SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/11/2020 10:40 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “God’s Program”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
6:10a
Message of the verses: “10 ’Thy kingdom
come.”
In
today’s SD I want to give a quotation from John MacArthur’s book “Jesus’
Pattern of Prayer.” I have mentioned
that he wrote this book some three or so years after the sermons that he gave
which is what make up his commentary.
There is much more in the book than in his commentary.
Perhaps
there are some people in the world who do not know what is going on in our
country after the so-called election, but probably not many as it seems to be a
world-wide topic. With that said I want
to quote a section from MacArthur’s book where he speaks about America and what
he speculates will happen to it.
Remember this is from 1981, so keep that in mind.
“People
often ask me, What is going to happen to America? They say, aren’t’ you concerned about
America? Well, I am, in the sense that
this is my homeland and I’m’ grateful to God for putting me here. I’m thankful for the freedoms here, but
frankly my concern is God’s kingdom.
“America
will go the way of all the rest of the nations.
Inexorably built into America is the inevitable hour indicated by God’s
Word: ‘Righteousness exalted a nation,
but sin is a reproach to any people’ (Proverbs 14:34).
“No
nation will last, because built into all the sinful seeds of their own
damnation. We have already abandoned
God’s causes, our biblical standards, our morality. We are on the way back down. We know that, but America is not the
issue. The issue is the kingdom of
Christ and His causes, and no one can ever touch the things that really matter.
“If
America’s eventual conquerors ever come after me and take everything I have and
put me in jail, they can never touch what is really valuable to me. They can take my car and my house, my
clothes, a few trinkets, all that stuff; but they cannot take the love I have
for my wife or her love for me. They
can’t take the love I have for my children or their love for me. They can’t take the love I have for God’s
people or their love for me. They can
never touch my friendships.
“But most of all, they can never
touch Christ in my life, and they can never touch anything in His kingdom.
“And
so I invest my life there. My causes
become God’s causes.
“The
kingdom will go on, and the gates of hell will never prevail against it. Because America is not the ultimate issue does
not mean that we are not to pray for our leaders; we are, the Bible tells
us. But we are to pray that they act and
think in accord with God’s principles.
“God’s
program is to exalt Christ. The
consummation of history will be in the reign and rule of Christ. The Talmud says, ‘That prayer in which there
is no mention of the Kingdom of God is no prayer at all.
“The
kingdom is the heart of the matter.
Before we go bursting into His presence with all our petitions, we need
to stop long enough to consider His causes, and His kingdom, and affirm our
yearning that He be glorified in His purposes.
“Why
is that so hard?
“As
soon as we desire to live a holy life for Him, we run right into the kingdom
that exists in this world, which the Bible says is the kingdom of
darkness. Satan challenges the effort of
a believer to live a hallowed life.
Therefore, subsequent to saying, ‘Hallowed be thy Name,’ we must say,
‘Thy kingdom come.’
“If
Satan’s kingdom is not withstood, there can be no hallowing of God’s name. Unless we are, as Paul said, transformed from
the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His dear Son (Colossians 1:13), we
cannot hallow His name. Until Christ’s
rule is established, we have not capacity to hallow His name.
“His
kingdom cannot ever come until His will is done, because His kingdom and His
will are inseparable.”
So,
okay, I went a little farther than his writing about America, but the rest is
very important too. I have mentioned
that when I first became a believer in 1974 while listening to cassette tapes
on the end of the world that shortly after that I realized that America is not
mentioned in end-time prophecies. I knew
that it had to fall from the world stage as a powerful nation. How that would happen no one was sure, but my
very favorite reason would be that the Lord would come in the clouds to take
His completed church to heaven with Him.
There are other things too, like what is happening in our country today,
but the main thing, as MacArthur has talked about is that we stay faithful to
the Lord praying that His kingdom come.
11/11/2020 11:09 AM
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