Sitting in the safety of my home office contemplating what to write about this week. My heart is heavy with the recent senseless violence in Dallas where a sniper ambushed and killed 5 police officers and injured many more. An incident that took place some 1000 feet from where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Now cops are targeted across America.

Our tallest buildings have been reduced to rubble. Cities and towns across this country are battered by unprecedented storms, turning thousands into refugees in their own country. Our financial system has been looted while our economy have been kept “afloat” by Ponzi schemes. Riots continue to erupt globally by people oppressed by the money masters and the unrest is spreading throughout the world. With the violence, terror attacks and heightened political atmosphere escalating, America has become desensitized and divided as a nation more than ever before. If you’re like me, you’re asking yourself what has happened?

People that I cross paths with are living in fear. Others have just given up, throwing their hands up believing that everyone and everything is so corrupt that there is nothing that can be done to fix what’s going on in the world today. As a result, many people pursue activities that create a numbing escape from the realities of the world.

We have allowed society to pervert and confound Christian doctrines and have turned morality inside out and upside down. We seem to prefer erroneous and false doctrines of the truth, and we prefer an evil to an upright course of conduct. The agenda of this world is clear: to remove God from everything by denying the very conscience He has given us. Truth is ignored, virtue is ridiculed, evil is praised as good and liberating, and God-given moral standards are mocked as a narrow-minded thinking of past generations.

Before you begin that slow clap, let me challenge you with the following:

• We tolerate the murder of our unborn children and call it “freedom of choice”
• We tolerate society’s movement against God’s original design and call it “diversity”
• We tolerate things not of God (paganism) and call it “multiculturalism”
• We tolerate euthanasia of the elderly or sick and call it “compassion”
• We tolerate division in the church and call it “denominational-ism”
• We tolerate intrusion into our homes by the government and call it “safety”
• We tolerate the erosion of Constitution of United States of America and call it “progress”
• We tolerate censorship across the board and call it “political correctness”
• We tolerate the deterioration of the heart and call it “racism”
• We tolerate social policies (rather than accepting our God given responsibilities to be our-brothers-keeper) and call it “charity”
• We tolerate massive debt (rather than accepting our personal responsibility to be “good stewards” of what God has given us) and call it “happiness”

I could go on and on, but I think you get the point!

America is in trouble and we are in need of Divine intervention like never before — the next president will not be the hope we are looking for. Only Jesus Christ is the great hope for a nation rampant with sin and a people enraged with evil. God’s word tells us to, “Put your hope in the LORD both now and forevermore” (Psalm 131:3). It also tell us that, “When the earth totters, and all its inhabitants, it is God who keep steady its pillars. (Psalm 75:3). Remember, God is still on the throne!

With a deepening poverty, debt, homelessness, crime, physical and sexual abuse, racial division in humanity and the disintegration of the traditional family. Alcoholism, heroin addiction, pornography and other dangerous behaviors are relentlessly chipping away at society. And these are further complicated by diseases of many kinds, including Zika, increases in diseases once thought eradicated like tuberculosis and measles, and sexually transmitted diseases. Combined with earthquakes, physical storms, and natural disasters of many kinds all across the world, one wonders how much longer before we wake up and recognize their significance and our response to them.

This is not a narrative to put the fear of the “end times” into people, but rather a narrative of hope. Yes, we need Jesus Christ like never before, but let the power of God’s Word found in Isaiah 58:6-12 (MSG) stir in your heart — unite courageous warriors.

“This is the kind of fast day I’m after:
to break the chains of injustice,
get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
free the oppressed,
cancel debts.
What I’m interested in seeing you do is:
sharing your food with the hungry,
inviting the homeless poor into your homes,
putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad,
being available to your own families.
Do this and the lights will turn on,
and your lives will turn around at once.
Your righteousness will pave your way.
The God of glory will secure your passage.
Then when you pray, God will answer.
You’ll call out for help and I’ll say, ‘Here I am.’

“If you get rid of unfair practices,
quit blaming victims,
quit gossiping about other people’s sins,
If you are generous with the hungry
and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out,
Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness,
your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight.
I will always show you where to go.
I’ll give you a full life in the emptiest of places—
firm muscles, strong bones.
You’ll be like a well-watered garden,
a gurgling spring that never runs dry.
You’ll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew,
rebuild the foundations from out of your past.
You’ll be known as those who can fix anything,
restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate,
make the community livable again.

As the world seems to be falling apart around us, rise above the fear and be hope to a broken people. It’s not time to give up…it’s time to rise up! Remember, you are the light of the world.