The kids benefit from all the maternal instincts and become the primary focus of all her tender nurture. The husband is just as needy for that nurture, but he is too proud to admit it.
When you look at your husband, you’re probably thinking he looks pretty self-sufficient. The other people in your life vying for your attention are truly needy (your children, grandchildren, aging parent, depressed friend). Look again. Your husband craves your affection and care but doesn’t want to ask for it. He bites the bullet because he’s supposed to be the strong one. Yet he desperately wants tender loving care just as you do.
How to Get the Most Out of This Book
The thirty-one happy husbands I interviewed for this book will serve as your insider guides for the next thirty-one days. Here are a few suggestions for how best to glean their insights as you read through this book:
Commit to reading a chapter every day for one month. Choose a month to soak your husband in tender loving care. Maybe choose his birthday month or your anniversary month to make it extra special and more memorable. But don’t worry—if you want to start today and his birthday isn’t for months, I’m sure he won’t mind! If you fall behind one or two days, don’t give up on the “Happy Husband” month. The chapters are short so you can easily catch up and get back on track.
Read it in five chunks. Maybe you want to tackle more than one day’s reading at a time. Once you’re settled in your comfortable chair to read, you want to keep going. Then I suggest you divide your reading into sections. Begin with Days 1-5, which cover Domestic Tranquillity. This way you can concentrate your focus on one key DREAM factor at a time. After you’ve completed the action steps suggested, you can move on to the letter R for Respect (Days 6-11), and so on.
Read the affirmation for happy wives aloud once a day. You’ll find this daily affirmation on page 179. Put your affirmation on your bathroom mirror and read it out loud every morning. Expect to feel uncomfortable doing this at first. But after a few days, not only will you believe the words you are saying, you will be living them out. It’s tempting to skip this step, so when you’re done reading today, turn to page 179. Photocopy, scan, or type out the page and put it on your bathroom mirror tonight.
Start a “Wives of Happy Husbands Discussion Group.” Read the book together with a group of friends who also want to add some sizzle to their marriages. Use the discussion guide on pages 185-192. Plan to meet weekly for five weeks to discuss what you’re learning. I promise these will be lively coffee dates or meals together!
Do the action steps. If you just read the book without trying any of the action steps, your husband probably won’t be able to tell you’re reading a book about how to love him better. At the end of each day’s reading, you’ll find these two recurring themes:
·       Notice Today —You’ll be invited to take a close look at your husband. It will take only a few moments, but it will make a big difference. When you notice something positive about your husband instead of taking him for granted or rehearsing his faults, you’ll experience a change of heart and greater warmth for your man.
·       Nurture Today —You’ll get to put your attitude into action through the daily steps to nurture him. Remember, if you don’t do anything differently this month toward your spouse, your thirty-one-day journey to marital bliss isn’t much more than wishful thinking.
Every day of your life, you’re either building your husband up or tearing him down. Proverbs 14:1 says, “The wise woman builds her house,
but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down.” In the next thirty-one days, you’re going to launch a full-force, no-holding-back, life-changing building program for your marriage. Let other things slide while you make your husband the number one priority for the next thirty-one days. Your only agenda is to overwhelm him with attention and affir­mation.
Roll up your sleeves. It’s time to build and dream again.
Marriage Quiz
Do You Have a Happy Husband?
Before you begin reading Day 1, take this self-assessment to discover what areas in your marriage need the most attention. Be honest in your answers. You’re not trying to impress anyone here. Your goal is to gain valuable insight about your husband’s current level of happiness in your marriage.
The environment of my home is warm and peaceful on most days.
             Yes  No
I drop other things (even with my kids) to make time for my husband if he needs anything.
             Yes  No
I never say unkind things about my husband to others.
             Yes  No
If there’s a decision to be made, my husband has the final say.
             Yes  No
I enjoy having sex and look forward to making love to my husband.
             Yes  No
My husband and I talk regularly about ways to improve our sex life.
             Yes  No
I make an effort to look attractive with my clothes, hair, and makeup even on days when I see only my husband.
             Yes  No
I am a healthy body weight and exercise at least three times a week.
             Yes  No
My husband and I go on a date at least once a month.
             Yes  No
We still enjoy romance, kissing once a day for at least five seconds.
             Yes  No
Total the number of yes answers:
1-4: Your relationship is on shaky ground. There are some critical areas of unmet needs that you must identify both for yourself and your husband. Reading this book is perfect timing.
5-7: You have some good habits and attitudes to build on. As you make a few key changes this month, you and your husband will be laughing, flirting, and enjoying each other’s company more.
8-10: You have a happy husband. By the time you finish reading this book, he will be ecstatic. You’ll be moving from good to great (or great to unbelievable). Be on the lookout for other women to encourage and mentor


Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Body Broken by Charles Drew

This is a great handbook to help Christians live out their Biblical beliefs in a world that opposes most of what we stand for.

One thing I found particularly insightful was the concept that we have to live by God's word only for ourselves.  It is not our job to make the world, or even other Christians, do so.  There is certainly a time when we must take a stand but we don't need to fight every battle.

I once had a friend who was so opposed to Sarah Palin running for the Vice Presidency.  Long after the election she was still completely incensed.  Apparently, by her own account, there was a big rift in her family over this debate.  And the thing is, she didn't even oppose Ms. Palin's positions or beliefs.   She was upset that Sara was a working mother.

Now, do I think a mother with children should be at home tending to their family?  Absolutely!  That is why I am where I am today.  If a mother comes to me for council on this topic I will certainly speak honestly and clearly from the Word of God and share my opinion.  However, is it my place to bring others to conviction?  No.  Absolutely, not!  No where in the Word are we told to  take on the job of the Holy Spirit.  In trying to do so we use up so much of our resources which could be better spent leading people to the Lord.  There are some people we may only have one opportunity to witness to.  Do we want to waste it on politics?

Let's consider this example for a minute.  What difference did it make to take such a vehement stand against the candidate?  Was it going to change Sara Palin's desire to be involved in politics?  Was it going to cause her to quit the race and go home to care for her child?  Was Mrs. Palin even going to know what this woman thought on the topic?  Probably not.  And worse, in making such a fuss on this issue, over which the every day Jane has no control, she caused division in her family, made herself look foolish and argumentative and in turn hurt her ability to share the Gospel with others.

We serve our God better when we carefully choose which battles are worth standing for and invest our energies in the ones that will make a difference to a lost and dying world.

Yes, God has a standard and as Christians we should find it and try to live it out.  However, is it plausible to expect the lost world to live by God's standards?  Sometimes, indeed, we need to fight for what the word of God says because it would lessen our ability to follow the Lord.  For example, earlier this year there was legislation coming to Maryland which would have negatively impacted our rights in home schooling our children.  I believe God has commanded us to raise our children in His word and, for this family, homeschooling is the means to do so.  This was stand worth taking because it would change the way I am able to obey my God.  We did what little we could to prevent those changes from taking place.  And it was effective.  

I am very much opposed to the same sex marriage bill that was passed in Maryland this year.  Homosexuality is clearly against God's word.  My family has worked diligently (and I am glad to say we were successful) to get the bill moved to the ballot this fall.  Even though I feel very strongly on this, if push came to shove I would not spend any time debating my belief with a gay person.  It would only alienate them and in no way help them to be saved.  And truly, although it does violate what I believe is God's plan for marriage, gays getting the title of married by this worldly government does not change who I am or what my marriage is.  There are more important battles to fight.  Just the same, I will cast my vote in the negative this fall.    

I hope that clearly illustrates what I got from this book... there are some things we should live out as Christians and there are some things we should also fight for because they challenge our ability to carry out the Lord's commands.  Mr. Drew helps us to know which are which and how to be most effective.

It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!

You never know when I might play a wild card on you!



Today's Wild Card author is:

Charles Drew

and the book:

New Growth Press (February 1, 2012)

***Special thanks to Rick Roberson of The B&B Media Group for sending me a review copy.***

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Charles D. Drew received his education at Harvard (BA in English) and Westminster Seminary (M. Div.). He has pastored for thirty years in Virginia, Long Island and New York, all in university settings. He presently serves as the senior minister of Emmanuel Presbyterian Church, which he founded in 2000 near Columbia University. Drew speaks frequently to universities and churches and is also the author of A Public Faith: Bringing Personal Faith to Public Issues, An Ancient Love Song: Finding Christ in the Old Testament and A Journey Worth Taking: Finding Your Purpose in This World. He and his wife Jean, a science teacher at the Brearly School in Manhattan, have two married children and two grandchildren. Sailing and music are two of Charles' great loves.


SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION:


In this updated and revised version of A Public Faith (NavPress 2000), Drew helps Christians to develop practical biblical convictions about critical social and political issues. Carefully distinguishing between moral principle and political strategy, Body Broken equips believers to build their political activism upon a thoughtful and biblical foundation. This balanced approach will provide readers-Democrats, Republicans, or Independents- with a solid biblical foundation for decision making. Drew even helps Christians of all political persuasions to understand how they can practice servanthood, cooperation and integrity in today's public square. With questions at the end of each chapter to help readers explore and apply principles, Body Broken will train believers to actively engage with political issues while standing united as a church.

Genre: Religion/Christian Life/Relationships


Product Details:
List Price: $15.99
Paperback: 208 pages
Publisher: New Growth Press
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1936768305
ISBN-13: 9781936768301


AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:

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Ch a p t er 1

First Principles



The Lord reigns, let the earth be glad; let the distant shores rejoice. Clouds and thick darkness surround him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. Fire goes before him and consumes his foes on every side. His lightning lights up the world; the earth sees and trembles. The mountains melt like wax before the Lord, before the Lord of all the earth. The heavens proclaim his righteousness, and all peoples see his glory. All who worship images are put to shame, those who boast in idols—worship him, all you gods!

Zion hears and rejoices and the villages of Judah are glad because of your judgments, Lord. For you, Lord, are the Most High over all the earth; you are exalted far above all gods. Let those who love the Lord hate evil, for he guards the lives of his faithful ones and delivers them from the hand of the wicked. Light shines on the righteous and joy on the upright in heart. Rejoice in the Lord, you who are righteous, and praise his holy name. (Psalm 97)

We are bound to disagree over politics, not just in the culture but in the church as well. I bump into this reality all the time. One such occasion occurred in early 2009 when I had two very different appointments back to back. The first was with a leader in my church who wondered why we did not talk more forcefully about abortion and homosexuality. He wondered why we were more likely to speak out on trendy New York City issues like justice and mercy than to speak out and even act on the issues he was concerned about. He wondered why, for example, if we were prepared to sponsor a march against hunger, we were not also prepared to sponsor a protest in front of an abortion clinic.

I met next with a Christian graduate student at Columbia University. She told me that she had begun to drift away from Christian community because, as she put it, “I am beginning to find that the people I agree with theologically are the people I disagree with so- cially.” The issues for her were, interestingly, the same as those mentioned in my first appointment—abortion and homosexuality, but especially the latter. She was in a different place on those issues. She was not gay herself, but she had a number of close friends who were, and her love for them made her feel at odds, given her prior church experience, with the Christian community. She was confused about what the Bible had to say about committed homosexual partner- ships, and she was struggling over what she would do if she became convinced that the Lord forbade them.

We talked about many things—about the false choice the culture often presents (one either must completely accept the gay lifestyle or one must admit to homophobia), about the tendency in the evangelical world to elevate certain sins over others (homosexual sin over heterosexual sin; or sexual sins over other types of sin, like greed or gossip), about the fact that there are different legitimate strategies for nudging our culture in the direction of sexual health (California ballot initiatives being only one of them), about the difference between struggling with sin and embracing sin, and about the difference between homosexual inclination and homosexual behavior.

I came away from the second appointment thankful and perplexed (more later on my perplexity). I was thankful that this young person had felt comfortable talking to me, for I am “the church” by virtue of my role as a pastor. I could not help but think that she approached me because our church did not, in its public face, fit the stereotype that she had begun to react to. We were committed, as she discovered, to a traditional view of marriage (heterosexual, monogamous, lifelong unions), but we were also keen to keep our “front door” open, so that people like her and her friends would feel comfortable coming in for serious and honest discussion.


