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Certainly there is much to warrant Him backing away. Blatant deceit permeating our politics and public media with no regard for truth. Abortion acceptance. Homosexual lifestyles accepted as normal lifestyles. No public prayer allowed in schools and certain other places. Even talk of striping the Ten Commandments of the first four commandments to make it palatable for posting in schools and courtrooms.

Perhaps Anne Graham Lotz was correct, that God has backed away from America because we have absolutely backed away from God.

We could certainly find plenty of Biblical backup for it, beginning in Genesis and ending with Revelation. But, then we also must seriously consider that God will always turn what man means for evil into something good as He did with Joseph and his brothers (among others).

Truth is as piercing as any two-edged sword dividing the marrow from the bone as Job's friends found out. However, some of our media, some of our politicians, and even some of our top-ranking, national officials have a barefaced, unashamed disregard for truth. They mistakenly believe that their office protects them from punishment even when the truth of their actions comes to light.

Why is there no hue and cry for justice? Why do certain media lap dogs lick the hands of these deceitful people? Why do we Christians duck our heads and proceed on our way without indignation?

Perhaps more than anything else, God's purpose is to show Satan that he has no power and his time is limited? After all, the truth is leaking all over the place. More and more illegal actions and disregard for the justice system are coming into the open. Perhaps the hands of justice are just slow.

Since God hung the world in place and put the stars in space, I'm not too sure we even have the right to ask, "Why do You allow this?"

We weren't there when He put the belt around earth's middle. Who are we that God is mindful of us?

One biblical example of God’s longsuffering comes to mind.

2Ch33:1 Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem.

Mark that: He reigned for fifty-five years. In that time, Manasseh rebuilt all the foreign gods’ altars that his father Hezekiah tore down. He built altars inside the Temple in both courts – women’s court and the inner court, but not the Holy of Holies. He sacrificed his own sons to the god Molech. This was the god that required little babies to be laid in the stone hands outstretched in front of the furnace in its stone stomach where blazes reached intensely hot degrees. The babies were placed alive to endure a fiery death.

Because Manasseh did this, he caused the people of Judah to do the same. It is why it is recorded:

2 Kings 21:16 Moreover Manasseh shed very much innocent blood, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another, besides his sin by which he made Judah sin, in doing evil in the sight of the LORD.

2 Chronicles 33:9 So Manasseh seduced Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to do more evil than the nations whom the LORD had destroyed before the children of Israel.

It isn’t that he didn’t know better. He’d been raised with a father who respected and feared the Lord God Almighty. Yet, it didn’t “take.”

This is when the prophecy that God told Hezekiah that Judah would be overrun and the day would come when all that was in his house, and what his fathers accumulated would be carried to Babylon; nothing would be left. They would take away some of his sons who would be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.

Get this. Amazingly, Hezekiah picked up on the detail that it would happen to his sons. Then he said, “The word of the Lord is good. Will there not be peace and truth at least in my days?" In other words, no war and no deceitful politics during his own reign. He’d die before the prophecy transpired.

However, it was Manasseh’s own sin that brought the kingdom down around his ears. God declared it in 2 Kings 21. God warned him to repent from his evil ways, but the king wouldn’t listen. The people wouldn’t listen. And God unleashed Assyria against Judah. The Assyrian army captains took Manasseh with hooks back to Babylon.

It’s about 700 miles as the crow flies, but it is also desolate desert. Armies must have water, so the trip was much longer as they followed rivers north to the Euphrates and then south to Babylon. Can you imagine being yanked with hooks all that way? Shudder!

While he was in this terrible affliction, he implored the Lord, his God. He humbled himself. Manasseh prayed to Him; and He received his entreaty, heard his supplication, and brought him back to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the LORD was God (2 Chronicles 33:13). He didn’t stretch his neck into more rebellion and more wickedness. It was a greatly humbled and obedient man God put back on the throne in Jerusalem.

Manasseh did come back to his roots that were close to God Almighty. Because he humbled himself before God, the Lord spared the Jews their impending exile for just a little longer.

2 Chronicles 31:20 And Hezekiah did this in all Judah, and did the good and the right and true before Jehovah his God. 21And in every work that he began for the service of the house of God, and in the Law, and in the commandment, to seek his God with all his heart, he worked and prospered.

Yet…

2 Chronicles 32:31 Even so with the envoys of the rulers of Babylon, those sent to him to inquire of the wonder that had been in the land, God left him to test him, to know all his heart.

Do you think it possible that God has pulled back to test the hearts of His children? To show us just how lax we’ve become to righteousness? Or perhaps it is to spur us to intrepid prayer for our country, to humble ourselves, to align our hearts with His purpose.Or perhaps it is so that some of these politicians and pundits and top officials to repent after their deeds have been exposed.

Whatever the reason, I do believe that the hearts of American Christians are praying for our country. We are praying for truth to shine its cleansing light into the dark folds of the wickedness permeating and deceiving Americans. Let freedom ring, and let the hearts of Christians all over the world be found audacious and unflinching with God’s truth.

"Inspiration For You" from Randy Mitchell

Honoring A Father