Equipping Christians to Think, Pray and Vote

Little political loaded something I loaded something that helped to bring a little bit of heaven and earth. This is family policy motors with MC family Pres. John Weston thanks for joining us this week for family policy matters. It's hard to believe that the 2019.

Election season is upon us here in North Carolina but it is in fact our primary election will take place on Tuesday, May 8 as we have discussed in prior episodes of this program and see family fully believes that Christians have a unique and very important responsibility to participate in our nations representative system of government through educated advocacy and voting today will be discussing this with a man who left employment in corporate America to lead an organization that is dedicated to helping Christians embrace our responsibility to engage culturally is informed and voting citizens. Jason Yates is the CEO of my faith votes, a nonpartisan movement of the church in America that seeks to motivate and equip Christians across the country to think, pray and vote in order to make a positive difference in our communities, state and nation. Jason welcome to family policy matters. It's great to have you on the show greater beer John for inviting me. Well, it's our pleasure, not Jason. For those of our listeners who want familiar. Tell us a little bit about my faith votes and what makes this organization unique in its approach to encouraging Christians to get out and vote right. Appreciate the question you might.

Boat was born in 2015 late 2015, out of a desire to see Christian act on their great but more than that, we learned that in the 2012 presidential election. There were 25 million Christians who were registered to vote, but who stayed on the sidelines and when we really think about the implications of that in the issues that our country is facing. We knew that we we could do more. There was more for us to do that our faith has something essential to provide to our country and the issues that were facing so we started the effort of my caseload and with the help of influential Christian leaders across the country who are endorsing what were doing work putting out the call to Christian to say. No longer can we stay on the sideline. We must bring our state forward and that our vote unit and a political act are voted something sacred. Our vote is something that helps the brain a little bit of heaven to earth as we do it from a biblical worldview.

Don't leave the influence of your faith on the sidelines.

Get out there and act on your faith Jason, you said that you all got started in late 2015 talking about your efforts during the 2016 election season and what are your objectives and goals for 2018 in 2016.

We were primarily focused on just put out out loud megaphone Christian important.

We have to get out and exercise our faith. And so needy and literally ran, and through the voices of influential Christian pastors we put that call to action out there. Yeah we hear so many reasons why people don't vote and a lot of time to sit out of apathy or out of maybe even a little bit of self-righteousness that I'm not going my faith or my boat into something as dirty as politics and so people stay away and stay on the sideline so we put articles in in video fan and messages, even in social media to help people understand what how to think about that and maybe a better way to think about it so they are bringing me important to their grades.

Now you speak in terms of sink play and vote. Unpack this a little bit for us.

What is this process look like for the average Christian voter. For example, you might think about football you weekly think, pray, vote, but I say this is a model that we as Christians should be doing in all that we do really think, pray, act right in how we act in anything now. I think both work focused on the back of voting. We like to say thank pray and vote. So when we say think we want Christians to be thinking about issues trying understand God say about those issues but what we find it.

Too many Christians are thinking there taking what others say and and just running with it without truly and genuinely asking God to reveal his heart in his perspective to them on a particular issue. We need to have a biblical worldview.

Sadly Barnett did some research and found that only one in 10 American truly have and live by a biblical worldview. So we want people to think well to think biblically about important issues of the day so that think now we also as first Timothy two tells us we want people to pray and pray for our leaders. In fact, that verse in the beginning of first Timothy two says. First of all four kings and those in authority. So when you take that seriously, and dedicate the energy that is required to do that well and pray for our leaders so I would encourage people to pray specifically for our leaders in three ways. One is security. You know, Proverbs 423 says guard your heart and that's what I pray for our leaders that there hearts would be guarded that they would be pure in their motives and their desires to serve God. We have elected leaders who love God who loves Jesus and so I just want to see their hearts be guarded but I also want to pray that they would be loving you know in that same verse it says in order that we may live peaceful and quiet lives. So I want leaders who are concerned about that and are peace loving and then thirdly, wisdom so I would take. I want to encourage people to pray for those three things for leaders but also to pray for their vote that they make wise choice and then finally vote, go to the polls you are listening to policy not as a resource to listen to our radio show online resources that will be a voice of persuasion in your community website family.org that's great in the nuclear family policy Council since the 2000 election has been producing a very comprehensive but I nonpartisan general election voter God and one of the primary distribution methods that we use for that is through churches across the state, but I was curious to how to get a sense for you with my faith votes. What role the church has in that process and in the work that you do and what resources do you have available for churches and church leaders sacred and should play a critical role absolute all herdlike. I believe churches really must not back down from presenting a biblical worldview and love. Of course, on topics and issues that their members are reading about every day and hearing about every day and so not suggesting that churches get political.

