We Will Never, Ever Give Up
Keep praying for America, doing what's right, and putting 100% of your hope in God.
Check your phone, turn on the TV, or listen to the radio for news and it won't be long before you may feel tempted to feel discouraged about our country. Last month, a Gallup poll claimed an all-time low level of patriotism. Yes, our country is going through multi-faceted hard times largely due to the socialistic policies by the current White House administration. And it is indeed disheartening to see our country essentially abused by the horrendous policies espoused by the current administration.
We're here to encourage you, fellow freedom-loving Americans. But the key to unlocking encouragement exists in putting our hope in God and getting busy doing good to overcome evil. Yes, God gives us hope and resilience. As long as we look to Him, we need not fear the future. Nothing stops God from working even during dark times. Yes, we must look up to God and never, ever give up hope and prayer! (See our interview on Newsmax about this topic below.)
We seek to share God's love with veterans and their families along with anyone in America who needs encouragement, And, today, we are here to encourage you to have faith in Jesus Christ and, through Him, fly above the storms in America today. We must place our hope and trust in God and not man.
Contrary to the popular version of the saying, people who are truly more Heavenly minded do more earthly good. We are called to love God and neighbor. We are called to glorify our Creator. It is important that we work hard and pray hard.
Instead of just feeling sad, discouraged, or righteous indignation and allowing stagnation to settle in, we must choose to hope in God and get busy doing His work today to protect the vulnerable and overcome evil with good.
This can include a wide range of volunteering opportunities, donating to reputable organizations staying true to God and loving neighbor, and educating young people why we can give thanks for so much about our country.
Positive, prayerful patriotism is a way to ensure that the best qualities in our country are preserved and, in other cases, returned so that freedoms exist in which to love God and neighbor.
Here are some practical yet crucial action points to help our country and overcome discouragement:
1. Spend time in prayer and reading Scripture. Keeping our hearts focused on the Lord will help keep us strong and reduce discouragement. Remember, God is always in control. “You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).
2. Educate the young people in your circle of influence. Sadly, so many young people are being taught lies about our country and military’s history. It’s important to teach them the truth about America’s history and why it is important to be freedom. Here are resources that can help teach others: https://wallbuilders.com/library-2/
3. Make sure you vote in all elections. We encourage voting in person. Do not sit out elections. We must show up united to vote for pro-America candidates!
4. Honor our veterans and current servicemen and women. These brave men and women are why we are free. And it is up to us to thank them and to promote policies and support leaders who will promote true freedom.
5. Attend a good Bible-teaching church in person. It is important to spend time with fellow Christians to build each other up. If the church in the US is strong that helps to keep our country strong, too.
We must keep praying and doing all we can to protect our freedom. America has been through hard times before. God is the only One Who knows the future and we can depend on Him. “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Philippians 6-7).
We will not wave a white flag of defeat. Instead, while praying and extending our hands, we are waving the red, white, and blue as we ask God to send another Great Awakening to our beautiful land!
In God we still trust,Carrie Stoelting and Stacie Stoelting Hudzinski
We're here to encourage you, fellow freedom-loving Americans. But the key to unlocking encouragement exists in putting our hope in God and getting busy doing good to overcome evil. Yes, God gives us hope and resilience. As long as we look to Him, we need not fear the future. Nothing stops God from working even during dark times. Yes, we must look up to God and never, ever give up hope and prayer! (See our interview on Newsmax about this topic below.)
We seek to share God's love with veterans and their families along with anyone in America who needs encouragement, And, today, we are here to encourage you to have faith in Jesus Christ and, through Him, fly above the storms in America today. We must place our hope and trust in God and not man.
Contrary to the popular version of the saying, people who are truly more Heavenly minded do more earthly good. We are called to love God and neighbor. We are called to glorify our Creator. It is important that we work hard and pray hard.
Instead of just feeling sad, discouraged, or righteous indignation and allowing stagnation to settle in, we must choose to hope in God and get busy doing His work today to protect the vulnerable and overcome evil with good.
This can include a wide range of volunteering opportunities, donating to reputable organizations staying true to God and loving neighbor, and educating young people why we can give thanks for so much about our country.
Positive, prayerful patriotism is a way to ensure that the best qualities in our country are preserved and, in other cases, returned so that freedoms exist in which to love God and neighbor.
Here are some practical yet crucial action points to help our country and overcome discouragement:
1. Spend time in prayer and reading Scripture. Keeping our hearts focused on the Lord will help keep us strong and reduce discouragement. Remember, God is always in control. “You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).
