This transcript was taken from the daily Stand in the Gap Radio program originally aired on June 25, 2002. To listen to the entire program, please click HERE.
Sam Rohrer: Well, you’ve heard the statement, “Choices have consequences,” and most people would believe that. I’m sure you believe that, because choices do have consequences. But it’s often the second part that some people have added that is easily ignored, and that is while choices do have consequences, consequences often have victims. There are real consequences to choices and there are victims to many of them. But before choices come ideas and beliefs and that’s where it all starts.
Well, hello and welcome to this Friday edition of Stand In The Gap Today. I’m Sam Rohrer and I’ll be joined today by Pastor Gary Dull and our honored guest today, Dr. George Barna. He’s with us regularly on this program. Those of you who are listening and have listened before, George, again, a Christian social researcher. He’s an author. He’s a servant of God, I’ll say that. He really truly is, now serving in the capacity of professor at Arizona Christian University and he’s the director of research at their Cultural Research Center.
Our focus for today is part four in a series of continuing research that George has been doing this year on the overall aspect of worldview of those in America. The state of the church in America is what I’ve often referred to it. He may call it something different, but it has a lot to do with that. And this is part four in a series that we’ve been doing over the period of months.
The theme for today is specifically America in moral freefall, why some lives don’t matter. In today’s program, we’ll quantify, to the extent that we can, morality in America, why it is in free fall. We’re going to look in segment two at the irony and the cause of why some lives in reality don’t matter, even in a culture where there is an insistence by many that certain lives do matter. In a segment three, we’re going to specifically look at research results about the views of morality in America towards lies, stealing and sex.
Then in the fourth segment, we’re going to conclude with answers to the question of, what will it take to recalibrate America’s moral so that all lives do matter? And where lying, stealing and unmarried sex is, once again, viewed as choices where consequences exist and where victims result. And what that, I welcome right now to the program George Barna. Thanks for being with us, George.
George Barna: Oh, thanks for having me again. It’s great to be with you.
Sam Rohrer: I’m glad that you are here and we’ve got a lot to go over. All this information that you produce, George, it’s fantastic, it’s really helpful, and we want to get right into it. On this program about a month ago, I think it was actually May 22nd with part three, we looked at your research at that point that tended to confirm that there was no moral rudder, so to speak in America. And that was because there was a rejection of God and absolute truth.
But here now in this next segment, you’ve gone a little bit deeper. One of the things you say in the report is this, quote: “Our nation is facing a potential moral freefall unthinkable to earlier generations” and unquote. Then you go on and you say this, quote: “Today, Americans are drawing very different moral lines than did previous generations,” end quote.
So let’s start here. Can you give a brief overview of your findings and specifically answer the question, George, about America’s current ideas about morality that prompted you to say, “Our current condition is unthinkable to earlier generations”? What’d you mean by that?
George Barna: Yeah. As I looked over the whole body of research that we’ve been doing here about worldview, we looked at the fact that only three out of 10 say that the purpose to life is to know, love, and serve God. We looked at the fact that eight out of 10 do not believe that success has anything to do with consistent obedience to God, the fact that six out of 10 reject absolute moral truth, that most people say that they’re the only ones who can know true.
Then you look at moral behaviors. You look at their perspectives on human beings, how they want to live their life and what constitutes a meaningful life. All the kinds of answers we’re getting suggests that there’s been a really seminal shift in the way that people understand life, understand purpose and understand God and [inaudible 00:04:33].
In prior generations, there was a much more widespread theological consensus, if you will, where there was a widespread understanding about who God was, the nature of God, His character, His purposes, how we fit into His plan. The understanding that freedom does exist, but it was one that had costs and it’s a privilege. The idea of judgment and the notion that the Bible provides us with the foundation for living in absolute moral truths.
Then in addition to that, in prior generations there had been the understanding that broad-based leadership was critical for the success of our culture. So that meant that the family really was responsible primarily for the development of morals in our minds and our hearts. The church was responsible for teaching those foundations so that we had deeper spirituality. The government played a role, and that was to craft laws that coincided with what morality has been defined to be. And then the schools and even businesses had a role in terms of the demonstration and the profession of ethics and morality in practice.
But today it’s a completely different setting. We’ve got a theological free-for-all that’s taking place where there’s no sense that we can go back to the Bible and understand basic theological tenants. But instead, there’s kind of a debate about whether or not God exists, if He does, who He is. There are debates about the meaning of humanity, the existence of sin, the existence of eternal life, the source of truth, the definition of success. All of these things in our culture now are up for grabs.
