I have a hard time saying the pledge of allegiance to the flag and if anyone has any thoughts that can help me I would greatly appreciate it.

It struck me one day when I was asked at a baseball game that I was doing something in rote. I had my hand on my chest and I was pledging my allegiance to the flag, and it made me think of the war in iraq and the people who are dying and killing over there.

I also thought of those who claim we are a Christain Nation and that we need to do everything within our power to put prayer back in schools and legislate morality, then God would bless us.

That word allegiance to me signified worship in that momment and I didn’t want to pledge my allegiance to anything other that Jesus. I want to follow Him first, not America. Then I thought about the apostles who got in trouble for not bowing down to the Emperors in Rome. Am I will to be subjected to the same fate. I hope it never comes to that in our country. I thought about what would happen if Muslims came over and were able to take over our country. Would I be upset and thing that God has abaonded us? Would I think that Christianity was a joke because our country fell apart? I think many Christians would with their God and country celebrations.

I was reminded by the above verses that my home is not anywhere on this earth, and my allegiance is to Jesus Christ alone. It doesn’t matter where I live, I hope by His grace to have the same mind as Christ and in humility become a servant, and become obedient even to the point of death. All of this as I look forward to the return of the King, when we shall all live in glory for ever and ever.

The sad note that my heart aches for is after reading this story “Former Christian Minister now Buddhist monk dies“. The sad thing about this story is he died, without hope and without God. He was lost, and is now suffering in absolute darkness, burning in hell. My heart aches for this man. I can’t help but also think of others like him. Please read the article and know this, there are others within the church that have the same doubts that this man had, and given the right circumstances will come to the same fateful conclusions. “Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” Heb 3:12-13

Does this “10/40 Window” tragedy actually exist? Although statistics show that 1/6 of the world’s population live there, and there are fewer Christians here than anywhere in the world; the definition of Christian in these statistics is pretty broad, including Catholics, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Therefore are there really fewer Christians here comparatively. In a recent article in Restoration Herald Jim Snapp talks about the percentage of Christians in the world when you substract out these broad terms. They are pretty staggering!!!

I noticed this issue of questioning the 10/40 again in a wikipedia article you can find here .

However, something I learned again is the truth that the 10/40 Window shouldn’t be prioritized because of how few Chrsitians that exist there but several other reasons that Justin Long talks about in his article “The Myth of the 10/40 Window?“. Enjoy!!!

“How a faithful nation gets Jesus wrong” is an interesting article. http://www.harpers.org/archive/2005/08/0080695

The article goes on to talk about some pretty interesting statistics about what people in church think about the the Bible. Why is that many church goers have a silly understanding theology? (such as joan of arc was noah’s wife, or that “God helps those who help themselves”)

My answer is it is a lack of discipleship. Jesus’ great commission wasn’t just going and making “decisions” or even baptizing people, that doesn’t make people Christians, but obeying the commandments and teaching others to do the same(matt 5:19). “If you love me, you will obey my commandments.” John 14:21

If everyone picked one or two people to come alongside them and then teach them to read their bible and practically obey what it said we could evangelize the world in no time. I am sure someone has done the math on that, and I know it to be true. So anyways my point is if you are not discipling someone to obey Jesus, then start today, and don’t delay. My recommendation to start would be at least to pray for God to give you someone to disciple you, and also pray for God to show you a couple people you can disciple.