Dirges, Woes, Disasters, and Terrors

From Louisville, Kentucky

This weekend I watched with great sadness the violence, terror, and hate poured out on the streets of my hometown Louisville, Kentucky and in cities across our country.  How did we get to this national level of hate in America? And, what should be our response?

The characteristic of life in America has for years become that of Joel O'Steen's gospel "Your Best Life Now". It is preached everywhere.  Our Lord says, however, that every happiness and peace and well-being that is based on ignoring a relationship to God will end in dirges and woes, disasters, and terrors.

What we are witnessing on the streets of America today is God lifting the veil from the eyes of His children to show us the numbers in our own circle who are absolutely dead to God's standpoint.  It is these revelations that bring distress to the soul before God in intercessory prayer.  They enable us to understand what Paul means when he says, I...fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ (Colossians 1:24).

We must stand with one camp or the other, we are either with God and the forlorn hope, or with the crowd who are going on without God, whose happiness and joy and prosperity is proving in our land to be all fictitious.

Consider now!  Call for the wailing women to come; send for the most skillful of them.  Let them come quickly and wail over us till our eyes overflow with tears and water streams from our eyelids.  The sound of wailing is heard from Zion:  How ruined we are!  How great is our shame! We must leave our land because our houses are in ruins.

Jeremiah 9:17-19