Win the private battles, and the public ones will be easier.
I’ve been thinking about how much energy we put into the public fights over faith—school prayer, the Ten Commandments on the wall, that sort of thing.
They matter. But sometimes I wonder if we’ve got the order wrong.
Jesus didn’t really talk about “fixing the system.”
He talked about hearts. He told His followers to believe in Him, repent, forgive, pray, and trust God.
And He warned against making a show of it.
“Go into your room and close the door,” He said, “and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”
That doesn’t mean there’s never a place to speak up publicly. But it does mean that the foundation is laid somewhere quieter.
I’m the first person that needs to hear this.
I pray most days, but we don’t always pray as a family before meals. We should, it’s not hard.
We just don’t.
No law is stopping us. No court ruling can make us start. It’s simply a matter of doing it.
That’s what struck me about the recent headlines here in Texas. We’ve made it easier for students to pray in schools. We’ve passed laws requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed.
Those are good things in my opinion, but they don’t mean much if most of us aren’t doing the simplest things at home.
I can’t help thinking that if more of us simply did those things—prayed at home, opened the Bible with our kids, treated the people in front of us with the grace Christ shows us—some of the bigger battles might take care of themselves.
We probably wouldn’t be able to explain how it happened.
And we wouldn’t get to take the credit.
But I believe we’d see change.
The good news is we don’t have to wait for permission to begin. We can start today, quietly.
The cross and the empty tomb have already settled the ultimate question.
What’s left is to choose our side and then be faithful with whatever God puts in front of us.
That’s not flashy. But it’s the work that counts.
And maybe it’s the work that moves the bigger things too.
It’s important of course, but until we are doing the small things we can already do ourselves, maybe we should worry less about what everyone else can or can’t, will or won’t do.
One easy thing you can do is make sure you and your loved ones all have physical copies of the Bible.
You can buy them here on Amazon.
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