DON'T FORGET GOD -- Devotional for July 5, from "Good Seeds"

The wicked shall be cast into hell, and all nations that forget God.” (Psalm 9:17)

The Russian author, Dostoyevsky, reminded us in his book, The Brothers Karamazov, that “if God does not exist, everything is permissible.” We are now seeing this “everything” coming to pass in our modern culture. We have nearly lost our capacity for shock and outrage at the disgusting things that have become everyday occurrences in our society. What’s to blame for this alarming trend? The truth is, it is not something that has been done to us, but rather something we have done to ourselves. As always, the real crisis is spiritual, a corruption of the heart. The result: an aversion to eternal things, leading to an undue concern for all things external and temporal. Steeped in the lusts of the flesh and the pride of life, modern man loathes the very thought of God, wanting to be free of Him. “I suppose religious faith has its place,” they say, “but it’s a private matter.” Hmm…sounds more like a smoke screen for wanting to put God out of their lives, out of the universe, out of the equation. The fact is – and history bears this out – when millions of people stop believing in God (or behave as if there were no God), tragic consequences follow, both public and private. For example, in Romans 1:18-32, we read that those who stop honoring God exchange His blessings and His glory for depravity and soul destruction. The Bible clearly spells out what will happen to persons and nations who set God aside as unnecessary or irrelevant: “The wicked (individual unbelievers) shall be cast into hell, and all nations that forget God.” I fear America is becoming one of those forgetful nations, and we are already beginning to pay the price. The Bible clearly teaches that freedom from God means bondage to sin (see Romans 6). We surely pay the price of sin with the coin of sorrow. America is no longer the happy place it used to be. It’s in a sad state economically, morally, and spiritually. There’s no question that we are a society in decline. We still print, “IN GOD WE TRUST” on our money, but for most people, it’s really "In GOLD we trust." We say, “One nation, under God” in our flag salute, and we proudly sing, “God bless America,” but for more and more Americans, these are just empty words. As Jehovah said of His chosen nation, so He says of us: “With their lips they honor Me, but their hearts are far from Me” (Mark 7:6). Their words feign worship, but their hearts are saying, “God, we won’t bother You if You won’t bother us, okay?” It almost looks as if God has performed a disappearing act in today’s society. But someday “every eye shall see Him” (Revelation 1:7), and “they shall look on Him whom they pierced” with their unbelief (John 19:37). Let that not be you or me!