Undivided Attention – God Bless America is a reminder to honor and pray for our elected leaders. We enjoy many freedoms in the United States of America. This Sunday we keep our attention on God and thank him for our spiritual freedom in Jesus and physical freedom in America.
In God We Trust
Pull out a coin or piece of paper money and you will see the words inscribed, In God We Trust. The origins of this phrase go back to 1814 when Francis Scot Key was watching Fort McHenry getting pummeled by the English fleet. The following morning he was sure that the fort was lost, but when he saw the United States flag still flying he was so moved that he penned the Star Spangled Banner, a poem with four verses. The first verse would eventually become our national anthem. Click here to hear the verse sung.
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
But not right away…
That was 1814. It wasn’t until 1956 President Eisenhower and the congress under him approved the phrase In God We Trust as our nations official motto. Not until 1966 did paper money bear the In God We Trust.
In the opening illustration we looked at a patriotic bill board that said, One Nation Indivisible. The current official verse of the pledge of allegiance does have one nation, under God. But the original written by Francis Bellamy in 1892, who happened to be a Baptist preacher, did not. I think we need to be a little careful about who that God is. The God that we worship is very different from all the other God’s in the world. And that’s a good thing.
Please click HERE to find all four verses of the Star Spangled Banner. Please click HERE to watch verse four being performed.
Want to hear more? Watch this week’s message taken from our series, Undivided Attention – God Bless America.
Book(s): Psalms
Series: Undivided Attention
Tag(s): King, Law, Nation
Speaker(s): Fred Guldberg