In our last blog we introduced the worldview of "short-termism" and asserted that it is a deadly mentality that affects every area of the Christian's life. So how do we break free from its captivity? We will be premising our solution from the prophet Jeremiah's counsel to his Babylonian captive, covenant-breaking people, as found in Jeremiah 29. (Do yourself a favor and take the time to read this chapter in its entirety.) If we are to follow the Lord's counsel through the prophet Jeremiah then these are some of the things we must do:

(1) We Must Begin Honoring and Interceding for the Spiritual Gatekeepers of Our Generation

Although the letter of Jeremiah to the captives in Babylon was to counteract the assurances given by the false prophets of a speedy restoration, yet his first words in the word that God had given him wasn’t to the majority of the captives; it wasn’t about how corrupt their leaders had been, and some still were, but instead was to those still holding the position as spiritual gatekeepers for the exiled nation. Note that the letter, designed to correct false prophets and their prophecies, wasn’t intended to subtly spread contempt, division, and rebellion against their leaders. In appealing to and honoring those who had been and were in authority over them, he recognized the biblical principle of submission to authority and that the anointing flows from the head down onto the rest of the body.

We need to hear and heed this word today. Pray for those in authority over us. Stop cursing them and start praying for them. Stop rebelling and start submitting. After all did not Paul command us in Romans 13:1-2: "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment." (Remember the one in authority when Paul wrote this was the notoriously wicked Roman Emperor, Nero!)

Pay attention to Paul’s response, once he found out that he had been irreverent of the High Priest: Act 23:2-5, “And the high priest Ananias commanded those who stood by him to strike him on the mouth. Then Paul said to him, "God is going to strike you, you whitewashed wall! Are you sitting to judge me according to the law, and yet contrary to the law you order me to be struck?" Those who stood by said, "Would you revile God's high priest?" And Paul said, "I did not know, brothers, that he was the high priest, for it is written, 'You shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people.'"

(2) We Must Reconnect with Our Godly History in Order to Position Ourselves with Our Destiny

Here is the prophecy Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Thus says . . . the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon...”

Anticipating their natural tendencies toward blame-shifting and the what-have-I-done-to-deserve-this type treatment, God reminds them that He is the reason they are where they are. Sure it was their sin and rebellion that was the culpable cause of their being in captivity in Babylon, but it was God who was the Sovereign Cause and Carrier, and He used pagans to get the job done.

The place where God had exiled them because of their covenant breaking wickedness was not culturally neutral, nor multi-cultural -- Babylon had its own agenda. They took the best and most brilliant of the Jews to Babylon in order to reeducate and reposition them so that they could repopulate the land with the culture or worldview of Babylon.

Jeremiah’s letter is a rebuke and a challenge to quit sitting around feeling sorry for yourselves and lamenting how bad things are. Eugene Peterson writes, “The aim of the person of faith is not to be as comfortable as possible but to live as deeply and thoroughly as possible – to deal with the reality of life, discover truth, create beauty, act out love. You didn’t do it when you were in Jerusalem. Why don’t you try doing it here, in Babylon?”

Remember --To Forget the Past is to Forfeit the Future!

Someone said, "Those who demean their heritage deny their future." Like ancient Israel, America was founded by God-fearing men who left us a godly heritage. When we talk in terms of the founding of America, we are not referring to the year 1776.  This country was in existence as a nation almost 200 years before independence from England was won. When one examines our early history, there is indisputable proof of a godly heritage.

On July 4, 1821, John Quincy Adams declared:  "The highest glory of the American Revolution was this.  It connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity."

In 1820 Daniel Webster was chosen orator for the epic celebrations in Plymouth, Massachusetts, commemorating the Pilgrims' bicentennial landing. He eloquently uttered: "More than all a government and country whereto commenced with the very first foundations laid under the divine right of the Christian religion. ...Our fathers were brought here by their high veneration for the Christian religion. They journeyed by its light, labored in its hope, and sought to incorporate its principles with the elements of their society and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions, civil, political, as well as literary."

