by Greg Laurie
“What joy for the nation whose God is the Lord, whose people he has chosen as his inheritance.”
Today is the 244th birthday of the United States of America. Our founding fathers framed a document that Thomas Jefferson drafted for the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia who adopted it on July 4, 1776.
We call it the Declaration of Independence. Among other things it says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The framers acknowledged that all people, from all backgrounds, have dignity before their Creator.
Pastor Chuck Smith once said that sometimes we forget that the Declaration of Independence, which declared independence from foreign tyranny, also declared our dependence on an eternal God.
We see this in its closing words: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
Our forefathers believed there is a God who guides the affairs of mankind. And they clearly founded our nation on the teachings of one book. That book is the Bible.
Thomas Jefferson said, “The Bible is the cornerstone of liberty.”
And Abraham Lincoln said of the Bible in 1864, “All the good the Saviour [sic] gave to the world was communicated through this book. But for it we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man’s welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it.”
However, in our pursuit of freedom I think we’ve lost sight of the Creator who gave us clear parameters to live by. We need to turn back to God. Although we have forgotten Him, He has not forgotten us.