PASTOR’S NOTE

We are nearing one of the most celebrated of all American Holidays, the Fourth of July, Independence Day.  I read somewhere that more hot dogs are consumed on this one day than any other day or holiday of the year.  It is a time for family, fun and awesome cookouts.  It will be so at my place.  This year we will be blessed to have my other three grandsons from Delaware here.  Needless to say, we are guaranteed to have fireworks without striking a match.  Regardless of anything else that will be going on, I want us as a family and as a church family to pause and truly be grateful for the freedom we have.  We could have been brought under the rule of a tyrant or a run-a-muck military regime.  Thank God for the founding fathers of this great nation who, though not perfect men, were evidently much wiser than those in power now.  These men understood the necessity of the freedoms of worship, speech, assembly and the right to bear arms, among other freedoms.  They understood that it was dangerous to create a special interest group with rights above and beyond that of the rest of the people.  They had seen and experienced these abuses in Europe.  We are watching unfold before us right now in the streets of Iran what happens when corrupt government yields to the will of a supreme leader and then attempts to stop freedom of speech and assembly of its people.  When government feels it can ignore the will of the majority of its people, as in Iran, in order to pursue the agenda of those in power, certain things are inevitable.  Our dear country can and will experience much of the same if we do not do something about it.  Abuses of power is the beginning and the fuel for government that has abandoned government for the people and by the people.  As a result, the people of this nation lose true representation in Washington.  The will of the people ignored for the will of the few.  Its military and other federal agencies established to keep us safe from outside forces will turn their attention inwardly in order to keep the masses in tow.  The freedom to believe and speak independently of government influence will be discouraged and punished.  Our freedoms of assembly and to travel will be greatly restricted and even taxed.  Lives will be lost.  Many of you, like me, feel inadequate to do anything about this.  So let us do what we are best at doing.  Let us pray to the Creator of all free men.  Let us call on God who makes us free in Christ, to turn our nation around and make us dependent only upon Him and independent of all who would try to enslave us.