Friends: When ill winds blow in our culture, who can we trust? Bob

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Spirituality Column #991

November 11, 2025

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Gales of November

By Bob Walters

 “Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation.” - Psalm 12:2

My greatest comfort as a Christian, despite my disquietude with the world – especially at this moment in history with socialist domestic elections, failed national legislative agendas, ridiculously skewed media narratives, murderous international persecutions of the faithful, and irresolvable wars – is knowing I can trust Jesus.

“God is in control.” Really? As a matter of fact, yes. What we are seeing in these contemporary November political storms writ large is the freedom God has given man to screw up the dominion He bequeathed to us, i.e., the Earth. God rules; we rebel.

God has a plan for our salvation, yes; it is faith in Jesus Christ. We are thus delivered eternally from our sins, yet mired in our temporal human desire – yea, surely our inability – to supplant God’s simple truths of love and grace by exerting our fallen nature of pride, greed, lust for earthly power, and rejection of our need for God.

Satan has got us pretty good at the moment; there appears nowhere to turn.

So, we turn away from God? Blame God? Double down on our own fallen, human mistakes and insist we can cobble together a better, more equitable, more just life on Earth if we seek freedom not in Christ but in our own truth? That’s the error of the world; that’s Satan. His goal is to destroy God’s glory and image; i.e., us.

We needn’t replay the particulars of the fall of mankind we see in Genesis 3, nor is there space here to catalogue the manifold foibles of humanity revealed throughout scripture.  In the here and now, the plenipotential cacophony of human communication whether the Internet, news media, politicians, academia, online screeds, or violence in the streets, assaults our senses daily and easily matches the chaos of the Bible.

What’s missing?  The hope of the Bible.  My first time through the Old Testament, or any part of the Bible, well into my adulthood, left me shaken with the images of violence, deceit, and the question of questions, “How could a good God …?”

In time I came to see that the Old Testament is a testimony of what doesn’t work for humanity seeking God’s Kingdom, and that God’s righteousness – like it or not – is unassailable. Later, I realized the New Testament – with its righteousness, sacrifice, grace, love, faith, and truth – is our path to eternal hope, life, and relationship with God.

That is what we trust God controls. That is why our joy in the Lord is our strength.

“The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?” (Psalms 27:1). In times like these, we trust the Lord and pray for his wisdom and strength in our battle against the powers of darkness. Darkness is that which seeks to displace Jesus as Savior, replace peace and hope with fear and guilt, and misplace aspiration with desperation.

Trust in the Lord, and fight the good fight. Don’t be lured by false peace or seduced by panic. Be able “to acknowledge the truth” (2 Timothy 4:7, vv1-7). Pray. Seek God’s wisdom and strength in battles you may have to wage. Freedom isn’t free.

Life as we have known it may indeed be changing, but while politics, false gods, suspect economics, and AI technology may change our circumstances, our human machinations will never change God’s truth. That’s the one thing we can trust.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is aware God allows sin and corruption because it is in our subsequent failures and suffering that we learn the most about reliance on Jesus and God’s love. It is a recipe for joy one would not expect, but a truth we can count on.  Walters wanted to write a breezy piece about November memories. Maybe next week.