Happy Birthday America!

Happy Birthday, America! 

Over 234 years ago, our forefathers pledged their Lives, Fortunes,and their Sacred Honor, went to war so that we would be FREE.

Of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence most of them lost their lives,and fortunes.

Many people suffered and died during the War of Independence where they fought for our freedom. The majority lost their fortunes, many lost their children and they all took a huge risk by signing their names to the Declaration of Independence. 

John Adams, our 2nd President of the United States wrote his wife Abigail, "It ought to be celebrated by pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other..." Since 1777, we have celebrated with fireworks. 

Read the Declaration

This 4th of July, re-read the Declaration of Independence.

I read it now, not because I have to but because I want to refresh my mind and remember why we celebrate Independence Day. The cost that was paid.

I read it now because we are in a battle for the hearts and minds of many American's who do not understand what it means to be self-governed.

I read it now because more and more of our freedoms are being taken away by the government.

 

Our freedoms were not given my man but by God. Man does not depend on government to grant him rights through a bureaucratic process, but instead to secure those rights that have been granted to him by God.

The Declaration states, "That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Are you consenting to what is happening in our government right now? I am not talking about just the current administration, but prior administrations are just as guilty of upsurping our rights to be a self governing people. 

The founding fathers understood the principal of the evil in mans hearts and their our hunger for power. They knew that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Hence, they wrote a document that gave us a system of checks and balances in our 3 branches of government.

Thomas Jefferson said the Declaration was "intended to be an expression of the American mind," and indeed, no document since has so succinctly and so eloquently spelled out the spirit of America.

Right now in 2010 we need a new birth of Freedom in our Nation.

Ronald Reagan in his farewell address said,

"An informed patriotism is what we want. And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world? Those of us who are over thirty-five or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions. If you didn't get these things from your family, you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea of the family who lost someone at Anzio. Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school. And if all else failed, you could get a sense of patriotism from the popular culture. The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special. TV was like that, too, through the midsixties.

This 4th of July I hope you will read the Declaration of Independence, and reflect on the sacrifice of those who went before us and laid the foundation for where we get our self evident Rights...Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness in America.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.-That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

It is a blue print for our Republican form of government.  It is really a short document, unlike the bills being written today.

Remember WHY we celebrate!

                          Have fun with your families and friends!

                          Celebrate with pomp, parades, bonfires, from coast to coast!

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. 2 Chronicles 7:14