America's Forgotten Adornment

I remember the devotion of your youth,

and how as a bride you loved Me... Jeremiah 2:2

God and His church were once the "adornment" of America. God says, Does a young woman forget her jewelry, a bride her wedding ornaments?  Yet my people have forgotten Me, days without number. And the tragic result is that the dead set of life in America has been away from God. 

How skilled you are at pursuing love! Even the worst of women can learn from your ways.  Jeremiah 2:33

As a presidential candidate Joe Biden has exhibited a pattern of debilitating forgetfulness - his physical ailment of forgetfulness is but one thing.  But the act of steadfastly refusing to recognize is another thing.   In an attempt to be relevant to the culture, many Christians have deliberately turned out of God's way.  They are skillfully pursuing after some other god than the God who is holy.

If only we could get used to recognizing the anguish and horror in God's heart when His people lust after worldliness. To recognize and understand this, the prophets of the Old Testament and the early Church writers of the New Testament used the most disgusting terms known among most civilized nations (Jeremiah 2:24-25). These words were spoken to those who have forsaken what they know.  

The things we see in the media and on our streets that shock us most are not what shocks Jesus the most.  The social and political corruption and immorality shocks many Americans till they don't know which country they live in anymore.  But what strikes the heart of Jesus Christ with horror is immorality against God, pride against Himself: You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts.  What people value highly is detestable to God. (Luke 16:15) 

Yet in spite of all this, you say "I am innocent." Jeremiah 2:35

America's cities are being pillaged. In order to justify their actions, mayors and governors along with the people encouraging this lawlessness have redefined it as social justice. The innocence arising from this evil is always like that - "I've done nothing."  It is the innocence we are all born with; sooner or later it takes its stand with evil and only knows good by contrast.  This is the danger of Christians and the American church in sympathizing with the claims of critical theory, the Woke Church, and Black Lives Matter.

The innocence arising from the presence of the Spirit of God takes its stand with good and knows evil only by contrast.  If we hand our hearts over to God we need never know in experience that what Jesus Christ says of the human heart is true:

What comes out of a person is what defiles them.  For it is from within, out of a person's heart, that evil thoughts come - sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly.  All these evils come from inside and defile a person. Mark 7:20-23

When churches and Christian organizations feel the need to bolster up their position by reasons, arguments, and apologies to a culture that hates Christ, it is a sure sign that America is on a rotten spiritual foundation.  For, behind our plausible talk, many church leaders are at their wits' end working to secure a right position on any social and

political issue.  The instinct that inspires a church who has lost her devotion to Christ often falls on the line of diplomacy or in trendy terms "engaging the culture".  The one safeguard of every church is in a personal relationship to a personal Lord and Savior - that becomes America's adornment.