FOUNDATIONS

Posted on by michellethurman2344

Gen. 12: 1-3 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, and from your relatives (go for yourself) and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you; and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

The foundation is probably the most important part of a building. If your foundation is faulty then the house which stands on it will start to crumble and fall. Jesus said: Matt. 7:24-27 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine, and acts upon them, may be compared to a wise man, who built his house upon the rock. And the rain descended,and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded upon the rock. And everyone who hears these words of Mine, and does not act upon them, will be like a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against that house; and it fell, and great was its fall.”

The house Jesus spoke of was a life. He used the example of the construction of a house to illustrate the importance of foundations….both in a physical house and in the life we build for ourselves and our children. The foundation we build our lives on is just as important as the foundation a building constructed from wood, masonry, or any other building material is built upon. And, so it is with a nation.

This nation: the United States of America; was built on relationship with God and on His word….and on the premise of spreading the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Men from Europe had been coming to this continent for many decades before the Pilgrims came. They fished the waters along the New England Coast; they explored the coastlines of Canada and into the south of this continent, down into the land of Florida. Some attempts to settle occurred on this continent in the northern regions and into the southern regions, but no nation rose from those settlements and they were lost in the mists of time. There is evidence that the Vikings traveled far inland in Canada and northern United States, but all that is left of those incursions is tantalizing bits of archeological evidence. The Spanish also entered this continent and traveled north, out of Mexico and into some of the southern interiors of this land, but they too disappeared out of the land and concentrated most of their settlements from Mexico south ward; with the exception being California which they lost in the mid 1800’s.

The two settlements that were most successful and have become the foundation for this are Jamestown in the Virginia Colony and Boston in the Massachusetts Colony. And both of these colonies had, as their basic motivation for settlement, strong beliefs and determinations to worship God in freedom and being a light of God to others.

First came the Jamestown settlement. It was here, at Cape Henry….so named for the son of King James…., that Robert Hunt, an Anglican priest, led a group of English settlers down the sandy beach to a place where he erected a seven foot, wooden cross. It was April of 1607; and one hundred and five colonists and thirty crewmen had finally arrived at their destination in Chesapeake Bay. They had set sail from England on December 20, 1606 on the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Deliverance. Their journey took them nearly five months. Robert Hunt, their spiritual advisor, required them to remain on board their ships for an additional three days of personal soul searching and repentance before they disembarked, lifted up that cross on that beach and knelt in the first formal prayer service in the new world. They gave thanks for God’s mercy and grace in bringing them safely to this new land. Hunt declared: “Every plantation, which my Heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.” He then raised his hands to heaven and claimed the land for country and king and consecrated the continent to the glory of God.

Thirteen years later, in November of 1620, the Pilgrims came in the Mayflower and landed on Cape Cod. Prior to their leaving the Mayflower they drew up a document signed by all the men….Puritans and non-Puritans, establishing a covenant between themselves for self governing their colony in the absence of any lawful presence, bringing into existence the first self governing government in the western world. This covenant included the words: “having undertaken for the glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith…..”

Thus, both colonies established the word of God, His Glory, the furtherance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and relationship with Him, as the foundational truth upon which they built their colonies.

Ten years after the Pilgrims arrival, in 1630, John Winthrop arrived with approximately 700 settlers and established a colony near where the Pilgrims had settled; a city called Boston. He wrote out his guidelines for this colony and included the words: “a city on a hill”; a part of a special pact they made with God to be a holy community….a light to the world. He quotes from: Deu. 30:15-19 “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity; in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments, and His statues and His judgments, that you may live and multiply, and the Lord your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to possess it. But if your heart turns away and will not obey, but are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall surely perish. You shall not prolong your days in the land, where you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess it. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, and that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that my may live, you and your descendants.”

Abraham heard the voice of the Lord. He followed after Him and trusted Him in all his ways and the Lord blessed him and caused him to be a blessing to all the world. Through Abraham, God established the nation of Israel and through Israel God brought forth the Messiah, Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world and saves all those who believe and call upon His Name.

Through Robert Hunt, John Winthrop and the Pilgrims, this land was built on the foundation of God’s word, His love and relationship with Him on a national level. We are a blessed nation because of our foundation of faith in God through Christ Jesus. All within this nation, Christian and non-Christian alike, are blessed because of the foundation upon which this nation has been built.

Today there are people who are trying to pull down our foundation. They are actively destroying our history. If the foundation is destroyed, the nation will be destroyed. Yes, much of our history is ugly. There isn’t a nation in the world, or ever has been, that is perfect and has a perfect history; but history is what is in the past. It is what has happened. We can learn from the past. We can build for a better future. But the foundation is what we build on. The foundation must remain solid and unbroken.

Our foundation is built on the word of God; on our worship of Him and our reliance on Him. We are one nation, under God. We stand firm on that foundation. God bless America; land that we love. Stand beside her, oh Lord; and guide her; through all the dark days we are experiencing in this dark, and uncertain year. Bring us safely through and help us to keep our feet firmly planted on the Rock of our Foundation. This we pray in the Name of Jesus. Amen!

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Published by michellethurman2344

I was born in California, but both my parents were born in different areas of rural Oklahoma. My father grew up on a small cattle ranch and my mother grew up in the hills of eastern Oklahoma near the Ozark Mts. Both were born in the 1920's when Oklahoma was still more a part of the 1800's than the twentieth century so I like to say I was born of parents who were the last generation born during the old west. Their old west roots had a huge impact on my childhood. I spent the first three years of my life on my Granny's chicken farm. She was my father's grandmother and she owned 60 acres of alfalfa which she rented out and lived on three acres of barnyard where she raised chickens. There was some electricity, but no indoor plumbing outside of a faucet in the kitchen. The toilet was down the boardwalk in a small shed...in other words...an outhouse. The shower was a room under the water tank in the pumphouse. Granny's little three room house was the only painted building on the property. Everything else was raw, unpainted wood including the two room house my parents lived in. And I loved living on that little farm where I pretty much had free run of the barnyard and sometimes even wandered into the fields surrounding it. The town where I was born is along the Colorado River in the middle of the California desert and across the river from the Arizona desert and while we did live there for the first 12 years of my life, we moved a lot due to my father's employment. He was a big equipment operator and we moved to where the work took him, but usually only six months of the year then we moved back to our hometown. We moved to Northern California in 1958 and I have lived here ever since. I am a mother, a grandmother, have one great-grandchild and recently retired. I am divorced and now live with my youngest sister. My sisters and I like to cruise and take road trips. I am enjoying my life.

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