Would our predecessors have foreseen that kind of theological free-for-all and the debris that comes from that, conflict that’s been taking place? Certainly not. I mean, they would never have predicted the curtailment of free speech in America, the curtailment of freedom of religion in America, the extreme demise of the family, the rise of Marxism and postmodernism or the popularity of socialism. They would’ve laughed at all of that and said that couldn’t take place here. In other countries, certainly, but not in America. Unfortunately, that day is here.
Gary Dull: So, George, a bit earlier here, Sam actually mentioned as he was quoting you, that our nation is facing a potential moral free-for-all. How close are we really to an actual free-for-all in America today?
George Barna: [crosstalk 00:07:22]-
Sam Rohrer: George, hold that question because we’re out of time. I’m going to have you answer that when you come back in the next section.
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Well, George, before I get back and we go into this issue of why some lives don’t matter and some information you’ve sent out about that, Gary posed a question to you why you used the word “potentially” entering a freefall as contrasted to perhaps the fact that we are already in a freefall. Was that word chosen specifically, or any thoughts on that?
George Barna: Yeah, I think you could argue both ways. You could say, “Well, it’s going to become worse, because I believe it is, based on the trajectory and the lack of obstacles to the continuation of our current paths.” On the other hand, I think you could also argue that, “But we’re already in that moral freefall.” You have to think about, well, what does freefall mean?
Well, it means there’s no anchor, and consistent morality requires that there be a foundation, a touchstone and anchor, if you will. Historically, that’s been the Bible. But when you look at where we’re at today, what our research is showing is that a large majority of people base their moral perspectives on themselves based on their feelings, their experiences, and their felt needs. That, therefore, means that our perspectives on morality are going to necessarily by definition be unstable and inconsistent and unpredictable.
Sam Rohrer: Okay.
George Barna: So given that, I would say currently, yeah, we are in that moral freefall. Will it continue to pick up pace? Will it continue to spread its arms and cover a wider swath of our population? Sadly, I think so.
Sam Rohrer: We’re going to talk more about solutions to that in the last segment, George, but I want to move into now. We’re going to get into some of the scenarios that you presented to people in the next segment and then we’re going to be dealing with lies, theft and sexual relationships. We’ll deal with that in next segment.
But there is another issue that is there before us. It’s this matter of lives mattering. As I look around our politically-correct, emotionally-charged, propaganda-driven culture, I know there’s a lot of big words, but I think it’s all true. The recent emergence of the legitimate, it is a legitimate, concept of the value of life seemingly has shifted from the truth of all lives matter as God views life to a singular focus of only black lives matter.
I’m not going to get into all that it pertains right now, but I do want to look at this with you. We know, biblically, God views all life as equally valuable. But the hijackers of this current narrative have sought to repudiate the concept that all life matters or even that unborn babies matter. That’s been out there as well. And to only pursue the stated transgender and Marxist views of the organization that actually uses those names, Black Lives Matter.
Now, in recent research that you’ve done, George, on the attitudes towards life, you shed understanding on this whole cultural emphasis on life as we answer the question here of why some lives don’t matter. A recent release you sent out, you said this, you entitled it What Percentage of Americans Really Believe Life Matters? So my question here right off: What does your research indicate about this? And can it help us understand why there can be such disagreement in reality, relative to all lives mattering? There’s something wrong in here, but what does your information show?
George Barna: Well, one of the shocking things I think that came out of the research, and I don’t get shocked by that much, I’ve been doing this for almost 40 years now, but one of the things that did shock me was that a little bit less than four out of 10 adults in America believe that human life is sacred. Now we add to that the fact that a majority of people would be willing to say that the Bible is ambiguous about abortion.
You got six out of 10 just say there’s no such thing as absolute moral truth. By a four-to-three margin you got people believing that good people will earn their eternal salvation rather than it’s a gift from God through Christ, through the confession of sin and embrace of Christ the savior. You’ve got two out of three who would say that the source of moral guidance in their life is either themselves or other people.
You got two out of three Americans who are saying that they define success in their life as being things such as their personal goodness, their productivity, what they’re able to accomplish, or their happiness. Well, you put it all together and to me what we’ve done is we’ve landed in that place where scripture says that people will do what’s right in their own eyes. That’s America today. So without moral absolutes, we become the sole arbiters of right or wrong in our world and it’s based on our feelings and our felt needs.
