You don’t want to be a loser, right? (Not quoting anyone, right?)

Anyway, I reckon a loser might be someone who refuses to pull their spiritual weight in a time of great need.

If you want to be a true contributor to the spiritual condition of our nation and our national government, please dedicate yourself to these things:

*Pray for the leaders. No matter who they are, we have a biblical mandate in I Timothy 2:1-2

I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings, and for all that are in authority…

*Pray in personal repentance for the nation. Sometimes we don’t like to think that we good Christians need to be repenting, but the mandate is there. God commanded Solomon that when rotten stuff happens:

If my people, who are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and heal their land.

There’s plenty of rotten stuff right now, so I reckon this is a good time for repentance and prayer. I wonder if a loser would think he didn’t have anything to repent of?

*Stand with, stand up for and do what you can to help: the weak, the defenseless, the poor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger in our land. (But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God. Leviticus 19:34 BibleHub.com).

This is not a time to sit in our spiritual comfy chairs, making ourselves richer and self-consumed, like the rich man in Luke 12 who decided to tear down his barns to make bigger ones to hold all his goods- that night God required his life. I reckon that guy was a loser…

A contributing Christian is looking out for those who cannot look out for or defend themselves. As James 1:23,27 says:

Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves…Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

And Isaiah 58:6

Is not this the fast I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?

*Be more gracious in your speech than ever. Bullies and uncouth people mock, jeer, and humiliate others. A loser has so little goodness that he must resort to such things. This is not the behavior of a child of God.

Colossians 4:6

Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how ye ought to answer every man.

There may be a time when you may need to assertively call someone in authority a “white-washed sepulcher”. Jesus did. God will let a humble and repentant soul know when that needs to be said.

*Do not fear. That’s what bullies and sick people want you to do. If you fear, they have control over you.

INSTEAD: Remember, you are the child of the Living God, the dunamis power of the Holy Spirit dwells in you.

I remember the old Southern “blessing”, when uppity people need to be put in their place. We’d look at that person and say: “Well, bless your heart.”

It follows Christ’s exhortation in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:44):

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you.

*Overcome that evil with good (that’ll heap some coals of fire on his head)…Romans 12: 20-21. Every time there is an evil, go out and make something good happen. A loser would harm, belittle or take advantage of people for his own greed and lust. Let’s fill our nation with so much good it makes evil fearful!

*Find things of beauty. All creation is praising God- you do it, too. Find a sunset, a bird, a river, a painting, a song. Don’t be so overwhelmed with the losers in the world that you miss the gifts God is giving you.

This is a time for prayer, courage and virtue in the power of the Holy Spirit. May it be a time we Christians are not losers, but instead: glorify God.