People like Max Lukado, a minister once known as the “American pastor,” rarely left without words.
Two weeks after the pointless shooting at a Catholic school in Minneapolis, three weeks before the massacre of Ukrainian refugees in Charlotte, it was removed 24 hours after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah.
“I have no words,” he told CBN News, keeping his grief at bay. “It makes us struggle.”
To understand the darkness of this world, Lukado turned to not the geography of maps or charts, but spiritual geography, a sacred arrangement that keeps the tension of what Christians often call “already.”
“Sometimes it just reminds us of places we are within the realm of human history,” Lukado said. “It is: We are between two gardens. We are between the gardens of Eden, between the gardens of eternal life. There was no panic, no chaos. I will confirm my heart and between Adam and Eve, between Adam and Eve, between Adam and Eve, between Adam and Eve and nature, and between my heart and between my heart.
“But now we are continuing in an age where we are moaning because we feel that something is not right, the nature itself, the world itself, and even the creation.”
Although the decline of Christianity is slowing in the United States, it is clear that the country is moving in the direction of Christianity.
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Lukad is one of the consequences of abandoning his relationship with God, and refers to the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4.
Unfortunately, our social media-driven culture has reinforced some of humanity’s darkest instincts. Your instinct can be traced back to your first family. These tendencies ramp out when God lacks in his heart.
“If you don’t have to meet or see someone you don’t agree with and you can’t say anything you want without consequences, then it cultivates this type of hostility,” Lukado said. “It sows the seeds of anger and feels like they don’t agree with them, they have the right to assault and hurt someone.”
It’s certainly a dark diagnosis, but Lukado provided a glow of hope. In fact, he called it the “ultimate cure” of the darkness that has raised an ugly head in the last 24 hours.
“What Charlie Kirk was doing worked well within his rights as an American citizen,” Lukado emphasized. “Whether a person agrees with him or not, whether it’s a matter of whether it’s a problem. What we can’t do, regardless of your perspective, is trying to silence someone with an act of violence or a drop of blood.
And in this dark deadlock, in this hopeless difference, Lukad said there was one way, and that is to “discover God’s peace.”
“Unless a man is in peace with his God and himself, they will never be in peace with their neighbors,” the pastor said. “But when we are at peace with the blood of the stream of Jesus Christ, we trust him for the forgiveness of our sins. We know that our name is written in the book of the Lamb’s Life.
Lukado, pastor of Oaks Hill Church in San Antonio, closed his time on CBN News with powerful prayers for America and Kirk’s surviving wife Erica and their two very young children.
Heavenly Father, we will come to you this day. I know I came to you 24 years ago this day on 9/11, but we still come to you, Father. We are still under attack. Not the New York City tower, but perhaps the good men and women on university campuses, school campuses, and churches. Please mercy. Father, my heart today is children, young adults, young adults, framing how to see the world. Lord, I ask you, do not let them fade to this, and do not let them react kindly to them. But I will trust them in God whom they live in goodness and gives them great grace to which we rely on you.
We will be with your mercy and in Kirk’s family and in the extended family. We continue to pray for all campuses and for all churches. And we ask the Lord that you consider coming back today. Please open the sky. Come for your church. Please accept us in your presence. Save us from this evil generation. But please acknowledge that we can remain faithful, whether you come in our life or not.
We offer this prayer through Christ. Amen.
You can hear more about our conversations in the video above. Lukado tackled the problem of evil – why God causes such fears – and how to deal with anger and anxiety in the age of deep darkness.
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