Total Reliance
Read Galatians 6:14
As Revolutionary fervor grew in the colonies, ministers from Massachusetts to Virginia preached a warning against trusting too much in their own strength, their own plans. A path without God could only lead to peril and calamity. Not only pastors felt the urgency, the fledgling Congress sensed the need to rededicate themselves to God’s vision, and on March 16, 1776, they put forth a proclamation setting May 17, 1776 as a “day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer,” a day of national repentance to obtain God’s “pardon and forgiveness.”
When May 17 arrived, Dr. John Witherspoon, a Presbyterian minister, president of the College of New Jersey (later to become Princeton University), and eventually one of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence, gave a sermon that was the most widely reprinted of all those delivered on that day.
John Witherspoon
John Witherspoon
As Weatherspoon stood in his pulpit he could not believe that he had only been in this country for just eight years. He had spent forty-two years in Scotland, studying theology and preaching, and yet when the call had come to serve as president for the floundering college, something in him had resonated. He knew what it meant to follow God’s will for his life, remembering how amazed and humbled he felt that God might guide his steps.
In his sermon, Weatherspoon told his congregation, “While we give praise to God, the supreme disposer of all of events, for His interposition on our behalf, let us guard against a dangerous error of trusting in, or boasting of, an arm of flesh…” He remembered the Apostle Paul’s statement, “I will boast only in the Cross.” Witherspoon went on to say, “I look upon ostentation and confidence to be a sort of outrage upon Providence, and when it becomes general, and infuses itself into the spirit of a people, it is a forerunner to destruction…” Witherspoon was a man who knew what it meant to be totally dependent upon God and in the providence of God. He was the one God used to represent the people of New Jersey in that first Continental Congress and to sign the Declaration of Independence.
As Weatherspoon spoke, he did not know that in just three short months, he would make himself a traitor to the Crown as he scrawled his name alongside Hancock and the others. Or that in a year his own son would be killed at the Battle of Germantown, his property would be destroyed, and that his beloved college would be ruined almost beyond recognition. And if he had known, he would not have stilled his tongue. He would have spoken the same words, called for the same humility, and stayed the same path.
John Witherspoon took his seat in Congress on June 29, 1776. He did not wait long to make his opinion known, however, when on July 1, in response to one member’s assertion that perhaps the colonies were not ripe for independence, Witherspoon responded, “In my judgment, sir, we are not only right, but rotting.” Three days later was the Fourth of July and the turning of history.
As you pray today, consider the courage of John Witherspoon and the others, who, in obedience to God’s call and with reliance upon Him, stepped forward to meet the challenge to form a new nation. Consider what call the Lord might have upon your life. What is He calling you to?