Tensions in My Own Mind

We are bound to disagree, not only over issues, but over which issues to “go public” on. Committed Christians, sometimes in the same church, sometimes in the leadership of the same church, can easily find themselves at odds with one another on these sorts of issues.

Such tensions arise not only between us but within us. I mentioned that I came away from the second appointment perplexed. The graduate student’s struggles reminded me of how confused people are, especially young people, even church-raised young people like her, about God’s way of wisdom when it comes to sexual matters. I found myself asking if our church’s relative public silence on the issue was in fact the best policy. Certainly it helped keep our front door more widely open than it might otherwise be. It certainly gave rise to an important and nuanced discussion with one particular person that might otherwise not have happened. But what about all the others out there? What about those in my own church who might need a lot more guidance than they realize?

Issues Change, but Disagreement Continues

As I write, everyone is talking about the economy—but not everyone in my church agrees on what is to be done. Some believe that the government bailouts are necessary and good; some see them as a fiscal disaster and an inexcusable wink of the eye at gross moral failure.

Back in the 1980s the range of issues was broader, but Christians still found plenty to disagree about. Some members of my congregation rejoiced at the swing to the right. They saw the Republican triumphs in 1980 and 1984 as harbingers of moral, fiscal, and educational renewal. Others were less sanguine,  pointing with dismay to the new guard’s positions on, for example, gun control and the environment  as huge moral blind spots. (If they had been able to see ahead into the new century, they might have been equally appalled at the financial chaos brought upon the world by the new guard’s advocacy of the unregulated pursuit of wealth.) Some saw the fall of the Soviet Union as the vindication of free market capitalism and of policies aimed at its unfettered growth. Others joined Czech Republic President Václav Havel in his fear that the lifting of Soviet control would only invite new expressions of violence, not simply in the former Soviet bloc, but even at home:






The unnatural bipolar system imposed upon the world, which concealed or directly suppressed historical differences, has collapsed. And these differences are now manifesting themselves with sudden and nearly explosive force, not just in the post-Communist world but also in the West and many other areas of the globe. I fully agree with those who see in this reality the seeds of one of the most serious threats to humanity in the coming era.

Some today might argue that the “triumph” of capitalism,  and the growing disparity  between the rich and the poor that  has accompanied it, has been one of the sources of the rise of terrorism in the first decade of the new century.

Navigating Our Differences: Don’t Panic

How do we navigate all these differences? Surely it is by looking to the Scriptures for perspective and guidance. I have found Psalm97 to be very helpful in this regard. It calls our hearts back to their proper center and for that reason serves as a manifesto on “first principles” for Christian citizenship. The first of these first principles is that Christians need never panic, since our God rules everything: “The Lord reigns, let the earth be glad; let the distant shores rejoice” (Psalm 97:1)

Notice that “reigns” is a political word. It describes a king exer- cising dominion over his subjects, the ancient equivalent (roughly) of saying, “President  so-and-so sits in the Oval Office.” Of course verse 1 says much more. We elect American presidents for a brief time. Their “reign” is neither permanent, nor absolute, nor flawless, nor worldwide, whereas God’s is all four. His rule causes the “earth” to be “glad” and the “distant shores” to “rejoice” (emphasis added). Verse 9 declares his absolute sovereignty over all authorities, whether seen or unseen: “For you, Lord, are the Most High over all the earth; you are exalted far above all gods.” What an encouragement! What a source of confidence and joy for the believer! God is in charge absolutely.
Those who bemoan the moral and  social disintegration  of American culture are often right. But when they speak to us in such a way as to stir up fear and panic in our hearts, they are wrong. Our God reigns, and therefore we need not—we must not—be afraid as we exercise our civic responsibilities, no matter what seems to be going on around us.

Consider the damage panic can bring. First of all, panic impairs judgment. If we give in to the voice that cries “Act now, or our great country will be forever lost!” we will find ourselves demanding easy and quick solutions to our nation’s problems, when in fact there are no such solutions. Christians, more than any others, should know that no candidate, no platform, no party has all the answers. But fear makes it easy to forget this.

