Yesterday was a busy day. Ohio State withstood a second-half comeback by Notre Dame last night to win the NCAA football championship. Nearly three thousand of the world’s wealthiest people gathered in Davos for the World Economic Forum. And retrospectives and remembrances related to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were shared widely as the nation remembered the great civil rights leader. But, of course, the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as our forty-seventh president occupied center stage.

A New York Times analysis of the 2024 election concluded that voters “were itching for change” and “wanted someone to acknowledge that the status quo was not working for them.” Accordingly, the Times reported that the incoming president “wants to seize momentum” as he begins his administration.

That he did.

“A tide of change is sweeping the country”

Mr. Trump began his inaugural address by declaring, “The golden age of America begins right now.” He announced, “We are at the start of a thrilling new era of national success. A tide of change is sweeping the country.” As part of that change, he signed a large number of executive actions described by Fox News as “a massive, first wave of policy priorities” on a variety of issues. Among them was renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.”

Unsurprisingly, criticism of his leadership has already begun. One commentator bemoaned “the takeover of the United States by a base mentality of greed and corruption.” Our politics may seem chaotic and divisive, but consider this: over the last decade, the UK has seen six prime ministers, four general elections, two referendums, and the death of the world’s longest-serving monarch. South Korea’s president has been impeached, formally arrested, and faces possible imprisonment.

By contrast, Mr. Trump began his Inauguration Day with a worship service at St. John’s Episcopal Church, followed by a cup of tea with the departing Bidens. Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump then shared a ride to the Capitol, where all four former presidents attended the inauguration. For the first time in US history, foreign leaders attended the event as well.

The day ended with inaugural balls representing “the peaceful transfer of power, a fundamental principle of American democracy.”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness”

Mr. Trump was blunt about the challenges and problems he believes we are facing as a nation. But he also stated, “My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier.”

To this end, consider a simple fact proclaimed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in a 1957 sermon:

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

Let’s reflect on the logic of his observation: A room is dark precisely because it lacks light. More darkness will not remedy the situation. Only light can defeat the dark. But the good news is that light always defeats the dark. Every time you turn on a light switch, the darkness is banished.

Similarly, “Hate cannot drive out hate.” If you have hatred in your heart for a person, more animosity will only make things worse. Tolerating the person may prevent hurtful actions, but it does not banish feelings of hatred or ameliorate their cause. As Dr. King noted, “Only love can do that.”

What makes us “good citizens”?

Here’s the problem: Unconditional love that puts the other person first, choosing to pardon their sins and seeking to restore what is broken, is a “fruit” of God’s Spirit (Galatians 5:22), not human effort. No matter how hard you try, you cannot manufacture it.

This is why “wars and rumors of wars” will continue to the end of human history (Matthew 24:6). It is why past ceasefires in the Middle East have not brought lasting peace to the Middle East. And it is why America’s greatest need is for Americans to experience and share the transforming love of God in Christ.

Daniel Webster observed, “Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.” And what “makes men good Christians” is imitating Christ as he “came not to be served but to serve” (Matthew 20:28). We do this by loving God in response to his love for us (Matthew 22:37; 1 John 4:19) so fully that we are then empowered to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:39).

Imagine a nation filled with “citizens” who loved their Lord and their neighbor like that.

Couple celebrates 82^nd wedding anniversary

Henri Nouwen wrote:

The great message that we have to carry, as ministers of God’s word and followers of Jesus, is that God loves us not because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love and has chosen us to proclaim that love as the true source of all human love (my emphasis).

Here’s an example: Betty and Elton Denner recently celebrated their eighty-second wedding anniversary. A video of the couple went viral, amassing more than eight million views. In it, Elton bought a dancing walker so he could dance with his wife on her one-hundredth birthday. The couple dressed up as Cinderella and Prince Charming for the celebration.

Their daughter explained the longevity of her parents’ marriage: “They credit their faith in Jesus as the strength in their marriage, guiding them each and every day. The love of their Lord has blessed and sustained them through these eighty-two years together.”

What Jesus is doing for them, he will do for you.

Why do you need his sustaining love today?

Our latest website articles:

• “Is the Equal Rights Amendment ‘the law of the land’? A reflection on presidential power and spiritual flourishing”
• “Biden will commute sentences of nearly 2,500 drug offenders: How can we experience the peace of true forgiveness?”
• “How to be Jesus’ apprentice, not just a Christian: A review of ‘Practicing the Way’ by John Mark Comer”
• “Carrie Underwood to perform at Trump inauguration: What the backlash to her announcement says about our national future”
• “The death of legendary baseball broadcaster Bob Uecker: A reflection on legacy and empowering mission”

Quote for the day:

“Seek unity and you will find neither unity nor truth. Seek the light of truth, and you will find unity and truth.” —C. S. Lewis

Denison Forum

We live in a culture that is permeated with sexual messaging. We are immersed in sexual temptation through TV shows, movies, advertisements, and online pornography.  So much of it is laced with underlying messages about “freedom” and “be yourself.” But, nothing could be further from truth. Sin enslaves and takes captive those who succumb.

