Politcal Dreams, Messanic Expectations, and Aspirations

Last night I had a vivid dream. Now it could have been prophetic or as John Wesley said, "It may be God, it may have been the devil, or the the food I ate last night." The dream was about the political aspirations and candidacy of a Christian leader who felt called to become our President.

A number of years ago, two great men of God, Bishop John Gimenez and Pastor Glen Foster, spoke about a vision the Lord had given them of a president who would sit in the oval office of the Whitehouse and call the nation to repentance. In my dream, I asked an aspiring Presidential canidate if he was a man who would be able to do that. In my dream, he said, "yes." As I have pondered this, I am of the opinion that God's hand is resting on a person who is yet to come that will become President that both John Gimenez and Glen Foster envisioned. However, we need to be careful about our own expectations.

When our current President Barack Obama, who I've admired and loved as our President, despite all the critics, ran for the Presidency; many looked toward him with messanic expectations. I believe the Christian right has the capacity to do the same with any of those running for public office. John the Baptist's question of Jesus keeps running in my mind, "Are you Him or shall we look for another?" Many in the Christian world today look toward our candidates as though they should meet some messanic criteria and save our nation. There are no political messiahs!

Even Jesus himself didn't meet the expectations of ancient Israel. Why? Because the kingdoms of this world are not the kingdom of God. America is not the kingdom of God and even though it had deeply Christian influences in its history - it has never been the Kingdom Of God. The kingdom of God does not have slavery, capitalism, war, economic inequality, or injustice. These issues will never be resolved in our country by a President or legislative process. Israel had the ten commandments and they didn't produce anything except the furtherance of sin and death. Read the book of Romans. In choosing our candidates for office, we need to look at qualifications, credentials and experience just like any other employer does when he hires a new worker. We also need to kill off anything with in us that thinks that Jesus is in the business of turning American into some kind of Christian Utopia. Jesus said "My kingdom is not of this world, had it been so they would have fought for me..." What is the Christian community fighting for?

Are we looking for a godly president who will legislate or use executive orders to Christianize our nation? Constantine tried this one during his rule of the Roman empire. He tried to legislate christianity in the culture through law. It didn't work and it was detrimental to the church... and the Western Church has never really recovered from it. William Penn once asked "Do we think we can force conversion on people?" So the next time I have a dream - I am not going to just stand up and proclaim it as a prophetic dream. During my dream I found myself sharing the visions of John Gimenez and Glen Foster with a man who was contemplating running for public office, that person responded that doing something like "calling the nation to repentance on TV" was a hard thing to do. Some believe we have leaders who can do that without compromise.  I've yet to find this kind of leader in America yet.

Yes we need the godly leadership in our country today. However, in my humble opinion, we have too high expectations on our candidates, so much so, that our expectations are messanic in nature and we too often forget that there is no one "Righteous" enough or godly enough to meet our expectation of a president ushering in the millennial rule of Christ!  God is not looking to place a "Pastor in Chief" in the Oval Office.  We need men and women of God who understand who have the qualifications in leading the government in a CEO fashion to make it work.  I enjoy the idea of a President who relies of his "faith" to inform his work place ethic.  But, just because someone says they are born again doesn't mean they can do the job effectively.  We need godly leaders who are gifted, qualified, and who demonstrate a character reflective of Christ to lead our government - but we also need leadership that knows how to work with every branch, department, and understands how to effectively manage the finances and economy of our country without bankrupting it.  A friend of mine recently asked me, "Do we want a president who gives us comfort or fixes what's wrong with our government?"  It's a great question!