Panic breeds impatience not only with political process but also with people. It easily leads to browbeating and to polarization even in the church, the very place where God expects us to model the one community that will outlast all others. How quickly and tragically we accuse and demonize one another when we are afraid. Our hearts break over the killing of millions of unborn children, but are we really right to label every pro-choicer an advocate for murder and every woman who submits to abortion an accomplice in murder? What of the young woman who has been persuaded that the child within is not yet a child? (Note: God distinguishes in Scripture between premeditated killing of a person and accidental killing, a distinction which we find in our own law’s distinction between murder and manslaughter.

Abortion is, of course, premeditated, but for some people that act is not morally murder since they have been led to believe that what is aborted is not a person.) What of the person who votes pro-choice because she cannot see how the legal battle against abortion will succeed rather than because she is pro-abortion? Because panic cries “Do something right now, before it is too late!” it dehumanizes us in our dealings with each other. For me to understand my neighbor’s motives and reasoning takes time, the very thing panic cannot stand.

Panic can be used to justify falsehood. Some people, fearful of a religious takeover, have lifted Jefferson’s “wall of separation” idea out of its historical context and used it, dishonestly, to justify the silencing of the religious voice in every public place and discussion. (The language, which nowhere appears in the Constitution,  was used by Thomas Jefferson in an 1802 letter to a group of Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut, to justify federal disengagement  in religion while tacitly approving  state engagement.)  Promoters of creationist literature, fearful of the impact of the teaching of evolution upon their children, have sought to sneak their material into a Pennsylvania public school by doctoring the terminology of their manual without substantially altering its content. Still others, fearful of the secularization of schools, have promoted “stealth candidates” with a hidden agenda (say, school prayer). Such subterfuge usually backfires, causing the opposition to retrench even further. Worse, when employed by believers, it dishonors the God they claim to serve by using ungodly means (lying) to advance an allegedly godly end.

Panic displeases God. Fear is a matter of the heart, and our reigning King cares deeply and especially about our hearts, since it is from them that everything else issues (see Matthew 12:33–37; Mark 7:20–23). God cares about why we do something at least as much as he cares about what we do. Psalm 97 reminds us that, deep down, the fundamental tone of our lives must be joyful confidence in God’s sovereign reign, not fear: “The Lord reigns, let the earth be glad; let the distant shores rejoice. . . . Rejoice in the LORD, you who are righteous, and praise his holy name.” (Psalm 97:1, 12, emphasis added). When I choose political and social action because I am afraid, even if I can justify that action from Scripture, I am denying God at a deep level. I am acting from unbelief. I am taking his majestic name in vain.

The next time you find yourself driven by fear, or you hear a mes- sage that urges you to act out of fear, consider Jesus. Our Lord saw the desperate evils of life far more clearly than we ever will, and yet he never panicked. In The Waiting Father Helmut Thielicke wrote:

What tremendous pressures there must have been within him to drive him to hectic, nervous, explosive activity! He sees . . . as no one else ever sees, with an infinite and awful nearness, the agony of the dying man, the prisoner’s torment, the anguish of the wounded conscience, injustice, terror, dread, and beastli- ness. He sees and hears and feels all this with the heart of a Savior . . . Must this not fill every waking hour and rob him of sleep at night? Must he not begin immediately to set the fire burning, to win people, to work out strategic plans . . . to work . . . furiously . . . before the night comes when no man can work? That’s what we would imagine the earthly life of the Son of God to be like, if we were to think of him in human terms. . . . But how utterly different was the actual life of Jesus! Though the burden of the whole world lay heavy on his shoulders . . . he has time to stop and talk to the individual . . . By being obedient in his little corner of the highly provincial precincts of Nazareth and Bethlehem he allows himself to be fitted into a great mosaic whose master is God . . . And that . . . is why peace and not unrest goes out from him. For God’s faithfulness already spans the world like a rainbow: he does not need to build it; he needs only to walk beneath it.



Seek God’s Glory above Narrow Political Goals

Psalm 97 calls us to exalt a Sovereign whose reigning glory knows no national bounds. And this gives us our second “first principle”: our political activism must always serve God’s glory worldwide. In other words, model Christian Americans, like their counterparts in Brazil or Korea or wherever, set their hearts first and always on the promotion of God’s interests.

