These are challenging times in America. The economy is in the toilet, lawlessness is running rampant, and it indeed seems as if the end time is upon us. Despite all of the seemingly clear signs that we are living in the last days, faith and religion have taken blow after blow as the far left continues to push radical agendas that are far from God’s will.
Consequently, young people are attending church at an all-time low. Who can blame them? They are being indoctrinated in our schools, hearing gloom and doom from the mainstream media, and have a general belief that the world is going to the proverbial hell-in-a-handbasket.
While things certainly look bleak, true believers know that they can lean on God for comfort and strength when it appears the world is burning around them. Certainly, there have been signs that young people are looking toward God for strength, as evidenced by the huge revivals in Wilmore, Kentucky, and elsewhere earlier this year, but for many people, all hope seems lost.
There is good news if folks are willing to listen and believe. Pastor Chris Fraley, the senior pastor of Wildwood Calvary Chapel, located in Yucaipa, California, has a powerful message for anyone seeking comfort and truth.
Pastor Fraley leaned into the book of Isaiah for guidance as he spoke of those seeking truth: ” God steps in and encourages them through his prophet to live with the anticipation that he is working and that salvation is coming. He reminds them that his righteousness will be revealed.” Fraley also pointed out that the folks he is speaking of are among those that: “they don’t see any reason to live righteously and to keep justice.”
Fraley seems to be speaking to the lion’s share of Joe Biden’s America with that statement. Many people have so given up hope that they don’t see any reason to live righteously. One need look no further than the spiking crime numbers and drug use in places like California, New York, and Chicago.
Fraley also speaks of how there are clashing worldviews between the secular and the righteous. He continued: “One is a secular worldview where the line of morality is always adjusting to the culture. The other is a biblical worldview where the authority for right and wrong is God’s Word. For the child of God, everything must be looked at within our world through the lens of God’s Word.”
This is a juxtaposition that so many struggle with. It is easy to question why there is so much evil and suffering in the world. If God is indeed real, why are so many people hurting? Fraley also spoke to this: “We can lose hope. We might ask ourselves, ‘Why is the world falling apart? Where is God in all this? Why is he allowing such horrific sin to continue?’ Fraley reiterated that this is: “what the people were struggling with in Isaiah’s day. The Lord reminds his people, ‘Don’t give up because of what you see in the world around you, the injustice, the depravity. Know that I am working, I am watching, and one day soon salvation will come.’”
Indeed, the lack of faith in a higher power is one of the greatest obstacles Americans are facing. We were once “One Nation Under God,” but some of the forces at work seek to remove God from that equation. Pastor Fraley gives a simple message, but one that everyone who feels lost and hopeless should lean into, especially now.