Let’s find ways to defeat temptation before it leads to sin and guilt. Jesus said that the devil is a “murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44) who “comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10). He assaults God’s people physically. But he also attacks us spiritually.

Expect to face temptation

Scripture tells us we are to expect temptation: “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

You will never face a unique temptation. Human nature doesn’t change, so Satan’s strategies don’t change. What worked against our ancestors works against us. We should expect to be tempted, because this fact is common to the entire human race.

But while we should expect to face temptation, we should also expect to defeat temptation: “He will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” Notice the definite article: “the way of escape.” There is always a way out, no matter what temptation we are facing.

“Endure it” means “bear up under it.” The temptation will not go away, but we will be able to withstand it. This was true even for Jesus: after he defeated the enemy’s temptations in the wilderness, the devil “departed from him until an opportune time” (Luke 4:13).

Here we find one of Satan’s most subtle strategies: if we defeat temptation, he will bring it against us again. He wants us to think we did not or could not defeat this temptation if it recurs. But this is a lie. If you’re in a war and win a battle, the fact that you must keep fighting makes your victory no less real.

The bottom line: expect to be tempted. You’re not doing something wrong if Satan finds you and tries to lead you into sin. As Rick Warren notes, “It is not a sin to be tempted.” In fact, you’re doing something right. The more he sees you as a threat to his strategies, the more he will try to destroy your witness and ministry.

Expect to defeat temptation in the power of your Lord

Satan hates our Father. He cannot attack the sovereign Lord directly, however, so he attacks his children. The closer you are to God, the more of a threat you are to him. The greater his temptations, therefore, the greater your ministry must be. And the greater your Father’s protections and power when you need them most.

Thomas Watson, a seventeenth-century Puritan, observed: “Satan doth not tempt God’s children because they have sin in them, but because they have grace in them. Had they no grace, the devil would not disturb them. Though to be tempted is a trouble, yet to think why you are tempted is a comfort.”

Expect to face temptation, but expect to defeat temptation in the power of your Lord.

What do we do when temptation finds us? “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape.” “Faithful” translates the Greek word for “trustworthy, dependable, reliable.” We can always count on our Father to be all he promises to be:

• “The Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations” (Deuteronomy 7:9).
• “He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:24).
• “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful” (Hebrews 10:23).
• “Jesus Christ, the faithful witness” (Revelation 1:5).

Because he is faithful to us, he will always give us what we need to obey his word and will. In this case, “he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability.” If there is a temptation you cannot defeat in his strength, you will not face it. This means that every temptation you face is one you can defeat in his strength.

Ask for help from God and from God’s people

However, you must ask for what you need. Jesus counseled his followers to “watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation” (Matthew 26:41). He promised us, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find, knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7). But we must ask, seek, and knock. God honors the freedom he gives us and will not force his help upon us.

We can ask for help from God and from God’s people: “Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed” (James 5:16). We are to “bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2).

If you ask, your Father may lead you to people who can help you defeat the temptations you face. There may be fellow believers who have been where you are and can offer wisdom born of experience. And they can pray for you and with you. As a member of the family of faith, you are never alone unless you choose to be.

When we expect to face and defeat temptation by seeking the help of God and his people, we position ourselves to receive all that we need for spiritual victory. But we’re not done. We must then take “the way of escape” our Father offers us. We must choose to “endure” the temptations we face.

In other words, we must choose to obey God as he works in and through our lives:

• Scripture teaches us to “flee from sexual immorality” (1 Corinthians 6:18). But we must choose to flee.
• We are told to “resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). But we must choose to resist.
• We are warned that “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils” (1 Timothy 6:10). But we must choose not to love money.

Billy Sunday: “Temptation is the devil looking through the keyhole. Yielding is opening the door and inviting him in.” Rick Warren noted that “every temptation is an opportunity to do good.” But we must want to do good.

If you don’t have the strength to choose to obey God, you can ask for that strength. If you don’t have the faith to believe that his will is best, you can ask for such faith. Whatever you need, you can ask God to provide. But then you must choose to use his help.

As we work, God works. Your Father knows you far better than you can ever know yourself. And he will give you all that you need to defeat the temptations you face whenever you face them. If you will expect to face and defeat temptation by asking for the help of God and his people with an obedient heart, his victory can be yours.