Psalm 97 makes this priority vivid. Verse 1 does not read, The Lord reigns; let Israel (or America) be glad! Nor does it read, The Lord reigns; let my family be glad! These groups must surely join the chorus, but the choir in view is far grander: “Let the earth be glad; let the distant shores rejoice” (emphasis added). Verses 6 and 7 convey the same idea: “The heavens proclaim his righteousness, and all peoples see his glory. All who worship images are put to shame, those who boast in idols—worship him, all you gods!”  (that is, all the different groups of people throughout the world [emphasis added]).

In the classic film Chariots  of Fire Olympic runner Eric Lid- dell courageously models this priority. When the Prince of Wales and a number of other powerful  figures press him to overturn his conscience-bound decision not to run on the Lord’s Day, he politely refuses. A singularly obnoxious  figure accuses him of arrogant dis
loyalty, saying, “In my day it was ‘country first, then God.’ ” Liddell fires back, “It is you who are arrogant! God made kings. God knows I love my country, but I cannot for the sake of that country do what God forbids.”

God’s glory, God’s victory, the revealing and acknowledgement worldwide of who he is, what he has done, what he is doing, and what he will do—this great purpose drives history. Each nation’s saga belongs to this larger one. The history of the United States, so full of God’s blessing and goodness, is not for that reason a special history unto itself. It belongs, together with the histories of Peru, Iraq, China, and Senegal, to his story.

There is a remarkable moment on the eve of the conquest of Jericho. Joshua meets a strange figure:


[Joshua] looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?”

“Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.” Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him, “What message does my
Lord have for his servant?” (Joshua 5:13–14)

God is neither “for us” nor is he “for our enemies.” God is for himself—his own purposes and his own glory. What a moment this was for Joshua. He suddenly realized that he was in the presence of an army far greater than his own. Perhaps even more important he realized that to be the commander of Israel at the gates of Jericho did not automatically put him in the ranks of that army, and he fell to the ground. If this humbling reality was true for Joshua in the days of the theocracy (when God’s rule was located in the action of one particular human kingdom) how much more true must it be for us who have no special claim to be God’s people simply because we are Americans or belong to a particular political party or are the advocates of a particular plan for making our country a better place. My strong suspicion is that, if we could see what Joshua saw, a great deal of the self-righteous certainty that lies behind our political anger would dissipate, and along with it the anger itself.


America and the Kingdom of God

We can draw at least one implication from this great principle. Many of us have legitimate longings for our country. But our deepest longing must not be that America will be happy or prosperous or safe. Think about foreign policy. Our deepest longing as we think about U.S. activity in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot simply be that America will be protected from terrorism. It must be that our policy there will advance in those countries, if only in small ways, the sorts of things that please and honor Christ—things like justice, mercy, and evangelism. One of the tragedies of modern times  is that far too many Muslim people hate Christianity  because they equate it with American militarism. Or think about the American economy. Our deepest longing must not be (as so many hoped in early 2009) that the economic crisis would pass quickly, that people would star spending again, that foreclosures would drop off and employment would rise, and that the “bad guys”  (whoever they were—there was, of course, some disagreement about that) would be brought to justice.

We must keep reminding ourselves that a safe and rich America is not necessarily identical with the triumph of God’s agenda. Scripture teaches after all that God is glorified not only in his mercies, but also in his judgments. In Romans 1:18–32 Paul describes the social and moral disintegration of an ancient culture—a disintegration disturbingly parallel to what we observe in our own country today—from sexual chaos to greed-driven economic collapse. Paul says that this tragedy did not happen by chance, but was the work of God aimed at making known his holy anger: “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness” (Romans 1:18). Like Jeremiah and many of the prophets, the Christian must be prepared to say with tears, “Lord, if you choose to glorify yourself in the failure of our thankless and decadent society (and I hope you do not), then so be it. Honor your name!” Our first love must be God’s will and honor, come what may.

We must embrace this difficult truth or we will blind ourselves to things about our country, past and present, Republican and Democrat, that have not pleased God. We must love our country, but we must have lover’s quarrels with it (starting with ourselves), for our citizenship is in heaven.




