The horrific images are seared in my mind from my visit several weeks ago to Southern California following the devastating wildfires that killed more than two dozen residents and destroyed $250 billion worth of property.
Street after street, mile after mile, nothing remains among the ashes except a few chimneys and some other charred remnants where houses, schools and businesses once stood in the Eaton and Pacific Palisades fire disaster areas.
Billy Graham Rapid Response Team chaplains have been there ministering to displaced residents, firefighters and the entire community. Pray for these families as they try to determine whether or not to rebuild while electricity and water are largely nonexistent in much of the area laid to waste by the fires.
It’s hard to imagine how quickly the flames—combined with 90-mile-per-hour winds—engulfed these communities. Pictures just can’t adequately communicate the magnitude of the destruction.
Next month, I will preach a televised Easter message amid the scorched landscape in Southern California to remind people that our God brings life out of death. Just as the grave could not hold the Son of God who was raised to life on the third day following His crucifixion, so those who surrender their lives in repentance and faith to Jesus Christ will be raised to new life with their resurrected Savior and Lord.
As California residents grapple with the aftermath of the fires, thousands in the Southeast are still struggling to recover from Hurricanes Helene and Milton. President Donald Trump recently joined me as we offered help and hope to people in Western North Carolina, where Samaritan’s Purse is rebuilding homes and providing other vital aid to storm victims.
It’s my prayer that many families will rebuild their lives on the rock of God’s Word by heeding Jesus’ warning in Matthew 7:26-27: “But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.”
In the midst of great loss and suffering like our nation has experienced in recent months— from floods, wildfires and the deadly aircraft collision over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C.—promises from the Word of God comfort His people like nothing else can.
Consider Lamentations 3:22-23: “Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning. Great is Your faithfulness.”
God’s mercy is revealed when He doesn’t give us what we deserve. Romans 6:23 reminds us of just how merciful God is toward us. “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
When I gave the invocation Jan. 20 at our nation’s 60th Presidential Inauguration ceremony for President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance, I urged those in attendance to remember the great things that God has done for this country.
I believe with all my heart, just like I prayed in the Capitol Rotunda, that if we keep our eyes fixed on God and our hearts inclined to His voice, God will answer our prayers of repentance and heal our land.
The Bible is full of accounts of God honoring and blessing the obedience of His people and also judging them when they turned their backs on Him.
In 2 Kings, we read about how King Josiah led the nation of Judah to turn back to God in repentance and worship after generations of idolatry and apostasy. “Now before him there was no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the Law of Moses; nor after him did any arise like him” (2 Kings 23:25).
In my inaugural prayer, I claimed the promise of God’s Word that “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord” (Psalm 33:12). I also quoted the Prophet Daniel, “Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, for wisdom and might are His. And He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and raises up kings; He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding” (Daniel 2:20-21).
I praise God for a new administration that seeks to protect the sanctity of human life by executive orders that eliminate any and all federal funding of abortions both domestically and internationally.
Another executive order clearly states that there are only two genders, male and female, just as God’s Word teaches.
Likewise, I couldn’t agree more with President Trump’s executive order titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” which cuts off federal funding for the transgender industry and allows families harmed to sue for damages.
The order rightly states: “Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions. This dangerous trend will be a stain on our nation’s history, and it must end.”
The Bible teaches us that God doesn’t make mistakes when He creates human beings. Psalm 139:13-15 says, “For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb.I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.”