How is this fact relevant to your soul today?

Denison Forum

“A leader is a dealer in hope”

TikTok went offline Saturday night after the Supreme Court on Friday upheld a law requiring its Chinese owner to sell the app by Sunday or face a ban. Then, after President-elect Trump said he would issue an executive order today to delay the ban, the company began restoring service.

This is just one example of the power to be conferred on Mr. Trump when he takes the oath of office at noon today (EST) as our nation’s forty-seventh president.

Other stories in this morning’s news:

• The first three hostages released from Gaza arrived in Israel yesterday after a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took hold. “An entire nation embraces you,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. Negotiators from both President Biden and President-elect Trump helped secure the agreement.
• A California father of two who lost his home to wildfires on January 8 is calling for significant changes in leadership that “absolutely failed us.”
• Detroit Lions Head Coach Dan Campbell is taking the blame for his team’s stunning loss to the Washington Commanders Saturday night. “It’s my fault,” he told reporters after the loss. “At the end of the day, I didn’t have them ready.”

Each story illustrates the crucial power of leadership. What is at the heart of that power? According to Napoleon Bonaparte, “A leader is a dealer in hope.”

As Mr. Trump returns to the White House today, let’s consider Napoleon’s assertion and its implications for our nation and our future.

“Everyone needs to feel we can come back”

Acclaimed Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan spoke for many when she wrote:

People need hope. Five years of the pandemic, its aftermath and angers, of cultural furies, of inflation and endless politics—people feel beat, like they were through something bad and still aren’t sure what it was. Young men and women need to feel, as they enter American history, that they’re part of something rising, not falling. The latent optimism the young always feel—they need to know it’s grounded in something real. Everyone needs to feel we can come back, turn it around, light the world, be the beacon again.

Psychologist Dan J. Tomasulo reports that hope is vital to better physical and mental well-being, noting that hopeful people tend to live longer and happier lives with “passion and zest that fuels their energy.” His article advises that the secret to hope is “focusing on what you can control.”

In his 1993 inaugural address, Bill Clinton similarly asserted, “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.”

However, Albert Einstein reportedly said, “You cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it.”

Which is right?

What we need “more than anything else in the world”

In The Sacred Journey, Frederick Buechner observed:

When it comes to putting broken lives back together—when it comes, in religious terms, to the saving of souls—the human best tends to be at odds with the holy best. To do for yourself the best that you have it in you to do—to grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world at its harshest and worst—is, by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you that is more wonderful still.

The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed also secures your life against being opened up and transformed by the holy power that life comes from.

He adds:

Surely that is why, in Jesus’ sad joke, the rich man has as hard a time getting into Paradise as that camel through the needle’s eye, because with his credit card in his pocket, the rich man is so effective at getting for himself everything he needs that he does not see that what he needs more than anything else in the world can be had only as a gift. He does not see that the one thing a clenched fist cannot do is accept, even from [God] himself, a helping hand.

In light of the unprecedented challenges we face, our nation’s ultimate hope is in the God whose help we need most. You and I can therefore love America best by praying and working for Americans to love and trust our Lord and thus be empowered to love and serve each other (Matthew 22:37–39).

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, many of his brilliant quotes will be cited by writers such as myself. Here’s one of my favorites: In his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Dr. King stated,

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.”

But he knew what we need to remember: “unarmed truth” and “unconditional love” must come from the only One who is “the truth” (John 14:6) and whose very nature “is love” (1 John 4:8).

The president of three meters

Only one American is president of the nation. Few of us have the power to guide our cultural future. How can you and I be conveyors of the hope our country needs?

Meik Wiking, who leads the Happiness Research Institute in Denmark, cites the importance of trusting employees as vital to workers’ happiness. He uses the example of staff at the Tivoli Gardens amusement park in Copenhagen, where they follow the three-meter rule: you are CEO of everything within a radius of three meters. If you see trash within your three-meter radius, you pick it up. If you see a guest looking for something, you stop and ask if you can help.

You and I are president of the three meters around us.

Will you serve well today?

Our latest website articles:

• “Biden will commute sentences of nearly 2,500 drug offenders: How can we experience the peace of true forgiveness?”
• “How to be Jesus’ apprentice, not just a Christian: A review of ‘Practicing the Way’ by John Mark Comer”
• “Carrie Underwood to perform at Trump inauguration: What the backlash to her announcement says about our national future”
• “The death of legendary baseball broadcaster Bob Uecker: A reflection on legacy and empowering mission”
• “Book read by NFL receiver on the sideline goes viral: What does God think about our doubts?”

Quote for the day:

“This is Christian hope, that the future is in God’s hands.” —Pope Francis

Denison Forum