Imagine a world without the United States. An unsettling thought, as unwelcome and as unlikely as the end of their empire would have sounded to Roman citizens at the time of Augustus Caesar. But history and Scripture teach us that nations come and go, and there is no guarantee that America will exist forever. Our duration and stability are in fact anomalies in the saga of human civilization. All human governments will one day fail, and for that reason the Christian sets his deepest hope on the glory of God’s reign, not the survival of his country.

Hate Evil

We come now to a third “first principle” for civic life drawn from Psalm 97: Christians must hate evil. Abundant evidence for this principle occurs in the psalm: “Clouds and thick darkness surround him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. . . Let those who love the Lord hate evil, for he guards the lives of his faithful ones and delivers them from the hand of the wicked” (Psalm 97:2, 10, emphasis added).

“Clouds and thick darkness” surround God’s throne because he is morally unapproachable.  That is, he is absolutely holy and we are not. When we read that his throne rests on “righteousness and justice” we learn that every act of his sovereign rule arises from a character and policy that are good and fair. Because of who he is, God will neither act unrighteously nor tolerate anything unrighteous throughout his dominion.

We will consider hating evil more fully in Chapter 9 in our dis- cussion of integrity. At present notice two things about it. First, we are to hate evil, not people—not even evil people (like those “fiends” across the aisle in Congress!). It is the easiest thing in the world to demonize the opposition—to make an abortion activist or a pro-gun lobbyist the incarnation of all that we hate about what they advo- cate. We must not do this.

Here is the second thing to note. The mandate to hate evil is for us a double-edged sword. On the one hand it comforts us immeasurably to know that the God who reigns over everything is good. We can know that all that is right and true and lovely will one day be fully vindicated. On the other hand, this truth reminds us that God is on our side only insofar as we are on his (remember Joshua’s encounter with the angel): “Rejoice in the Lord, you who are righteous” (Psalm 97:12, emphasis added).

Who among us can be 100 percent sure, in anything, that God is fully on our side? Even in our most “Christian” moments, we as a nation never enjoyed the special relationship to God that ancient Israel enjoyed. (People have different opinions on how Christian we were once, though it is fair to say that there was a time when a Protestant Christian ethos dominated the culture.) Israel was a theocracy, the kingdom of God located in a human kingdom—something we have never been, despite the rhetoric of some. For this reason we must be wary of the sort of thinking that lifts an event or law out of ancient Israel’s civic life and tries to insert it wholesale into the contemporary  scene as “God’s will for America.” A sad example of this was the tendency of some in colonial times to identify the killing of American Indians with the conquest of Canaan.

And even if we were a theocracy, we would still need to be extremely cautious about identifying what is “of America” with what is “of God.” After all, for all its privileged status, not even Israel survived the righteous judgment of God when they turned from him. Patient and forgiving for many years, he nevertheless chastened his people, even to the point of exile. If Israel, who enjoyed “most favored nation” status, was punished for sin, can we expect an exemption?

It is a great mistake to think that all the good guys and all the best ideas can be found in one party, usually one’s own. If we hate evil we will watch for it close to home. And we will resist it close to home—in the ideas and strategies of our closest friends and allies (those whose errors we are most apt to overlook). We will never find ourselves buying into everything our party or activist group stands for. And for this reason we will always be a little bit lonely, a little bit out of sync with our fellows. This may be hard, but it will keep us humble—and that is always a good thing.


Making It Personal

1.     What social issues would you rather not talk about at church, or with Christian friends, or with any friend? Why?

2.     Recall a time when you or a friend made a political choice out of panic. Why did you panic? What did you do and what were the results? Why is panic in politics unwise? Why does it displease God?

3.     Psalm 97 teaches that God’s glory worldwide is the main theme of history. Romans 1 reminds us that God is glorified in judgment just as he is in mercy. Where do you see God’s mercy at work in American society? Where do you see his judgment? Talk to God about what you see.

4.     The final stanza of Katherine L. Bates’ famous song, America, reads in part: “America! America! God mend thine every flaw. Confirm thy soul  in self-control,  Thy liberty in law.” Scrutinize the political party or activist group that you feel the greatest affinity to. Where does it need mending? What can you do to contribute to that mending? How might your efforts make you lonely?