NOTE TO SELF: Over the next 130 days pray your way through the election season. Don't turn it into a rejection season. Privately seek God's exposure of your own sin with the same passion you publicly expose another person's sin. Show some humility. Looking down on someone else rarely gives you a better view of God. Focusing on another person's character flaws does not improve your own. Pray for an exposure of "any hurtful way" that postpones a personal and a national Awakening. It begins with you. TALK LESS! PRAY MORE!
Passion expended to reject, rather than elect candidates for office is an expression of liberty, but it sometimes misses the point. Resist focusing more on a rejection than the election. Rejection punishes many qualified people running for office. Find them and encourage them.
In a republic, the people rule, not the state. "We the people" do not always agree with one another, but it wouldn't kill us to be agreeable with one another. Without establishing basic civility there is no hope for an improved civil government.
Freedom of speech remains one of the vital signs of liberty. Nothing but hot rhetoric only produces a scorched earth that can take your breath away. Don't settle for terminal halitosis. Say a good word about a candidate who can make a difference. They could use your support.
Soul conscience is not a right provided by or tolerated by the state. It is a precious gift from God. Those who love religious liberty should protect it with all their might. Say your piece, but don't forget there is a blessing in being a peacemaker.
Having a clear conscience is rarely produced by smearing another person, or exposing another person's shortcomings in public. It comes from confessing your own sins in private. We the people need to take a deep breath, and take a long walk with God.
Soul conscience is the very heartbeat of religious liberty, and as such it is not limited to the four walls of the church, or the sacred confines of the heart. There is no liberty without the freedom to fully express one's faith everywhere and anywhere.
Those in the media who wish to limit religious liberty would be the first to cry foul, if freedom of the press was suppressed. No newspaper publisher would tolerate being told he can believe and print anything he wants, as long as he only distributed his paper within the confines of his building. Any such limitation by the state would bring a cry of censorship from the media.
Never trust someone who limits liberty and calls it tolerance. Never be bullied into silence by those who think your opinion is not politically correct or Biblically accurate. Your position may be right. Your beliefs may be wrong, but in a democratic republic, the citizen is free to be a wise man or a fool. Time will tell whose values rule the public square.
Having a clean conscience is a not a fool's errand. It is the evidence of your walk with God. Pray for one. Psalm 139 expresses it this way. Pray with me.
" 23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me and know my anxious thoughts;
24 And see if there be any hurtful way in me,
And lead me in the everlasting way."