Every November 11, much of Europe celebrates St. Martin’s Day. Most Americans have never heard of the man behind it, but his story leads straight to one of the most important names in our own history, and to our November 3rd election.
Martin of Tours lived around 350 A.D. He was enrolled in the Roman army, and his father, a Roman officer, expected him to make a career of it. Martin had other plans. He had become a Christian, and when he was ordered into battle he said, “I am a soldier of Christ. I cannot fight.” The best-known story about him is about kindness. He met a freezing beggar, cut his own cloak in half, and gave him part of it. He literally gave the shirt off his back. Martin didn’t wait for a program to help the poor. He used his own cloak.
His name traveled. Tradition holds that Christopher Columbus sighted an island on St. Martin’s Day in 1493 and named it St. Martin.
Then, on November 10, 1483, a boy was born in Germany. His parents had him baptized the next day, and because it was St. Martin’s Day, they named him Martin. Martin Luther grew up to face down the most powerful leaders of his day, the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor. When they ordered him to take back his writings, he refused and said, “Here I stand; I can do no other.” He insisted that no church, crown, or culture could stand above God’s Word, and that the only way forward was to get back to God. Luther didn’t take a poll. He took a stand. On October 31 of each year, the Lutheran Church celebrates reformation day in honor of this Martin.
Four centuries later, an Atlanta pastor named Michael King went to Germany for a Baptist conference in 1934. He came home so moved by Luther that he changed his own name, and his five-year-old son’s name too. Michael King Jr. became Martin Luther King Jr.
Three Martins, each one standing on conviction rather than convenience. Each Martin passed the baton. Now we’re running our leg of the race.
Dr. King’s dream was that his children would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” That dream did not ask us to sort people by grievance or rank them by how oppressed they are. Today’s “woke” agenda does the opposite. It teaches people to be bitter and unforgiving, and it trains them to see themselves as victims.
The Bible offers a better way, through a man who had every reason to be bitter. Joseph’s own brothers sold him into slavery. In Egypt he was falsely accused and thrown into prison, and the people he helped there forgot about him. Years later, God raised him up to second-in-command of Egypt. Then his brothers came to him hungry and begging for food, and Joseph held their lives in his hands. He could have gotten even. Instead he wept, forgave them, and fed their families. He told them, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:20).
Joseph never pretended the wrong didn’t happen. He said plainly, “You intended to harm me.” But he refused to let what was done to him decide who he would become. Bitterness would have kept him chained to the brothers who sold him. Forgiveness set him free to save a nation.
That is the choice in front of every one of us: bitter or better. You can’t be a victim and a victor at the same time. When we whine, complain, and make excuses, we don’t make ourselves better. We just pass the bitterness on to the next runner in the generational relay race.
In 2008, Barack Obama promised to “fundamentally transform” America, and in many ways he did. But that change didn’t begin or end with one president. For 30 years, we have kept growing government and expecting it to do what only changed hearts can do. Government can write a check, but it can’t change a heart.
Maybe it’s time we got back to Romans 8:5–8: “Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.”
Joseph lived out that passage. The flesh would have said, “Get even.” The Spirit said, “Forgive, and feed them.” #WORDview
We are headed toward death unless we get back to the truth, to reality, to biblical knowledge, to building the home and to the foundations this country was built on.
St. Martin gave away his cloak. Luther gave his conscience to God’s Word. King gave his life for a dream about character. Joseph gave forgiveness to the brothers who sold him. Government programs don’t change the world. Spiritual leaders do.
Donald Trump is a flawed human being. He is not my spiritual leader. That role belongs to pastors like Josh Howerton, Phillip Anthony Mitchell and Rob Goodwin. As Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress put it, “I might not choose this man to be a Sunday school teacher in my church, but that’s not what this election is about.” Trump is a businessman with the backbone to stand up to the unbiblical ideas being pushed on our society. And God has always used flawed people: Moses the murderer, David the adulterer, Peter the denier. Trump is not the leader taking this country to hell. His MAGA goal is to bring America back to the nation that was built on the rock.
Jesus put it plainly in Matthew 7:24, 26: “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock… But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.”
The ballots will be counted in early November. Character isn’t on the ballot, but it decides every election. The vote that really changes our community happens every morning, when each of us decides whether to live by the flesh or by the Spirit, and whether to be bitter or better. Don’t vote again for more sand. Vote for leaders who will build on the rock. Then build on the rock yourself. Cast that vote.
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