So I think, unfortunately, we’re in a situation where when each of us becomes our own moral foundation, our own source of truth, what that means is if you disagree with me, you’re wrong and that’s simply the way it is. I think that’s what leads to a lot of the unrest, a lot of the tension and the conflict and the anger and hatred, and the playing out that we see in our culture today. It’s because we’ve given up on the Bible as being the source of truth, being the source of guidance for our lives, we’ve turned inward and now that’s turning on us.
Gary Dull: George, I’m reading here from the survey that you put out. In that survey, it indicates that only 39% of Americans today view life as having unconditional, intrinsic worth. But it goes down from there. For instance, 12% claim that people are simply material substance or biological machines. Another 12% argue that people are part of the mind of the universe, an interesting phrase, part of the mind of the universe.
Then there are other groups who say that human beings are simply an illusion, claiming that they do not exist or are sleeping gods or a part of the soul of the universe. Now, to me, all of it sounds quite weird, but it’s really another worldview besides the biblical world view. What kind of a worldview brings on these sorts of results that we’re talking about here today?
George Barna: Yeah. It’s an interesting thing to examine, Gary. As you say, for someone with a biblical worldview, it all seems a little bit wacky. But this is what people believe; this is what’s driving their life. So, really, what we’ve got to understand is that our research is showing that nobody has a pure worldview.
What we tend to do in America is we’re exposed to so much information about different perspectives, we pick and choose from different things that feel good, that make sense, that we think will work, that we think it’ll meet our felt needs. So we bolt all those together into a customized worldview.
A lot of what we’re seeing is postmodernism, which says there is no moral truth, no absolutes. There may or may not be a God, can’t really know. It doesn’t really matter. That there is no ultimate purpose to life, no grand marriage that explains everything. Just shoot for happiness through relationships and experience.
But then there are other worldviews, too, that are popular. Whether it’s secular humanism; again, one that says there is no God, there’s no purpose. Whether it’s nihilism, which will tell us that life doesn’t really exist; it’s all an illusion. Existentialism, Marxism, modern mysticism. These are all different options that we’re exposed to every day through the media, through conversations, in schools and being written into public school curricula, in popular books and so forth.
So it’s all around us. And people who don’t know what’s in the Bible or who have consciously chosen to reject the Bible are integrating all of this into a personal perspective, a philosophy of life, that may not be internally consistent, but as long as they feel satisfied with it, they run with it.
Sam Rohrer: George, it sounds to me almost like the prophetical aspect we get to the end there’ll be a one-world religion almost. It almost could be this cosmopolitan approach of what you’re talking about here, where at the end there is no God but it’s a mix of all kinds of things. I don’t know.
But answering this question, you can comment on that if you want. But in regard to this article they prompted you about the percentage of people who actually believe life matters, when we’re talking about and seeing such a disunity relative to different aspects of culture: color, race, background, all kinds of things, major disagreements. And things are driving in to separate them even further. What is the resolve? George, people are out in the street, are demanding of government to do certain things and certain laws here and there. But can those kind of responses fix the problem that we have?
George Barna: No. I mean, when we’re left to our own chaos and the energy emerges, I think what we’re seeing here is that United States today has a profound spiritual deficiency. That spiritual deficiency in turn is producing a worldview crisis. And that worldview crisis is what’s responsible for our cultural demise.
Really the only solution is going to be for us to restore the moral, the ethical, the spiritual foundations, going back to a true understanding of the nature, character and purposes of God, the role of Jesus Christ in our lives, the place of the Bible in terms of truth and morality and guidance for life. The role of the church as a community of believers who encourage each other and to help each other to be accountable to living in accordance with God and his ways.
Unless we get back to that, we’re left leaving humankind as the dictators of what our reality is going to be. And the kind of chaos and anarchy that we’re seeing and experiencing today is only going to continue and expand unless we get back to God in His place.
Sam Rohrer: George, what you’ve just explained or as listeners are listening, they say, “Yeah, I’ve heard that before.” Well, yes, ladies and gentlemen, you have, because the solution from God’s perspective is very clear. It is very simple, but it seems that we just are having enormous difficulty doing this. That’s even in the life, not just those who reject God, but even those who say they fear God.
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Welcome back to Stand in the Gap Today. I’m Sam Rohrer accompanied by Dr. Gary Dull and our special guest today, Dr. George Barna. He is now the director of research at the Cultural Research Center there in Arizona Christian University. He has a website there, arizonachristian.edu, I know is one place that you can go to pick up the release of what research we’re talking about today. Arizonachristian.edu, and just look for release number six and you’ll find the data from what we’re talking about here today.
