In the sands of American history, there’s arguably no stretch more nerve-racking than the final weeks of October during an election year. Even if you’re not on edge, you can still sense the tensity in the air. With only one week left until Election Night, the curiosity across the country is palpable as anticipation builds and pique nears its peak.
Like many, I don’t fancy myself with deep political acumen or tempt egocentrism as the center of a finite worldview. If anything, I just want to keep up with the news to know how to pray for my county, city, state, and country. Apart from that, I’m not one to hitch my faith to narratives rooted in intimidation and fear.
Yet, as for the point of this post, I want to encourage us to anticipate trust in the coming days. Not anger, not disappointment, but vertical confidence ready to be humble. As a wise voice recently reminded me, the time is now not only to have faith in the present…but in advance. While human nature seeks certainty to offset discomfort, to calm the storm ahead of us, when we consider Jesus, we find the opposite. When He was distraught, when the storm was imminent, He counted it all joy to wait on the improbable and believe in the impossible respectively. By His example and the Comforter in tandem, we can receive the gift of faith, pursue the power of prayer, and believe with purity intact for the breakthroughs we crave.
Having said that, there’s hardly a solution that instantly quenches our anxieties this side of heaven; hence, the call we have to lean on God as we cast our cares upon Him (1 Peter 5:6-7). Among my concerns is the tendency we have to leave the backdoor open for anger, doubt, and entitlement to manifest.
For instance, in my case, there are times I will declare confidence in prayer yet simultaneously cling to the thought of wrestling with God about our country’s future later on. The conviction here lies in what I’m making room for. While yielding to God is a wise move, if we’re preemptively giving our faith an out, is it really faith at all?
Regardless of where we stand, we must ask ourselves if there’s anything or anyone outside the divine to which we’re anchoring our trust. If our belief is confined to the moment, in the ways of man, then the holy perspective in which it’s designed to thrive will likely suffer. Far too often, we’re content to reference God as a cause-to-effect, as a reaction to the storm. Little do we know in doing this, we sustain the historic pattern of misappropriating Christ’s identity amid conflict desperate for a worldly king to set us free.
My charge to us is as we contend for God’s will to be realized in this nation is two-fold:
1) Let’s recognize the Messiahship of Jesus by anticipating the experience of God out of the present into the future. In doing this, we can create room for our emotions, thoughts, and beliefs to find rest, even if our surface goals and expectations aren’t realized.
2) Let’s surrender our contingency plans to grapple with God if we don’t see the immediate fruit of our hope. As many social media posts have highlighted, the same God who sent His one and only Son, is still on the throne regardless of the election outcome; however, we must understand this isn’t a call to passivity, but to lift our faith and sow gratitude into our hope for a better tomorrow.
At the end of the day, God is faithful to establish His purposes through the authorities He appoints and the decisions we make. At the very least, knowing God’s desire to partner with us is not subject to the color of democracy, is enough for me to stiff-arm simmering apprehensions.
Whatever compels me to lean in, I’m all in.
Cover photo creds: Gallup News
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