What Does it Take?

In 1968, Jr. Walker & The All Stars recorded a hit song, ‘What Does It Take (To Win Your Love)’. The lyrics are:

What does it take to win your love for me?
How can I make this dream come true for me?
Whoa, I just got to know, ooo, baby cause I love ya so.
Gonna blow for ya
[Instrumental Interlude]
I tried, I tried, I tried, I tried in every way I could,
to make you see how much I love you.
Ooo, I thought you understood.

So you gotta make me see,
what does it take to win your love for me?
Gonna blow again for ya.

I believe the lyrics of this song capture the ‘Heart of God’ toward America as a nation. The scenario fits us perfectly –- a lover reaching for a potential love or, in our case, God earnestly reaching out for us, His lost love. He honestly has ‘tried, and tried, and tried, and tried in every way He could, to make us see how much He loves us.’ Yet we just don’t understand. How sad, yet He keeps on loving us. How?

Consider Romans 2:4: Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?

The Living Bible translates this as: Don’t you realize how patient He is being with you? Or don’t you care? Can’t you see that He has been waiting all this time without punishing you, to give you time to turn from your sin? His kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.

Ok, since God has indeed been kind and good to our nation, perhaps more than any other, then where and when is the resultant repentance? We all know what personal repentance looks like, but what exactly in our day does national repentance look like? If God’s goodness, forbearance, and long-suffering toward America do not produce the fruit of national repentance, then really, ‘What does it take?’ 

History is replete with nation-after-nation that spurned God’s love, manifested by His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering. From my personal life, and in observing the lives of others, it seems one thing is rock solid in the human experience: We don’t learn well the lessons from others’ mistakes! Nope, our prideful nature ensures we have to make our own personal mistakes, irrespective of the costs to ourselves or others! Notice I said, ‘we’. No one is exempt from this seemingly cardinal rule. This rule apparently also applies to nations!

The goodness of God only leads to repentance where there is wise fear (awe, respect, honor) for Him. Whether in a personal, community or national life, wherever the root of the fear of God has dried up and withered, there will be no repentance. In such situations, Hebrews 10:26 -27 affirms, ‘...there remains…a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries [of God].’

God has apparently called or allowed the U.S. to be a world leader in many respects, and in some areas, we may still be leading quite admirably. Increasingly, however, our leadership role and abilities are being challenged by other countries, as they indeed should be! While I pray such challenges will cause us to ponder and re-examine our leadership, my concern is the apparent inverse relationship between our leadership skills, heart and directions, on one hand, and our fear of God, on the other hand. The continuing decimation of the fear of God in our national life only emboldens us to lead in increasingly ungodly directions, even as we prod other nations to follow our lead! Alas, it is only the fear of God that leads to both the wisdom and moral integrity required for global leadership. The relationship between the fear of God and wisdom is the principal message of The Book of Proverbs.

Jr. Walker (born Autry DeWalt Mixon, Jr.) played a ‘mean horn’, as the colloquial expression goes. I like the creative part of the song where he says, ‘Gonna blow for ya’ and ‘Gonna blow again for ya’. God also has horns, specifically trumpets …and I mean L-O-U-D trumpets! Ask the young nation of Israel who had the first-ever recorded experience of humans encountering God’s horns:

Now all the people witnessed the thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled and stood afar off. Then they said to Moses, ‘You speak with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die.’ (Exodus 20:19)

The next record of humans who will encounter God’s horns is in Revelation 8:

When He opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and to them were given seven trumpets.

Trust me, you definitely do not want to be on God’s wrong side when these fellas blow their trumpets! Take time to check out the rest of Revelation 8 to see what happens when they blow. Talk about ‘blowing a mean horn!’

   

So again I ask you to join me in pondering, ‘What does it take?’ for us to turn from the sinful directions in which our nation is heading, toward faith in God so we can become a righteous leader in our world? Does it start with you and me, personally? Or is there something far, far bigger and more awesome required?

What say you?