What You Trust In

Posted by Lorren on August 11, 2008

I was pretty fortunate that I was born in the United States, rather than say… Ethiopia or Yemen or something. I was fortunate that someone told me about Jesus and I can afford to have a Bible… even enough Bibles that I can keep one in my backpack all the time, and another one on my bookshelf.

We have a strong military. Lately, we’ve been winning many battles in Iraq. We pay a lot of taxes towards funding our military. Yet, we haven’t had a decisive victory in war since World War II. It’s not because we don’t have a strong military, we just don’t have the heart to stick through with finishing what we’ve started.

Or is it?

I was reading in Isaiah, and in the 31st chapter, it warns Israel not to put confidence in Egypt to help them militarily. Egypt was strong, but they did not follow god. When Israel made an alliance with them, God was not pleased, because they were to put their trust in God and not the militaries of other nations.

With God on our side, our country can do great things. When we as a people follow God, our country is great. Not perfect, but when our country followed God, people in general were a lot more courageous. Do you remember the people in the American Revolution? They risked a lot for what we have now, because they had courage.

Our military even today has a lot of courage. They do a good job, and we should be thankful for them. Many of them have conservative values, and there are people on every base and probably every ship that attend regular church services (yes, they even have church on board ships when they are in the middle of the water). But America as a people have fallen away from God. We don’t trust in him with our whole heart. We might trust in the money we pump into our defense system, but not in God.

Could that be why we often back out of conflicts like we did in Vietnam? The people back home were ungrateful to our military for what they were doing. We got out before a decisive victory was had, because we didn’t have the heart for keeping our military there. I hope that we have the heart to finish what we’re doing in Iraq.

Without God on our side though, the day will come when all the military might in the world will not help us. Great nations like ours have fallen apart in history. When you put your trust in military might, or money, or anything else other than God, you’re bound to not succeed eventually.