I’d also just encourage all of you who are listening to know that this, as I mentioned at the beginning of the program, this is fourth in a series that is continuing throughout this year that’s based off of the largest research of worldview attitudes and so forth across the country that’s been undertaken by anyone. And we’re been dealing with this as we go through the year, pieces of this research. We’re dealing with this about once a month.
So I think May 22nd was the last one. But if you go to our website, standinthegapradio.com or if you have our app, if you don’t download it, put in the phrase, “stand in the gap” and you can do that. But you can search by topics. Here’s the point. You can search by topics. If you put in George Barna name as an example, you will find these four.
You put these four together and what is happening, you will have just an amazing series of information that tells you exactly what the attitudes of those in America are today and not just those who are nonbelievers. But so much of this deals with those who identify as part of the household of faith or evangelicals, whatever the word would be. That’s all a part of it. It’s very, very interesting and usable if you can take advantage of it, so I’d encourage you to do that.
But George was talking about a little bit on the other side. Once a culture rejects the concept of God as creator and therefore, if you reject that, then you can reject the concept of God as the judge of our actions. And therefore, it’s an easy thing to throw out God altogether as the determiner of moral truth.
That’s really what’s been done. Put that all together, the consequences of that choice continue to produce a long list of victims. Once a culture moves to the embracing, for an example, embracing of lies and deception as standard or bribery and corruption or unrestrained sexual activity, it will look like contemporary America. And it’s going to look like most of the nations of the world.
We can see this in redefined families, children outside of marriage, or no marriage at all. Or fake news, lies, in what we see and hear. Abortion and institutionalized bribery and corruption, they all go together. Nations who choose to reject God’s moral truth will always see these consequences that we’re seeing today. And they’re going to see a landscape littered with the victims of those choices.
George, in your recent research, building out on it, you posed five different scenarios and asked for people to comment. I’d like to get your comments on three of them in this segment if we could. First, you asked people not necessarily in this order, but one of the five, you asked them to comment on what God says precisely in Proverbs 6:16 that he hates and that is a lying tongue. What did you ask? What did you find out and why does this matter so much to us as a nation today?
George Barna: Well, in the course of the survey, because a worldview is not just about beliefs, it’s about how you translate those beliefs into behavior. We measure behavior as well. So in one section of the survey, we gave people five different scenarios and asked what kind of advice they’d give to somebody who is asking about how to deal with a particular behavior.
One of those was telling a falsehood of minor consequence in order to protect their personal best interests or reputation, is that morally acceptable or morally unacceptable? What we found was that 47% said that basically lying just because it’s something you want to do for your best interests is not morally acceptable. Not a majority; a large minority, but nevertheless, a minority of people saying that that kind of deceit is okay. We found that there were particular groups that were very open to this.
In fact, if we look at spiritual skeptics, sometimes called “the nones,” but these are people who say, “We don’t know if God exists. We don’t care if God exists. We don’t care about religion. Don’t even want to answer question.” They’re the fastest-growing faith group in America today, and only one third of them said that telling lies is morally unacceptable.
So here we are. And we have to realize that as society relies upon itself and others to determine righteousness, what’s morally acceptable and lying is approved, well, then we can expect all kinds of bad decisions to be happening. Because this trust between people is going to increase, which we see happening today, and this kind of lying and the distrust that comes with it fosters the elimination of truth and goodness and righteousness and replaces it with distrust and conflict and selfishness. It’s that slippery slope that some people will talk about. And, man, we are sliding down that slope pretty quickly.
Gary Dull: Well, we sure are, George. Another one of the scenarios that you produced in this particular survey had to do with stealing. How did you ask the question about stealing and what kind of a response did you get? And, really, why does that matter so much?
George Barna: Well, in this particular scenario, what we posed to people was someone who had taken out a loan, a small amount of money that they had borrowed from a relative who was wealthy and they borrowed it. The lender, the relative, hasn’t mentioned paying it back, and so the person who borrowed the money says that they plan not to pay back the money because, frankly, the relative doesn’t need it but the person who borrowed it does. So they wanted to know, is that morally acceptable?
