Remembering the horizon

I remember ten years ago reading about the death of JFK, Jr. His plane crashed, and it killed all on board. The tragic thing about the crash was that it was due to JFK's error. He was not completely certified as a pilot, and he did not know how to fly using his instruments. A pilot needs to be able to fly based solely on his instruments in the case of poor visibility. JFK was flying his plane at dusk, and he lost sight of his horizon. The plane gradually descended, and before he knew it, he crashed full speed into the ground.


A similar thing happened to the Israelites. God had delivered them from slavery, provided for them in the wilderness, yet Judges 2:10 says that after Joshua and his generation died, another generation arose that did not know the Lord, nor what he had done for Israel. They had forgotten their moral and spiritual horizon - abandoning the Lord and His will for their lives. This leads the entire nation and its society on a downward spiral that is summed up in the last verse in Judges - "Everyone did what was right in his own eyes." 


Isn't that what we're experiencing now? In a day and age where "Teen Mom" is one of the most popular shows on TV, where hooking up with a person is just as casual as a conversation, where sexual orientation is as much a matter of preference as what team you'll root for, where is our horizon? How will we navigate the landscape of our culture and the new challenges that the advancing times will bring? We need revelation. We need insight into the architect of this world and our hearts. We need to know how to live, what to do - we need wisdom.


Today we pray for God to move in such a way in our lives and our nation that we would return to living by the Bible. We pray this not in a condescending or arrogant way, as if we are morally pure and the world is not. Rather, we pray humbly and desperately, asking God to show us the places where we have lost sight of the horizon and pleading that he might intercede before our nation crashes.


Prayer points:

• Pray that parents would once again take seriously their primary responsibility to impart biblical values and not leave it to the culture, the schools, or even the Church. (Remember values are more “caught” than they are “taught” thus the value of practicing what we preach in our family life.) 
• Pray that our church may become a place where men and women learn to say “No to ungodliness and worldly passion, and to live upright and godly lives in this present age” (Titus 2:12).
• Pray that we might become people of the Book since Biblical values must start with the Bible. (If you uncritically absorb secular values from your TV ten times longer each day than you spend absorbing Biblical values from your Bible, guess which values you will live out ten times more often?)
• Pray that we would become a people who once again embrace Truth (absolute).
• Pray for a return to biblical values regarding sexuality and marriage in our culture. Pray for repentance from the rampant promiscuity and acceptance of homosexuality. 
• Pray that God’s people would be “the salt and light” of our nation, bringing biblical values into the schools, workplaces, and into the halls of government – to the end that many would see the reality of Jesus Christ and respond to the gospel.
• Pray for strength and courage in the face of the persecution that will surely come in response to our desire “to live a godly life in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:12).