2. Educate the young people in your circle of influence. Sadly, so many young people are being taught lies about our country and military’s history. It’s important to teach them the truth about America’s history and why it is important to be freedom. Here are resources that can help teach others: https://wallbuilders.com/library-2/
3. Make sure you vote in all elections. We encourage voting in person. Do not sit out elections. We must show up united to vote for pro-America candidates!
4. Honor our veterans and current servicemen and women. These brave men and women are why we are free. And it is up to us to thank them and to promote policies and support leaders who will promote true freedom.
5. Attend a good Bible-teaching church in person. It is important to spend time with fellow Christians to build each other up. If the church in the US is strong that helps to keep our country strong, too.
We must keep praying and doing all we can to protect our freedom. America has been through hard times before. God is the only One Who knows the future and we can depend on Him. “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Philippians 6-7).
We will not wave a white flag of defeat. Instead, while praying and extending our hands, we are waving the red, white, and blue as we ask God to send another Great Awakening to our beautiful land!
In God we still trust,Carrie Stoelting and Stacie Stoelting Hudzinski
Stacie and Carrie on Frontline (Newsmax)
Learn more about positive patriotism and the importance of faith in Jesus in America. Go to www.unitetheusa.org to learn more.
Unite the USA's
Featured Veteran of the Month: Robert Maxwell
Medal of Honor Recipient Robert Maxwell shares his experiences during World War II as well as the Medal of Honor and the values it represents.
America, Why I Love Her
These words recited by John Wayne still ring true today. We must not give up on our country. We know John Wayne would never wave the white flag on America. May we keep waving the red, white, and blue!
Featured Quote
"Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway." -John Wayne
Featured Bible Verse
What Is Patriotism?
By Peggy Noonan
What is patriotism? We all know what it is. It is love of country. It is pride in what a country stands for and was founded on. It is the full-throated expression of that love and that pride.
America has been throughout its history an especially patriotic country. I believe the reason has to do with a particular assumption, a particular habit of mind. Our patriot fervor was the result of the old and widespread belief in the idea of American exceptionalism—the idea that America was a new thing in history, different from other countries.
Other nations had evolved one way or another: evolved from tribes, from a gathering of the clans, from inevitabilities of language and tradition and geography. But America was born—and born of ideas: that all men are created equal, that they have been given by God certain rights that can be taken from them by no man, and that those rights combine to create a thing called freedom. They were free to pursue happiness, free to worship God, free to talk and speak in public of their views, and to chose their leaders.
American patriotism was the repetition, reaffirmation, and celebration of our founding ideas, and it gave rise to a brilliant tradition of celebration, and of celebration's symbols: the flag—that beautiful flag; the parades and bands and bunting; Betsy Ross, Uncle Sam, the tradition of patriotic speeches, the reading aloud of the Declaration of Independence; the sparklers like the candles on a birthday cake.
And all these symbols come together on the big birthday: July 4, the day America was born.
All this has served America well. This celebration of our continued adherence to ideas made those ideas new again, young again, vital again, so that in each generation they were continued and reborn. Jefferson famously said the tree of liberty must be water by the blood of patriots. But it receives vital water as well from the tears, the honest tears, of those moved at the thought of the blessings of our country, the blessings of the freedoms guaranteed here.
Our patriotism has been beneficial in other ways. America was—perhaps is—a big, lonely country, huge and sprawling, and was from the beginning full of disparate people from different places with different beliefs. In a big, disparate, far-flung country, our patriotic feeling was one of the unifying forces that kept us together, that bound us in shared agreement.
Love of country was one of the things the wild agnostic mountain man of the West had in common with the temperance-loving schoolmarm of Philadelphia. Pride in America was shared by common men and intellectuals, by the Irish immigrant of Hell's Kitchen and the high WASP patrician of old Boston. They had something in common: they loved America. This feeling has helped sustain us and lift us up.
We have all had some patriotic memories. Here is one of mine. July 4, 1976, was the bicentennial of the United States, a great day. And I, in my excitement, spent a wonderful day that began in Boston, where I lived. I worked the overnight those days at an all-news radio station, so I began the late evening of July 3 in the darkness with a tape recorder, gathering sounds of the Boston events—the re-enactment of the battle at the Concord Bridge, rifle fire in the darkness.
And as I walked in the darkness in streets full of young people, it was so festive and moving. I went back to the station and filed, and the next morning, a day off, I started in Boston at dawn on July 4, 1976, in the North end of Boston, in front of the church whose steeple Paul Revere looked to for the lanterns, one if by land and two if by sea.
Then my friend Charlie Bennett and I took the train to Philadelphia, where we stood in a vast throng as the great, great, great, great grandchildren of the signers of the Declaration of Independence stood on a rolling green where the Liberty Bell was displayed. At noon, these children tapped the bell with their hands, for, as I remember, it could not be rung. And then Charlie and I went on to Washington, D.C., for the festivities there, where a good man named Gerald Ford watched the fireworks from the lawn of the White House with friends and family.
