When Does Faith Cross the Line

On Thursday, October 13th, I watched another HISTORIC day of coverage of the January 6th hearings. While watching the truth further unravel it better explained what’s happening in the body of Christ today, and here’s why.

During the tenth hearing, it was discovered that former President Trump declared victory of the 2020 Presidential race super early. Like really early. At first I thought nothing of it but then I saw how dangerous that declaration had become. In that by declaring victory well before the votes had been counted would - without question - place a shroud of fraudulence on the results. And though on the outset that could be seen as harmless, as a Christian, him doing so could also be mistaken as faith in that some might argue that Mr. Trump was merely calling, ‘…those things which be not as though they were.’ And that’s my question for you is: When does faith cross the line?

In many Christian circles, former President Trump’s OVERALL victorious attitude can be misconstrued as faith. Him not accepting the results and demanding that Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, find 11,780 votes can be seen as, ‘faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.’ (James 2:17) It could be seen as if Mr. Trump was merely using his faith, speaking to the mountain of defeat (Mark 11:22-25) and was doing the work of looking for the votes that supposedly had not been counted. What Mr. Trump did, and continues to do is something that we’ve all done. In that there have been times when we haven’t accepted what we thought was supposed to happen. Simply because the whole time we were believing, we thought we were using our mountain moving faith. So when what we were using our faith for doesn’t happen, we take that as the devil fighting us, and we continue to stand – supposedly fighting the good fight of faith (1 Tim 6:12). The problem with that is that we should have never been fighting in the first place. But I digress.

Again, in many Christian circles, what we're seeing today is an ongoing fight. Many of our faith leaders are in the ring, denying the results of the election. In fact, I can turn to many well-known international Christian broadcasters who still deny the election results, even AFTER reporting on 10 separate senate hearings. 10. And I continued to wonder why...until I saw that it’s misconstrued faith.

The fact that we have seen footage of Mr. Trump summoning violent insurrectionists to the Capitol, still has not been enough for some Christians. Some have even refused to watch the senate hearings even though Proverbs 18:13 clearly says, ‘He who answers a matter before he hears it, it is folly and shame to him.’ This would include the matters discussed in the hearings.

Not only that, but the fact that the former President did not contact his former Chair of the Evangelical Advisory Board, Paula White-Cain, to hold a prayer vigil on the stairs of the Capitol on January 6th is a question we need to ask ourselves.

Or why didn't he reach out to his lead outside Christian counsel of his first impeachment trial, Jay Sekulow, to educate the crowd on the proper way to contest election results but instead marshaled violent insurrectionists, is something I don't think some Christians have thought about.

The fact that he didn’t assemble the same group of Black inner-city Pastors he assembled in 2018 when he wanted to discuss the First Step Act to meet him in the Rotunda on January 6th, remains a mystery.

And the fact that he didn’t reach out to mega Pastors Mr. Jack Graham, Mr. Robert Morris, Mr. Jentezen Franklin, Dr. Jeffress or other high profile faith leaders, all of whom have personally prayed for him in the White House to the Capitol on January 6th is a question I don’t think some Christians are willing to ask.

So my question is: Why not call them? And with all due respect, should our leaders be asking the same?

The answer to that question remains to be seen but if I had to guess it would have to be because they didn’t get the result they hoped for. And don’t get me wrong. I get it. I too have had times when I thought I was using my mountain moving faith and believing God for something I thought He told me I could have but like Mr. Trump, I too didn’t get what I hoped for. Unlike Mr. Trump and so many other Christians, I had to move on and accept the hard truth.

Accepting the Hard Results

The hard truth can be likened to Mark 14:27, 29 when ‘…Jesus said to His disciples, “All of you will be made to stumble because of Me this night”…Peter said to Him, “Even if all are made to stumble, yet I will not be.” Think about that for a moment. What do you do when God’s Son tells you that God's arch enemy is coming for you? I mean how do you accept that kind of truth?

What I found is that hard truths are those we don’t want to accept simply because they defy our understanding. I mean how could Peter - the bold, brazen one of the bunch accept that he would be defeated? In the same way Mr. Trump did. He didn’t. As is the case for many Christians who haven’t accepted the results of the 2020 election. They haven’t been willing to accept anything other than victory. And again, that sounds like faith, but the question now becomes: Who told them he would win? Jesus TOLD Peter that he would be sifted. Did God say that Mr. Trump would win the election because if He did, then I too would have gotten the memo and would have voted accordingly. But don't get me wrong, I am in no way saying God told me who to vote for. But just because they voted for him does not mean that God told either of us that either of our candidates would win.

But again, I get it. We’ve all voted for a candidate whose morals, values, and faith aligned with ours, and more importantly, with God’s Word. Yet that candidate lost. Again, I get it because it’s happened to me on several occasions. But after this last election, I spent some time in prayer and I asked God about it and He revealed, not in an audible voice - but in my heart, that no matter who won, He’d use that person. Whether that person was ungodly or whether they served Him wholeheartedly, He would use whomever held that position because in the end, His will will be done. Because remember Romans 13:1 says, “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God”...whether we voted for them, or not.

Besides, do we not think our God does not have the power to use the man who took the time to architect 356 pages of legislative devastation against Black and Brown people (aka the '94 Crime Bill), to select the first Black Vice President of the United States in addition to appointing the first Black woman to sit as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court?

Do we think that our God is so weak that He couldn’t use the same man to appoint a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe as the U.S. Secretary of the Interior which is ‘responsible for the management and conservation of most federal land along with natural resources, leading such agencies as the Bureau of Land Management, the United States Geological Survey, Bureau of Indian Affairs and the National Park Service? [1]

Or are we so stuck in our faith that we continue to believe that the same man couldn’t select a woman, of whom was the first, to lead a successful Democratic campaign? Please don’t tell me that in the 11th month of the year 2022, that today, as children of the Most High God, we believe that our God can only use 1 man to do His will? Please tell me that we still don’t believe that.

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SOURCE

Wikipedia contributors. "United States Secretary of the Interior."

Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 14 Oct. 2022. Web. 30 Oct. 2022.