One must be considered and enemy of Christ as well as America, who attempts to denude, distort, rewrite and deny us our Christian heritage. Who among us can deny that there has been a radical foundational shift in our nation so that we have forgotten our godly heritage!

A Bridge-building Generation connects with the past history and reaches forth to the future generations with the challenge to go forward with confidence, but don’t forget your godly history! Things did not begin nor will they end with us!

Could it very well be that this Old Testament story gives us a glimpse of God’s plan for his people in the world—not just in the city, but everywhere. His plan is not to rescue us from the world, but to rescue us from sin and then send us into the world to be His re-presenters. If you could have eavesdropped on the Jewish captives, you would have heard them talk about their being in Babylon by the use of words like “banished” and “condemned” to describe what God had done to them. But that is not how God saw things. He viewed the exile as a mission: “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you” (Jer. 29:7). The exiles were not just captives, they were also missionaries, and they would find God’s blessing in seeking the good of the city where God sent them.

(3) We Must Establish Economic Viability by Building Strong Multi-generational Businesses

‘Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce.’ Viability means practicalness, able to grow, productive and prosperous.

Eugene Peterson, tries to imagine the complaints of God’s people in exile: “Oh, a terrible thing has happened to us, and it's not fair. I know we weren't perfect, but we were no worse than the rest of them and here we end up in this Babylonian desert. Why us? We can't understand the language. We don't like the food. The manners of the Babylonians are coarse. The schools are substandard. There is not decent place to worship. The plains are barren. The weather is atrociously hot. The temples are polluted with immorality. Everyone speaks with an accent. I don't like it here! And many of the exiles tended towards a state of bitterness and self-pity and despair, depression and to make matters worse, there was prophets, who rose among them and said, "Don't worry. In two years the Babylonian Empire is going to collapse, and we are all going back home to Jerusalem. So just hold on. Don't put down any roots. Don't engage. Don't work too hard. Just wait things out. Just get by. Just get over." And sometime later, Jeremiah writes this letter we just read to these depressed, despondent withdrawn exiles that were holding onto lies and he tells them, don't listen, don't believe the lies that you are hearing. Put down roots. Live in hope in Babylon because you have a God of promise.”

In Luke 19:13, Jesus gives a command via a parable: “And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till I come.” The word “occupy” means to do business. We can’t do business if we are planning on going out of business any day. Dennis Peacocke was on target when he said, "Runners don’t rule and rulers don’t run." We must get out of a renter’s mentality and embrace that of an owner! We must become generational in our thinking instead of terminal. We must think as Sons in the Family Firm of Almighty and Sons rather than as slaves to a system! We must depend upon a Big God and not upon Big Government! We must believe that it is His will that you prosper and be in health even as your soul prospers. Break the poverty mentality and begin to develop the Kingdom mentality of Matthew 6:33, “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

Pastor Terry Christ laments for so many of us as he writes: “Robbed of a theological incentive to “plant vineyards,” my spiritual forefathers didn’t plan for the future. To put down their roots very deep was, to them, a sign of disbelief in Jesus’ very soon coming. Their tentative efforts to build businesses, therefore, were never very successful.”

We close this article with the pertinent, albeit, painful questions posed by Dennis Peacocke: "Why do we insist on preparing for defeat? Why do we continue to let the secular forces always  rush back in to fill the void left by the historically consistent implosion of humanistic, cultural cardiac-arrest? Only eternity will reveal how human beings and nations have needlessly and generationally suffered due to our false reading of the times.  Biblically speaking, we have been in the "last days" for nearly two thousand years!  Great cultures have risen and disintegrated, nations have come and gone, all awaiting God's intervention with the glorious gospel of Christ to bring them life.

Where are the teams of Christian lawyers, educators, scientists, business professionals and city managers, anxiously preparing for their next international assignment as God pulls down the systems of this world?  They're tuned into the wrong channel. Oh, Jesus, what will it take to shatter our unbelief in Your personal stewardship of the nations?  Hello.  Where are the Josephs, Daniels and Deborahs?  Folks, the game isn't over until it's over and the gospel accomplishes its complete work."