By Bill Bathman
Faces of all colour have represented the United States in the current Olympic Games in London. Some have overcome serious injuries and bounced back from previous defeats. We have seen the tension on their faces, the tears of joy and of sorrow, because each one has put their heart and soul into long, hard hours of disciplined training.
They have brought back glory and honour to our country and renewed respect for America among the nations. We have rejoiced with them as they stood, justifiably proud, front and centre on the podium, with their hands over their heart while a billion people worldwide heard our National Anthem played again and again.
And now, this pathetic government administration, whose Secretary of the Treasury is himself a “tax cheat,” wants to punish the achievements of these returning heroes with a tax on the medals they’ve won. Medals painfully earned by years of strict discipline and sacrificial hours of determined dedication to deliver, or face the disappointment of defeat. Meanwhile, lesser breeds of their fellow citizens sit in occupation of other people’s private property, smoking pot and fornicating while at the same time criticizing the very hand that feeds them. O God, help us!
Somehow we’ve lost our sense of true values. We can’t even agree on what constitutes a marriage these days. The Nanny State micro-managing mayors of our largest cities confidently tell us what our values should be; how much soda we should drink, how much salt to use and what food is good for us and how mothers ought to feed their babies. Where does the meddling control of big government end? In slavery—that’s where!
You say, “Wait Bill. That’s too strong.” Listen, my dear friend, I have travelled around the world multiple times and visited more than 100 countries, my conclusion: America has lost more freedoms in the past fifty years than most other nations ever had to begin with! Most of our youth today have very little concept of the extent of that loss, or the consequences it will have on their future. America needs to awake—before the quake.
Maybe this is what happens to a country that expels God from the classrooms of its schools, that banishes the Bible, our moral roadmap, from academic curricula; that deliberately discards the moral Foundations so carefully laid by our Founding Fathers; a nation that callously murders its innocent, unborn children—and that by choice—thus depriving them of LIFE, liberty or the pursuit of anything.
Our goal is not merely Olympian Gold that will one day perish, but rather to be champions for Jesus Christ in a world that ignores Him. To run the race, to face the odds, to overcome the obstacles in order than one day we may humbly bow in His divine presence, and hear His words of positive encouragement: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” That is the ultimate prize of the high calling of God.
And while we’re at it, it will help to lay up treasures in Heaven, where moth and rust cannot destroy, thieves are unable to steal and the tax man has no authority to misappropriate. The benefits of such investment are out of this world.
Rev. Bill Bathman is Chairman of the Board of Frontline Fellowship, a Great Commission ministry headquartered in South Africa with worldwide outreach. Rev. Bathman is also the author of Going Through – Even if the Door is Closed.
He can be contacted at [email protected]. Visit his blog at http://pennireef1west.wordpress.com.
© 2012. Used by Permission
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