Romans 8:28 says, “All things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose.”
Speaking at his first public campaign rally since the assassination attempt, Donald Trump suggested that if he hadn’t turned his head slightly to the right at just the right time, he wouldn’t have been addressing the crowd in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that day. He said he was especially grateful for the “open borders chart.”
Knowing in our hearts that God exists, that God loves us, and that God is still involved in the lives of people and nations, we should be grateful for the times in which we live.
This chart was created in the wake of a daily American tragedy: the southern border is wide open, allowing an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants to flood into the United States. This chart would not exist if Biden Administration officials had not created a southern border crisis with their unconscionable actions. Without this chart, Trump would never look back and see this chart. This could have been disastrous not only for Trump, but for the country.
While an open border would be a scary thing for any country to do, and we seem to be the only country out of 200 that does so, there have been some positives from the situation, with Trump repeatedly thanking God for his protection on that fateful Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Recently, many terrible plots have been hatched to remove Trump from the political stage, culminating in an assassination attempt a few weeks ago. Numerous court cases, some of them fabricated and without evidence, have not shaken off the former president and, overall, he appears stronger in the eyes of the public.
All of this calls to mind an Old Testament story in which the tables were turned against Joseph’s brothers who sold him into slavery in Egypt (see full Genesis chapters 37-50). Eventually, Joseph became second in power to Pharaoh, and he used that power to save many nations during a time of great famine. Confronting his repentant brothers, Joseph offered this sharp observation: “You intended evil against me, but God intended it for good, and He has accomplished what has been done, and has saved many lives” (Genesis 50:20).
Events in life can unfold like falling dominoes: one event leads to another, which leads to another, and finally to a final outcome. But as I point out in my new book, “The obvious: Recognize the evil we see and take action against it.“It seems like much of life is like a Rube Goldberg contraption.
Instead of things falling in precise order like dominoes, from A to B to C to D, life is more like A hits G, which drops to C, which pops off H, which accelerates to M… Z. We take action and set things in motion, and through many unseen and sometimes bizarre circumstances, amazing results are realized.
Events in our personal lives often reflect this. Whether within our families, among friends, on the national or even international stage, we play a role in the lives of others. Romans 8:28 may also shed light on the 2020 election and the disastrous impact the Biden campaign has had on America over the past three and a half years. Was this particular “all things considered” situation necessary during this time to wake up enough Americans to the precarious state of our constitutional government? President Ronald Reagan emphasized that “freedom is within a generation of perishing.”
The past eight years have presented us with two stark choices: Do we want a constitutional republic designed by America’s Founding Fathers to empower “we the people,” or do we settle for a false democracy in which certain elites decide how and by whom we are ruled?
America has roughly three months to decide its future, and for those who “love God, who are called according to his purpose,” perhaps this is a time to pray for God’s continued intervention in our lives and the life of our nation.
Irving Berlin has penned a powerful prayer for just such an occasion, originally written in 1918 during World War I and revised just before World War II. Berlin’s opening verse sets the stage for a heartfelt and moving plea to Heaven:
As storm clouds gather over the sea,
Pledge your allegiance to a free country.
Let’s be thankful for such a beautiful country.
We pray aloud and solemnly.
Of course, what follows this preamble is a simple but powerful petition to Almighty God, applicable to our current national crisis. (Please allow me to tweak the lyrics a little to make the prayer a bit clearer.)
God bless America, [we] Love
Stand by her and guide her.
Through [this] night [Your] Light from above
Adding this to our heartfelt plea in the Lord’s Prayer to “Deliver us from evil” (including the nation as a whole), we can fight the “good fight” now, on Election Day and beyond, and that fight includes engaging patriotically, but under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, in the interest of our nation and, ultimately, all the nations of the world.
Knowing in our hearts that God exists, that God loves us, and that God is still involved in the lives of people and nations, we should be grateful for the times in which we live.
Yes, we are indeed “born for such a time as this,” and we must take our role seriously and with solemnity.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on stream.
