A Divine Guidance Driven By Faith In God
Word-Of-The-Day: ‘(12) Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people he chose for his inheritance. (16) No king is saved by the size of his army; no warrior escapes by his great strength. (17) A horse is a vain hope for deliverance; despite all its great strength it cannot save. (18) But the eyes of the LORD are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love, (19) to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine. (20) We wait in hope for the LORD; he is our help and our shield.’ (Psalm 33:12, 16-20)
Our Founding Fathers created the United States of America under the premise they were acting under ‘Divine Guidance’ from God to form our nation. Breaking away from what they considered to be the evil tyranny of King George III and the British Empire and the subjugation they were put under through excessive taxation (ironically far less than what we are taxed now) and heavy-handed tactics by the British Army to ‘keep the Colonies in line’, these leaders of rebellion against the crown moved forward to divorce the Colonies from England and forge a new country on a new continent.
The premise was that under God, with God-given rights of freedoms for the individual (initially ‘Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness’, later further defined in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights), ‘We the People’ would form the eventual ‘more perfect union’ that would allow all the people of the United States the ability to achieve prosperity through the lifting of burdensome rules that sought to keep us under the thumb of oppression.
The Declaration of Independence on July 4th 1776 was only the beginning of the process. The War for Independence would not end until the British General Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown on October 19th 1781; this led to the Treaty of Paris in 1783 that formally recognized the United States as an independent nation by Great Britain. The Articles of Confederation were briefly the outline of governance for the new nation from 1781 until the current US Constitution was written on September 17th 1787 and, along with the first ten Amendments known as the Bill of Rights attached to it, ratified by a majority of states on 2 July 1788.
The current governance of the United States under the Constitution formally began under the inauguration of our 1st President, George Washington, on April 30th 1789. Up through today, the United States, while much larger and more powerful than the Founding Fathers could likely imagine, continue to be governed by the three branches of Federal Government; the bicameral (House and Senate) Legislative branch (per Article I of the Constitution), the presidential-led Executive branch (Article II), and the Supreme Court-led Judicial branch (Article III).
Over the course of two-hundred-plus years, there have been a total of twenty-seven Amendments to the Constitution, the first ten being the Bill of Rights – the last Amendment, the Twenty-Seventh, was ratified May 7th 1992 (but was initially proposed as part of the Bill of Rights in 1789). These founding documents have stood, with little changes, for over two hundred years.
These have stood the test of time because our Founders were Godly men who were Faithful to Him; they believed the words of Psalm 33, that God would bless the nation who accepted Him as their King, not an earthly king that was flawed but the Perfect King who is Eternal. They knew, going back to those hot summer days of June and early July in Philadelphia in 1776, that overcoming the preeminent and most powerful nation on earth at that time was a formidable task.
Yet, those fifty-six men who approved and signed Thomas Jefferson’s final draft, facing certain death and deprivation, did so having Faith that God was with them and they would overcome evil and tyranny through Him. The Founders knew that Great Britain had the army and navy, but the British didn’t have as much Faith in the Lord (or had more faith in their own strength), and that made all the difference. The Founders knew their ‘God-math’: The colonists plus God equaled an infinite majority that would defeat any force of any size. They placed their lives in God’s hands in Faith, that He would deliver them from death.
It was through this Faith in God that allowed them to prevail, and it was this same Faith that provided them the guidance that propelled James Madison to frame and create the US Constitution. It is the same Faith we need today, if we are to overcome those obstacles that threaten our ‘more perfect union’ that the Constitution set up. The United States is not perfect, and it never was – but it is a blessed nation under God and it can continue to be so, if we – God’s People – lead the charge of revival to provide the Word of the Lord to those who have not heard it.
Remember the price paid by those who came before us, and the Faith they had in our Creator, and let us capture that same Faith to lead us into the next chapters of history to preserve the United States and its freedoms!
