God change us.....Part II of IV

"Pride goeth before destruction......."

What an unfortunate time this week has been for our community. A young man who many respect and admire, many students consider a mentor and friend & many of us in the christian community consider a brother in Christ.....resigned as the boys basketball coach for improper use of the internet at school. Everything seemed pretty from the outside.......as most things do in our town.

We have an incredibly attractive town. Our downtown is vibrant and beautifully restored. We have impressive parks and recreational facilities unparalleled in communities 5x our size. We have graceful streets lined with regal trees shading beautiful homes. We have economic prosperity seldom found in towns our size with McMansions built on our south hills and lakes. We have it all. And yet the core is rotten. I've made the comment often that you can put paint on a corpse, but it's still a corpse.

We believe we've got it together. Particularly with athletics and speech in our schools and with the prettiness of our city that economic fortune and intelligence has afforded. Yet, as seen this week, we have some real problems that need dealt with. Pornography is just one, albeit heavily present in our town; others are racism against Latinos, arrogance, alcohol provided by parents to their kids' friends while school leaders and those charged with enforcing our laws look the other way, lavish and wasteful use of money-I believe we probably have more Hummers per capita than any city in Indiana, adulterous affairs that have found their way into government offices, the schools and those charged with protecting us-breaking up homes. But we continue to cover all this up-and maybe it is because we ourselves know we are guilty.

The wealth and immorality is breaking down our homes as has become obvious and we need a purging.......maybe this week was the beginning. I believe it will begin in the church. Many of those guilty, and we are all guilty to some degree, profess Christ with their mouth but their heart is far from Him. The church needs to break free from our own arrogance, self-indulgent and immoral behaviour first and allow our families to heal in order to be effective tools to bring about change in others. Unfortunately, many people are rejoicing and deriving great pleasure in the demise of the young man I mentioned above.....as I know many did over my great public humiliation this year. Please pray for him and his family-everything he had hoped for in life, everything he wanted to be, came crashing down around him this week. And I can identify, at least in part, with that.

"If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray, says the Lord, I will heal their land."

God, forgive my own pride and make me your humble servant in changing this community.
It's time to pray for transformation.