Dear Friends,
Most of our newsletters are filled with questions from you and answers from me. As our election approaches and I jokingly encourage people to ‘vote early and vote often’ we have huge questions about the future of America.
I am asking your forgiveness for my stepping back from financial concerns for this letter and directing my thoughts, ideas, and suggestions to ways I believe we can help our country.
Be assured, we will return next month with more questions that are at the top of your mind with answers that we believe will provide you with peace of mind.
Thank you.
Abraham Lincoln – served our nation as President during the most dangerous time in our history – the Civil War. More than 600,000 Americans would die in a conflict that threatened to tear our country apart.
Some would say we are on the brink of a second civil war. Some have said it has already arrived. In my humble opinion, they are wrong. I don’t believe for a moment that the politicians represent the American people They have, to paraphrase Lincoln’s words, turned their back on God and vainly imagine, in the deceitfulness of their hearts, that all America’s blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of their own.
I believe the ‘average’ American loves both God and our country – in that order. I believe the ‘average’ American prays every day that God will right our ship. They pray that the egotists in Washington D.C. and beyond are – by God’s plan – brought up short in their vain confidence in their own wisdom and virtue and brought back to a belief in the only power able to bring us all back together.
I believe that ‘average’ Americans number in the hundreds of millions. I find them working together, praying together, and serving their communities everywhere I look – independent of their political affiliations. Wonderful, hard-working, God-fearing Americans who know in their heart-of-hearts that the only way out of this mess we find our country in is to return to honoring God and praying for him to direct our way.
I believe the citizens who wish to see America fall is numbered in small fractions of a per cent, but they are loud, dangerous, break the law with little/no fear of punishment, and they have the support of many in the media. They are the loud-mouthed bully on the playground.
The rest of us (for the most part) are quiet, hardworking, law abiding, and being ignored by politicians who pander to whomever is willing to write a check against us and the American way of life.
There isn’t a politician (remember when we respectfully called them public servants) alive today with the strength of character that would allow them to use their own names in the same sentence as that of Abraham Lincoln. They cannot for even one moment of sanity (that might be hard to find) believe their value to America approaches even the soles of his shoes.
So, a wise person, aspiring to truly serve America – and not serve themselves, would look to Lincoln as a model for setting the direction of our country under the most desperate of circumstances. And what did Lincoln do when America was torn apart by civil war? He turned to God and declared a national day of humiliation, fasting, and prayer. Please read his words. The underlined portions I have chosen to highlight – in my opinion – the elements that speak directly to where Americans find themselves today:
“By the President of the United States of America.
A Proclamation.
Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for National prayer and humiliation.
And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.
And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!
It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.
Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer. And I do hereby request all the People to abstain, on that day, from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.
All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this thirtieth day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty seventh.
By the President: Abraham Lincoln”
America needs a national day (certainly more, but let’s start with a beginning) of humiliation, fasting, and prayer as much today as we did in 1863. We won’t get one declared by our current politicians in power. They are too self-important to realize how needed such a day is to us all.
I don’t believe that should stop us. Somewhere in America there is a leader(s) – outside the government – who can declare such a day and enlist all of us in that effort.
Please pray with me that person is found, steps up, and helps America and our leaders back to God – for the sake of our country. For the sake of all of us.
Please allow us to serve you and those you love.
Thank you,
Gene
P.S. Please send me an email ([email protected]) with any ideas you may have about advancing a national day of prayer.
P.P.S. Thank you to everyone who generously support our radiothon supporting Folds of Honor and the great work they do for the families of our fallen and disabled military veterans.
With all your help and God’s encouragement we broke last year’s record of $107,000 by raising $111,700! Everyone on our More than Money team thanks you. I thank everyone on our team who spent months preparing and many days executing our radiothon so we could make a difference in the lives of these families who need our help.
This is just a small example of what Americans can and will do when they are brought together for the right reasons.
Thank you.
