Tuesday, January 15, 2013

From New Birth to an Inheritance

I just returned from Liberia where I met with Pastors, church leadership, friends and family to share my vision with them. Liberia is doing well some what financially as things return to normal. But the spiritual health of the nation is slowly declining in the face of a religious awakening. Every block there is a church or worship center. Sunday is like everyone returning or going to Jerusalem for worship. The streets are filled with people going and coming from church. Everyone seemed happy and loving one another.

But when you look beneath the veneer of reality the story is different, politically, and religiously. We are morally unzipped, and intellectually uncurbed, to quote Carl Henry. With 9000 UN Peace Keep Forces in the country, the flow of money from relatives living in America and the world; the 1989-2003 civil war is a thing of the past, and no one remembered why we fought and why we killed so many people. Every aspect of the culture is corrupt or getting corrupt. The church is not exempted from these vices, but find herself in the midst of evil and corruption; and doing nothing about it.

Yet, there's hope, in that we find traces of God everywhere we turn in Liberia. He's working behind the scene touching and changing lives. Life of faithfulness, honesty, honor, and wearing the banner of truth in their daily lives. We want to be part of the answers and solutions to our nation's ills. We broke it, therefore, we must help to rebuild it, and rebuilding is always difficult, especially spiritual restoration of a declining culture. Listen to the weeping of the weeping Prophet: "8“Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. 9 Will you steal, murder, commit adultery,  swear falsely,  make offerings to Baal,  and go after other gods that you have not known, 10 and then come and stand before me in this house,  u which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—only to go on doing all these abominations?" (Jer 7:8-10, ESV). CPI