What we found is that four out of 10 Americans said, “Sure, that’s morally acceptable or it’s not even a moral issue.” Again, when we look at this kind of behavior, it builds that just trust between people. What it does is it begins to erode our character, because it’s the playing out of the absence of any kind of absolutes, moral absolutes, rights and wrongs in all situations, and it becomes a stepping stone to continued and larger justifications and rationalizations.
Frankly, it’s another step away from biblical truth. So it leads to behavior that facilitates dishonesty, broken relationships, lost trust, and the absence of the kind of peace of mind that you can have when you know that everybody’s playing by the same rules that everybody for centuries and centuries has agreed that those rules were just and reliable.
But now we’re giving them up. That’s the danger of what we’re seeing in that question, where closing in on half of American, say, “Yeah, if you want to steal money from somebody because you think they’ve got enough they won’t miss it, that’s morally acceptable.” That’s scary.
Sam Rohrer: Yep. It is a fact, Gary. And, George, I’ve got to get to the third one because this was a big one. You posed a question surrounding the issue of sex outside marriage, but the results for me were shockingly big. Tell us what you ask and what that means.
George Barna: Yeah. We asked whether or not people felt that having sexual relations with someone that they love and expect to marry in the future is morally acceptable. And yeah, I would say, shockingly, only one out of four Americans say that is not morally acceptable. Most people say, “Yeah, well, of course. That’s okay.”
In fact, that we found that only one out of four people from mainline churches, only one out of four people from Catholic churches, only half of people who attend evangelical churches, only one out of five people under the age of 30 all said that it was unacceptable morally. So you got most people saying, “Yeah, run with it.”
Of course, that’s at odds with biblical teachings about marriage, about sexual relations. It allows our feelings and felt needs to trump God’s truth. So we’ve been developing and now we’re living out this new perspective on male/female relationships, on role and the place of sex in a marriage. What we’re doing practically is redefining the boundaries and the expectations of what family means.
I know we got to go to break, but I would just say in summary, all three of these scenarios fit within that redefinition of truth, the redefinition of morality, the redefinition of authority. And it’s part of this new cultural narrative that has emerged.
Sam Rohrer: George, to me it makes it very, very clear why you can say a moral freefall. Because if I take these numbers again and look at them, 40% in effect say it’s okay to steal. If I’m taking these numbers right, 53% say it is okay to lie, 75% say that sex outside marriage is fine.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you don’t think that that is a problem, then you’re not really thinking. Those are unbelievable numbers.
And George, as you’re saying, once we put ourselves in a position of saying that what God says, “Thou shalt not steal,” that he doesn’t mean it, that we can decide. Or that “Thou shalt not bear false witness,” which is lying and that God hates it and we say it’s okay. Or if he says, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” which means premarital sex or any other variation of what God says, it’s okay. It’s 75%, right? That’s significant, ladies and gentlemen. Why this issue? The program today is America in moral freefall.
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We’re going into our final segment now and we’re going to try and bring some final analysis and conclusion to this. We present and are presenting research. That’s what God has called George Barna to do, provide research, information. It is important. Information can be knowledge and knowledge is critical to decision making. It’s appropriate.
Biblically, we’re told to seek counsel. That is getting information and knowledge, and we’re told to get it from the right place; it’s all through scripture. So that’s appropriate. From God’s perspective, God says in Proverbs 2:3 that if a person “cries after knowledge,” that’s what the King James says, “cries after knowledge and seeks understanding, then they will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.” So there’s a little bit of a pattern right there.
But then in Proverbs 1:7, it says that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom,” but it says “Fools despise wisdom because they don’t fear God.” So at the end of the day, just like that one-minute program we just heard in the break that I did, the fearing of God is where it starts, and the fearing of God is a choice. We either fear God or we don’t. That’s a choice.
If we do, then it puts us on a path to find knowledge. And with that understanding, then you put it all together and that becomes wisdom. Information for information’s sake without God, without the fear of God, is not wisdom. It can be actually very evil and dangerous. Choosing to fear God is a choice. It brings good consequences.
Deuteronomy 30 talks about that. “Choose God,” it says “and live.” But “choosing to reject God is the choice of a fool,” the Bible says. It will produce death and destruction and it will bring God’s judgment. And that’s how I started the program. Choices have consequences and bad choices produce victims. That’s what happens as we look at America in its decision to walk away from God and we then see the freefall that we’re seeing now.
Question is, can we reverse it? George, I wanted to give you full reign here. Go where you want in this answer as we wrap up this program. But you attempted, and you did this research, you attempted to answer the question a bit relative to how we should respond to all this. And people can find that again at the website, arizonachristian.edu, and then just look for release six, research six. That’ll be there.
