Election’s Results

(Matthew 5:16 KJV)  Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

I am writing this before the day of the election.  I want it to be uncolored by celebration or disappointment.  I want to consider the effect that election has on our society.  My primary concern is about God’s elect, not the politically elected.  I don’t care if you are a Calvinist who believes that God sat down before He started to create and made of list of people He was going to create to go to heaven and a list of creatures He was predetermining to Hell, or if you are an Arminian who believes that the vote is God-one, Satan-one and you have the deciding vote.  If you are a child of God, however you got there, you are part of the Elect.  You are one of the ones who are destined to spend eternity rejoicing in the presence of God.  You will have a name tag at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.

That is glorious for then.  What about now?

Many of us have applied the values of our faith during this election.  We have distributed Christian Voter Guides, we have talked ourselves out of our friends' lives, we have driven people to the polls.  Having done all this, remember that the results have only a little value.  The force that is going to change the country is not who sits in the seats of power.  The force that is with us is not the Ying and Yang of Star Wars.  The question is, “Are you going to be salt and light?”

Jesus talked a lot about the Father in Heaven.  He talked even more about the subject of obedience.  It is not about feeling our faith, it is about living our faith.  I don’t care if you feel my pain, I want an aspirin. 

How do we give that world an aspirin?  First, we start with the invisible, see through bottle that holds the aspirin.  We pray.  We study and meditate on the Word.  We repent.  We get our souls and minds in order.  Remember the second part of the Shema:

(Deuteronomy 6:5 KJV)  And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

Notice that last part.  Luke has a little longer quote from Jesus:

(Luke 10:27 KJV)  And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.

We have to practice our inner disciplines and then begin to apply them.  Begin to love our world.  We have to apply it.  We have to get dirty and smelly as we rub elbows with the dirty and smelly. 

This election is over.  People don’t seem to be so anxious to have the Republicans elected as having the Democrats removed.  If we get “second verse, same as the first” then nothing will have changed.  But if God’s people move out of the voting booths and into the lives of the lost we can see transformation that will equal the first century.  When people are saved they become honest, chaste, thrifty, discerning..., and they go to heaven.  Do you see a pattern here.

So?  You have voted with your pen.  Now vote with your lives.  Live for Jesus and demonstrate real hope and give a chance for real change.