Speak friend and enter.

Following my new consistant blog updating lie I tell myself, here is my weekly update about a month after the last one :-p Things are going pretty well in Paul-world. I'll be going back to school soon, which is a mix of good and bad. And here for your perusal is another devotional I done wrote a while ago. Hyuk.

Politics. I don’t know about you, but the very word makes me cringe. If I had to define the word based on my understanding of it, it would probably run something like “n. the way a person or group twists the facts to make them say what they want” or possibly “n. the set of values a person or group uses to define everyone but themselves as wrong”. As it turns out I have a very poor understanding of politics.
Taking a cue from John (the pastor, not the disciple) I went to Dictionary.com and looked it up. Politics: singular noun, The art or science of government or governing, especially the governing of a political entity, such as a nation, and the administration and control of its internal and external affairs. So, basically, its how something is governed. Ok, so what is governing? Govern: verb, To have or exercise a determining influence. Big words! What does it boil down to? Control, that’s it. So politics is how something is controlled, and a person’s choice in politics is how that person feels things should be controlled. It makes sense. So, for a Christian, where does God fit into all this? Well, He doesn’t. Its kind of like the old example of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, except in this case its more like trying to fit the whole puzzle into one of the little pegs. Square or round, it just won’t work. To be a Christian, to be Christ-like, we have to seek His will, the will of God. As John (the disciple, not the pastor) recorded, ‘Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does...” (John 5:19). Likewise, we should do nothing, except what we see the Son doing.
So where do we go from there? Unfortunately Jesus didn’t leave us instructions on how to vote on controversial matters. He didn’t say whether war with Iraq was something He wanted or which political party if any “had it right”. But He did promise us the Spirit of truth (John 16:13) and the ability to seek and find Him. So really, politics isn’t much different than anything else in the life of a Christian. We should seek to put Him in control, let Him “have and exercise a determining influence” on our lives. Seek His will in the scriptures, pray, ask Him for advice and listen for His answers. Some verses to think on: John 8, 3-11; Romans 13, 1-10