HIS thoughts are not our (MY) thoughts!

I don't know about you guys, but I've been wondering over the past week just what God might be doing through the election of Barak Obama as our next president. I've gone through all of the emotions: sadness because of his stance on those ideals we as Christians hold so dearly, anger as I struggle with judgment issues (my own), excitement to see how God is going to use this and could He be ushering in something REALLY big as we humans see it, amazement because it really is a historic moment to elect someone of color to the highest office in this country. But I have to admit that my primary thought has been that God is just giving us over to ourselves (by that I mean our country as a whole), giving us what we deserve, etc...

As most of you know, I am currently reading "Transforming Grace" by Jerry Bridges. Fabulous! Well, today I was reading the second to last chapter on "Appropriating God's Grace", i.e. taking hold of God's grace. Bear with me here, there is a point.

In this chapter, Jerry Bridges talks about seeing the sovereignty of God in our circumstances. He makes the point that if we are to truly take hold of the grace of God we must see the hand of God behind ALL of our circumstances not just the good. No matter how those circumstances take place or who is behind them, God is ultimately behind it all. Most of us get that right? And, he sites the stories of Job and Joseph. The author of Job gives all the "credit" for Job's troubles to the Lord. And Joseph himself did not blame his brothers for putting him in the pit to eventually be taken into slavery but said "So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God" Genesis 45:8...

My point? Jerry Bridges goes on to point out that it is hard for us to see God's hand in the hard times. And it is isn't it, even though we know better? Here is what Jerry Bridges said to that effect: "Discipline may be either corrective or remedial. It may be sent for the purpose of correcting some sinful attitude or action, or to remedy some lack in our character. In either case, it is administered by our heavenly Father in love, not in wrath. Jesus has already borne the wrath of God in our place, so all adversities that come to us, come because He loves us and designs to conform us to the likeness of His Son." My immediate reaction to what is happening is to say, yep, we are being corrected. And, perhaps we are but not out of His hatred for Barak Obama or because we as Christians have gone so far to the left ourselves! No, it's because He LOVES us that He has allowed Obama in the White House! Do I "get" that? No! But, I do know that He is behind it, orchestrating it.

One more point that I found humbling... I know A LOT of Christians who are not happy in the least with the prospect of an Obama administration or what this country will look like with the extremely liberal slant to his views/prospective legislation and that of our now almost completely liberal executive branch. Think about this one also taken from the book mentioned before "...we tend to evaluate all our circumstances in terms of whether or not they produce happiness. Holiness, however, is a greater good than happiness, so God arranges and orchestrates circumstances to produce holiness before happiness." (emphasis mine)

Now, I say to you, and myself, isn't is quite possible that God did not just allow this man into the White House to punish us as the outright immoral, sinful nation that we've become. Maybe it's not about that at all. Satan has them in his camp. He just might have an avenue to work on us even harder now. So, maybe, just maybe God is using this to produce holiness in us. Are we willing to let Him do that? Are we willing to go through and do whatever it takes to come to that end? I don't know about you, but I have yet to think of the results of this election in that way so...

In addition to praying for our new president as the Scriptures instruct us to, and praying that "those" people's hearts will be opened to the Truth through this, I will now be praying that God would use this time as He sees fit to bring about greater holiness in me, my family, my church and my fellow believers across this nation!

So, I guess all of this could really be summed up in one simple statement. I guess it's not necessarily about "them" but about US!

OFF my soapbox now and on to cooking dinner! Hope that wasn't just a rambling mess to you but I tried to put all the thoughts floating around in my head down as clearly as I could!