As I look back over my life and remember the presidents I’ve lived under I remember many of them having private church services in the White House, sometimes with Billy Graham conducting the services and other times with other men of God preaching.

I remember President Clinton carrying a study Bible so thick it looked as though it would give him a hernia as he came out of a church for his photo op and then went to the Oval Office for a dalliance with “that woman, Ms. Lewinski”.

I recall hearing of President Bush attending services in Texas a few times but I have never seen him leave the church. I know he professes Christ to be his Savior and he seems outwardly to live that life.

Now comes word that President-elect Obama has decided to skip church and go to the gym instead.

I’ve been having trouble in my prayer life because as a Christian I am commanded to pray for the leaders of our country that our lives will be easier. I don’t know whether or not to ask God’s blessings on Mr. Obama, as I don’t know his feelings about God. I pray that God will give him wisdom and if he does not know Jesus something will happen that will move his heart to accept Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior. I pray that he will be successful for our country’s sake, but I don’t know how to pray for him.

I guess I have lived too sheltered a life as I am just learning in the past few years how many people in this world and indeed this country are rejecting the message of the Gospel.

I am amazed at how people can blaspheme God and dare to do it. They mock Him and say He doesn’t exist. I even have a family member who says he believes in the Great Spirit but he doesn’t have a Son named Jesus Christ. This hurts my heart because I know what the destination is of the soul of this loved-one if he doesn’t go back to his childhood teachings and ask Jesus to be Lord of his life.

I am amazed at how people think God changes. Those people protesting the gay marriage proposal in California and across the country seem to think as long as the are “good” they will go to heaven and because it’s 2008 God has changed His mind on homosexuality. He never changes. I just give you the message…He gave the rules.

People try so hard to make God completely human, when He is a Spirit and created humans. He can out think the greatest mind ever imagined on this earth. He can step into space and time and exists outside of both because He made the laws of physics and can break them at His will.

We are also spirits. What do you think your soul is if it isn’t a spirit? When we die our vessels for our physical selves (our bodies) rot in the ground while the soul, our spirit, immediately steps out of this plane and into a spiritual plane. Whether it be the spiritual plane of Heaven or the spiritual plane of hell is our decision in this lifetime. When we are dead it is too late for anyone else to do anything to get us out of Hell.

People may joke and say they’ll join their friends in hell, but it won’t be a joking matter when they find themselves in there. Their friends will be in the same torment they are in and won’t have the time to search them out even if there is light to see. I believe hell will be a dark place where souls will wander forever with no hope of ever having their pain relieved. They will acknowledge God has a Son named Jesus Christ, but it will be too late for them. I don’t wish that fate on my worst enemy.

I’m far from the perfect Christian. I will humble myself before God at the Great Throne and be ever so thankful that He provided a way for me to have fellowship with Him forever. I will probably try to be a wallflower and not be noticed, but I’ll have to answer for what I did for Him after I got saved. This is why I talk about Him so much. My mission is to tell others about the saving grace of the blood of Jesus Christ, who died that we all might live eternally.

We don’t just cease to exist as an animal without a soul does. I wish that were true for those who are lost, but it isn’t.

I was told last week by someone I love, “I’m glad I don’t have to worry about all that.” Well, one day this person will have to worry about that and will wish he had listened and it will be too late. That breaks my heart.

I don’t even know if my own son is saved and I pray every day for his salvation or his return to the Lord like the Prodigal Son if he was indeed saved at age eight, when he asked if he could be baptized and we questioned him on his faith and beliefs.

This is a terrible burden for any parent to carry. But the Lord has told us in Proverbs to “train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.” I hang onto this promise for the two I have mentioned here. I know both were trained up in the way they should go and I believe God’s promise that when they are old they will not depart from it.

I have seen in my own life how long in man’s terms it can take God to answer a prayer. I prayed for over forty years to meet my biological father. I should say forty years before I met him I prayed for a couple of years to meet him and then just forgot about it. But, when the time was right, God dropped the information into my lap and made my biological father accepting of meeting me. We had a wonderful 26 months of knowing one another until he died.

I would have been satisfied with just the first meeting, but God had more in store for me. What a loving relationship we had and I still feel it in my stomach some nearly five years after he died.

God didn’t say no and He didn’t grant my prayer immediately because He knew neither my father nor I was ready, but instead He said, “Wait, my child” and when the time was right, He arranged it all.

Who else can love me so much He will grant my most urgent wish and at the right time in my life? He can do that for you too. If you’ve lost a child you know that child will not come back in this life, but if that child was old enough to know right from wrong and was saved he or she is waiting for you in Heaven. If that child rejected Christ he or she wouldn’t want you to be in hell, but would want you to be in Heaven to escape what he or she is experiencing right now. He or she knows you won’t meet up in hell because the torture will be so great you will only be concerned with yourself.

Just as the President of the United States has the authority to pardon any federal criminal, Jesus holds in His hand a pardon offered to you. It will pardon all your past, present and future sins, regardless of what they are. All you have to do to accept that pardon is invite Him into your life as your Lord and Savior and He will come in and sup with you and you with Him. The angels in Heaven will rejoice at your salvation. Give it a try. The alternative is too awful to even think about.

Written by ~J~

3 Responses to “Does Our President Have to Go to Church to Prove He’s Christian?”

1. David M. says:

   November 25, 2008 at 9:59 am

   Your post raised a strange issue for me that I had not thought about for years. Do you recall when Christ cast out a demon from an individual into (I think) a pig or a herd of pigs? From memory, I think it’s in Mark 5:__ , but that could be wrong. While we would all like to see our animal companions in heaven, I don’t believe they have souls. However, I do think my cat is sometimes possessed by an evil spirit or just has a rotten personality While this is meant to be mildly humorous, I have always wondered about Christ casting out demons into swine. Along the same lines, Dr. F. Scott Peck wrote a book titled “People of the Lie.” He theorizes the problem with modern psychiatry/psychology is that it fails to recognize the existence of pure evil, including demonic possession.

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2. ~J~ says:

   November 25, 2008 at 10:14 am

   David, although animals don’t have souls I like to believe that if I want my Silky or the other beloved pets in Heaven God will give them to me. After all, the Bible does say the lion will lay down with the lamb. God wants us to be happy, and I believe if that makes us happy He will do it for us. They are not guilty of sin because they have to be taught behaviors. Otherwise they are just animals. It’s not like they know right from wrong except by behavior modification.

   Yes, Jesus cast out demons into a herd of swine, answering the demons’ request. The pigs then went crazy with the demon possession and jumped over a cliff.

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3. Piano Girl says:

   November 25, 2008 at 2:38 pm

   I believe the Reagans attended church until after the assassination attempt on his life early in his presidency, and they decided that it was better to worship quietly at the WH or at Camp David than to put church members through so much agony to go to church. President Bush occasionally goes to St. John’s, across the street from the WH when he’s in town, but there is a small chapel that is on the Camp David property at the weekend retreat for the POTUS, his family, and guests to use. It’s a short helicopter ride (they sometimes fly over my home) to Northern Maryland to get there. That said, I’m a little surprised that the Obamas weren’t worshiping somewhere in Chicago…he’s made such a big deal out of his faith, even tho’ he had to be reminded on the ABC show one Sunday morning that his was a “Christian faith, not Muslim faith”. You would think that he would want to go thank the people who have given him a church “home” for 20 years.

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