But they need to be biblical and help people understand and interpret what's happening so I do believe churches should be speaking up, but well I should say and at the very least need to be encouraging their members to vote and and helping them do so on a nonpartisan basis, and so my caseload provides those churches with a complete toolkit. It helps them understand whether there legal rights and limitations, but also providing them with excellent videos and media kits that they can use for Sunday announcement store or just plain in-service videos even sample sermons, etc. but just equipping the church to just put that call out to Christians and encourage them to vote now understand why they should notice that in addition to an assortment of policy topics on your websites that are in the play section of your website on that page, you also devotionals on a variety of virtues of Christian living, such as mercy, forgiveness, and devotion. What are these topics relevant as we pray about and think about our involvement in the realm of politics and public policy. Let me just say that I know people can get passionate about their political beliefs and and they should and maybe that's why we say we should never talk about politics at a dinner party because we can get but when I convinced that you when we are passionate we want to convince others that were right and what I want to say is we should never sacrifice our spiritual witness for political influence and so you ask about you forgiveness and devotion and gentleness and so we believe that we should be expressing those virtues when were entering into the political realm.

You people are not our enemies. People who have opposing views are not our enemy. The story of Jonah and at the end after he come out of the fish and he's gonna need testified to Nineveh at the end he still hates hate the fact that that he was called to do that we don't want to be like Jonah in that in that way we want to be obedient, but we don't want to have that heart and so what guard our witness and our ability to talk to others about Christ and if we are steamrolling others about our political beliefs we may lose that witness now Isaiah says come let us reason together, so we want to reason together, as the Scripture Scriptures command us to do so with gentleness do so and devotion and and forgive as necessary so we focus on those. For those reasons, because we want to enter into this based on our faith not based on our politics and do it in a loving way that we can win others to Christ.

Jason, what would you say is a word of encouragement to a Christian, Vader who finds himself or herself frustrated or even disenchanted with the current state of politics in our nation and who frankly is just considering checking out altogether from voting this year. Thanks, John. You first. I think voters in Christian need to recognize Christ has won the victory is his. So all that were fighting against. It is a spiritual battle and in Christ has won that spiritual battle, but the reality is there is Jill an opportunity for us to bring our faith forward to the solutions that we have the solutions that are needed in our world and to the issues that we face and Christ calls us to act on our faith be his hand.

And so this isn't an act of a political act. This is an act of our faith which God smiled down on us, or when we are obedient and taking on responsibilities so I would just encourage people to look at this differently as a sacred responsibility and not a political act. This list is more about my faith votes and access the resources that you have available yet. I think I please have them go to my faith vote.org that my faith votes.org and right on the front page their people and sign up for our personal voting assistant or access from our main menu. Some of our voting tools that are there both for voters for churches for universities. They have access to all of those tools excellent again. That website is my faith votes.once again, my faith needs.org and I will encourage your listeners to take advantage of that great information that my faith votes has on their websites for your benefit for your education and for your edification and with that, Jason. Excellent, thank you so much for being with us on family policy matters and for your leadership in helping to equip Christians are also nice opportunity Huntington family policy matters production and only listen to our radio show online resources and information about issues important to families in North Carolina website family.org and follow us on Twitter and Facebook