What a day. But it was in Philadelphia that, for me, the great moment occurred. There was an accidental, unplanned moment of silence. I think it was after the Liberty Bell was tapped by the kids. I was in a crowd of thousands. We were waiting for the next big thing to happen, and were all being quiet, and I guess someone decided that silence was not quite right for this day.
From the back of the crowd came a sound. It was a young man and he was singing. The song was "America." It built in volume and traveled through the crowd and soon everyone was singing. And everyone smiled at the end and laughed—a sweet moment, mildly embarrassing and deeply moving at the same time. But it was a natural moment. It was not planned. It was spontaneous and sweet.
What is patriotism? We all know what it is. It is love of country. It is pride in what a country stands for and was founded on. It is the full-throated expression of that love and that pride.
America has been throughout its history an especially patriotic country. I believe the reason has to do with a particular assumption, a particular habit of mind. Our patriot fervor was the result of the old and widespread belief in the idea of American exceptionalism—the idea that America was a new thing in history, different from other countries.
Other nations had evolved one way or another: evolved from tribes, from a gathering of the clans, from inevitabilities of language and tradition and geography. But America was born—and born of ideas: that all men are created equal, that they have been given by God certain rights that can be taken from them by no man, and that those rights combine to create a thing called freedom. They were free to pursue happiness, free to worship God, free to talk and speak in public of their views, and to chose their leaders.
American patriotism was the repetition, reaffirmation, and celebration of our founding ideas, and it gave rise to a brilliant tradition of celebration, and of celebration's symbols: the flag—that beautiful flag; the parades and bands and bunting; Betsy Ross, Uncle Sam, the tradition of patriotic speeches, the reading aloud of the Declaration of Independence; the sparklers like the candles on a birthday cake.
And all these symbols come together on the big birthday: July 4, the day America was born.
All this has served America well. This celebration of our continued adherence to ideas made those ideas new again, young again, vital again, so that in each generation they were continued and reborn. Jefferson famously said the tree of liberty must be water by the blood of patriots. But it receives vital water as well from the tears, the honest tears, of those moved at the thought of the blessings of our country, the blessings of the freedoms guaranteed here.
Our patriotism has been beneficial in other ways. America was—perhaps is—a big, lonely country, huge and sprawling, and was from the beginning full of disparate people from different places with different beliefs. In a big, disparate, far-flung country, our patriotic feeling was one of the unifying forces that kept us together, that bound us in shared agreement.
Love of country was one of the things the wild agnostic mountain man of the West had in common with the temperance-loving schoolmarm of Philadelphia. Pride in America was shared by common men and intellectuals, by the Irish immigrant of Hell's Kitchen and the high WASP patrician of old Boston. They had something in common: they loved America. This feeling has helped sustain us and lift us up.
We have all had some patriotic memories. Here is one of mine. July 4, 1976, was the bicentennial of the United States, a great day. And I, in my excitement, spent a wonderful day that began in Boston, where I lived. I worked the overnight those days at an all-news radio station, so I began the late evening of July 3 in the darkness with a tape recorder, gathering sounds of the Boston events—the re-enactment of the battle at the Concord Bridge, rifle fire in the darkness.
And as I walked in the darkness in streets full of young people, it was so festive and moving. I went back to the station and filed, and the next morning, a day off, I started in Boston at dawn on July 4, 1976, in the North end of Boston, in front of the church whose steeple Paul Revere looked to for the lanterns, one if by land and two if by sea.
Then my friend Charlie Bennett and I took the train to Philadelphia, where we stood in a vast throng as the great, great, great, great grandchildren of the signers of the Declaration of Independence stood on a rolling green where the Liberty Bell was displayed. At noon, these children tapped the bell with their hands, for, as I remember, it could not be rung. And then Charlie and I went on to Washington, D.C., for the festivities there, where a good man named Gerald Ford watched the fireworks from the lawn of the White House with friends and family.
What a day. But it was in Philadelphia that, for me, the great moment occurred. There was an accidental, unplanned moment of silence. I think it was after the Liberty Bell was tapped by the kids. I was in a crowd of thousands. We were waiting for the next big thing to happen, and were all being quiet, and I guess someone decided that silence was not quite right for this day.
From the back of the crowd came a sound. It was a young man and he was singing. The song was "America." It built in volume and traveled through the crowd and soon everyone was singing. And everyone smiled at the end and laughed—a sweet moment, mildly embarrassing and deeply moving at the same time. But it was a natural moment. It was not planned. It was spontaneous and sweet.