But turning back to God, George, is the key, of course. We’re not doing it, it seems, in this country. Not doing a very good job of it. Although God, I think, has been really trying to get our attention these last several months. So here’s my question to you: What do you think it will take to cause Americans, and I’m going to put Christian Americans, to truly reset our moral standards?
George Barna: Yeah, well, I think the context here is for us to understand that the issue is, are what I called before, a profound spiritual deficiency. And that’s what’s producing the worldview crisis and then in turn the cultural collapse that we’re seeing. So as we look practically at it, the thing that we have to address is that we’re wrestling with poorly-formed character and a broken moral compass. These are spiritual problems that produce bad decisions and bad behaviors.
We can’t fool ourselves into thinking that we can change hearts by changing the law. Defunding the police, Black Lives Matter, all lives matter, whatever movements you come up with, if they do what’s going on now, they’re going to fail. Not necessarily because they’re bad ideas, but simply because they’re not focused on changing hearts.
Really, God is the only one who can do that in a fashion that’s going to be in our best interest. So again, it comes back to it’s not a political issue, it’s not an economic issue. It’s a spiritual issue that needs a spiritual solution.
How do people then change? What I’ve found over the years through the research is that people can change in three different ways. God uses three different approaches to facilitating transformation in our lives.
One way is through hardship, Him allowing us to experience pain or suffering or loss and failure. In other words, He allows us to be broken. We need to be broken of sin, self and society and focus on Him and His principles in order to lead a meaningful life. We can either when we’re broken turn inward, rely on ourselves, or we can turn upward and rely on Him. And that’s the way to go.
A second way that we might begin to see change is through what some might call the law of attraction. That’s by having a relationship with other people whereby we’re providing them with consistent biblical teaching and modeling. They hear it, they see it, they like it. They’re attracted to it.
So we are given the opportunity, we’ve earned the opportunity, to become a personal mentor and then through intent and time and accountability along with the content, we have the privilege of being able to lead somebody down a better path. The best way to do it isn’t to beat them over the head with the Bible, but to be asking them questions about what they believe and why. And playing that out through a Socratic dialogue, being able to bring them back to the truth that they may not have recognized as God’s, but ultimately it is.
Third way people might change is through anticipation: recognizing what’s coming down the pike, what their own needs and desires are, what is going to be best in the end run or long run, and then initiate the transition that will get them there.
So which way will we take? It looks like we’re moving toward hardship where America has said, “Now I’ve got to experience pain or suffering or loss or failure in order to be pushed to that point where we say, ‘Okay, this isn’t working. I need to try something different.'” That’s a very difficult route to travel, but it looks like that’s the one that America’s choosing now.
Our better routes to travel: I wish that the church had a stronger voice. I wish that church leaders were not as invisible in this important cultural moment and that they were actually giving God’s truth and perspectives and principles to people so they could make better decisions. Unfortunately, I don’t see enough of that happening.
Sam Rohrer: George, excellent summary there. Gary, I want to turn to you. There’s not much time left to give a comment if you want. And then I want you to close in prayer in regard to these things, because it’s God’s people and certainly the pulpit that plays a key, key role here today.
Gary Dull: Well, I agree with that 100%, Sam. And, George, thank you very much, once again, for sharing with us what you have.
My mind goes back to the concept that we need to turn back to God and in Lamentations 3, the Word of God says in verse 40: “Let us search and try our ways and turn again to the Lord. Let us lift up our heart with our hands under God in the heavens. We have transgressed and have rebelled.”
Father, as we come to you today, we know that our nation was founded on biblical truth and biblical principles. And yet it just seems that year after year, we get further away from those principles. We get further away from truth. We do that which is right in our own eyes and our own heart and that brings sorrow to Your heart.
I pray, dear Lord, that all across this nation, from the pulpit to the pew to the person, the individual Christian, that we would do as this passage tells us, to search and try our ways. And when we find that we’ve gone away from You, that we will repent and turn back to You to live for Your glory. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.
Sam Rohrer: Amen. Thank you, Gary, and thank you, George, for being with us. God bless you. I just pray that He continues to bless the information that you are sharing and putting together.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being with us today. This is the end of the week going into the weekend. Stand in the gap for truth wherever you are. Take the information of this week. Share it, pray about it, put it before others. And we’ll see you back here on Monday, the Lord willing.
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