July 6, 2024
The Fourth of July is one of my husband’s very favorite holidays. He loves the colors red, white, and blue and loves to fly the flag.
Growing up, learning about the history of our nation was no fun at all. Today rereading/relearning the happenings of our country’s beginning and how our independence came about stirs my heart. America is surely a mess, but I am thankful it is my country.
Presidents and leaders decades ago spoke openly about their dependence on Almighty God. Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Franklin Roosevelt, and a host of others publicly proclaimed America needed His help. They prayed, often in their inaugural address, inviting God to be involved.
Life in America is good, but there are decisions to be made. Each day brings choices: Do we want to be dependent or independent?
In the book of Jonah, we learn he left town quick as a wink when God called him to go out of his comfort zone. Jonah is a lot like us, or we are a lot like Jonah. We want to be our own boss. We don’t want anybody telling us what to do. We live in America, for Pete’s sake. We want to have independence and the freedom to make our own choices and that trickles over into our relationship with God. We are willing to serve Him, as long as it’s convenient, change the world, as long as it’s not hard, and follow where He leads, as long as it’s where we had already planned to go.
But, when we accept Christ as our Savior, we are giving up our right to be our own boss. We are actually declaring our dependence on God. That’s a good thing. He knows our future and He has plans for it. He created each of us for good works (Ephesians 2:10).
So, we have a choice to make. Do we want to declare our independence from God (because we are Americans and don’t want anyone telling us what to do) or declare our dependence on God (because we’re getting smarter all the time and frankly it’s hard to do everything on our own)?
If you are a believer and follower of Christ, the day you made that decision is your “Dependence Day.” If you don’t know Christ, today would be a great day to declare your dependence on Him!
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Dawn Reed is a pastor's wife and newspaper columnist. Reach her at preacherswife7@yahoo.com.
