The Light Went Dark and the Salt Went Flat

By David Hobbs

[This was published as the Appeal Democrat's "Message of the Week" on its religion page on 5/22/15]

In the last 53 years, America has seen perhaps the greatest moral free-fall of any culture in history. From the removal of God from the public schools in the 1960s, the legalization of abortion in the 70s, the advent of the destructive drug culture, no-fault divorce and family breakdown, pornography epidemic … the cultural carnage goes on and on and shows no sign of abating. In my town of Olivehurst, the churches that were once full and prospering are barely surviving with a few older people in a community devastated by drugs. 

Where were the churches while all this was going on? Attending meetings, singing songs, listening to sermons, and fellowshipping. Instead of being the salt and light prescribed by Jesus, we have been neither. Since all this happened on our watch, we must give an account of ourselves to God. If there ever was a time we needed to heed the words of 2 Chron. 7:14 it is now: humble ourselves, pray, seek God’s face, and turn from our wicked ways. 

 I heard a local pastor tell his congregation a few years ago, “Your hope is in the rapture.” I guess what he meant was that the church had become so weak and ineffective that it was unfixable and the best we could hope for was to get raptured out and let someone else deal with the mess we left behind. 

God doesn’t take the failure of His people lightly. Israel had to wander in the wilderness until the whole generation died off because they refused to believe God to take them into the Promised Land. In Jeremiah’s day, Jerusalem was destroyed and the nation exiled for 70 years to Babylon because they had a societal meltdown much like ours today. In Jesus’ time, Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed in a terrible blood bath and the nation scattered for 2000 years because God’s people didn’t recognize the day of their visitation and accept their Messiah. 

 Yet we think God is going to shrug off 55 million aborted babies and the unbelievable human carnage from the evils we have allowed to flourish in our day? And then rapture us to heaven! Such thinking must have the angels shaking their heads in utter disbelief. 

God does have the answer but only for those who are willing to repent and accept accountability before Him.

Choose Life ... or Death

By David Hobbs

I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live (Deut. 30:19). 

I have always thought of that scripture as being either a matter of eternal destiny—choose Jesus and live forever in heaven or reject Him and die eternally in hell—or about earthly blessing or cursing—choose obedience and live an overcoming, blessed life, or go your own way and … well “the way of transgressors is hard” (Prov. 13:15). But just last week something happened that cast a new, startling light on that familiar scripture.

 It was at the National Day of Prayer public gathering, where all the Christians come together in a city park and pray for the needs of our community. It came at the end of two of the worst weeks of my life in a long time, mostly centered around huge problems in my painting business with a bunch of other stuff thrown in for good measure, as Satan loves to do. I think he invented the concept of “piling on,” which he works masterfully.

It was Friday afternoon and the week was finally over, though the prayer meeting started soon. I was home, lying in bed, trying to take a little nap, kind of hoping I would fall into a deep sleep and not wake up until the prayer meeting was over (and even better not wake up at all!). But I only dozed briefly, and there seemed no good reason not to go. But would I be missed if I stayed home? We had just had our National Day of Prayer breakfast with over 300 people showing up for that. Surely there would be a good carry over. But still I went out of duty. Prayer was my thing, after all.

There are almost 100,000 people in our metropolitan area. George Barna says that 70% of Americans still identify as Christians, so that would be 70,000. But regular church attenders? My guess is more like 20,000. But if half those showed up there would be 10,000 praying people! Still, I wasn’t too surprised that 30-40 turned out.

Something in the songs of worship stirred my soul and got me out of my funk. The angels were there, I could sense them! All of heaven was there in fact. This was a big deal to them. Here we were making a public witness of Christ, something rarely done by the church. We were out from behind the church walls proclaiming Christ and His Kingdom. I felt the touch of the anointing. I knew I had to get up there first and pray to set the stage, to boldly proclaim Christ: His power, His authority and His victory. It didn’t matter that there were no unbelievers within the sound of our voices. All of heaven was there; and the principalities and powers were there. This was a confrontation between light and darkness, the wicked world that had been for so long and the new world that was coming in to replace it.

After the leader prayed an opening prayer I went to the microphone and proclaimed Christ as boldly as I could muster (what a privilege we have to do this! Proclaim Christ and the power of His blood before every demon of hell!). Though it was not as ringing and powerful as I hoped, it was enough to intensify the anointing and draw the angels closer. And it did set the stage for those who followed. Afterwards, I still felt the power of God’s anointing coursing through my being so I loudly “amened” and agreed to everyone else’s prayers.

I began to get self-conscious and felt I was standing out too much. Others were mostly silent, just listening. If the praying person touched a particular hot-button topic, there would be a swell from the crowd, but most of the time I was the only one actively agreeing to the requests (there were also a few Hispanic ladies who actively engaged, bless their hearts).

But that’s when the revelation happened. As I wondered if I should pull back and be silent like the rest, a choice appeared before me. With every prayer I could choose to push myself out there and make verbal, enthusiastic agreement, or I could choose to listen in silence like the others. But I saw that every time I chose to launch out in verbal agreement, it brought life to my spirit. I could feel the life quickening me. And I also saw that choosing passivity like the others would be choosing the opposite, choosing death.

Now here’s where most of you will rise up and rebuke me, “How can you say that being silent while others are praying is choosing death!?" Death is the absence of life, just as darkness is the absence of light. Passivity is the slow road to death, as death is the ultimate passivity! When one speaks actively, even forcefully, it breaks off bondages and sets the spirit free; while refusing to respond—passivity—allows the soul to be bound until it is unable to speak out, unable to make public witness—intimidated into silence!

I don’t know how many of you I can convince of the truth of this, but I clearly saw it. Some things can’t be explained until they’re experienced—chocolate ice cream and sex come immediately to mind. I saw it and decided I couldn’t afford to be silent. I needed life too badly to pass on this opportunity to get it.

 The happy side effect of this was my oppression of the past 2 weeks melted away and I woke Sat. morning back to normal and have been ever since. Choose life!