Looking forward in 2008!

The old year has gone with all its triumphs and disappointments!

But, now, there is a new year ahead with new challenges, and perhaps new difficulties. Yet, that is how life is. We are presented with many difficulties and many challenges.

Unlike the preaching of many preachers, Jesus never promised us as Christians a rose garden. If He did, He certainly meant to include the many thorns on a rose stem on the way to the rose at the end of that stem.

That is exactly how things are in the political arena. Before any party makes it to the point where it demands a strong hearing with many voters to back it, it has to go past all those pesky thorns before the rose itself is reached.

The ACDP is blamed many times that we are dividing the vote against certain parties that are seen as “behemoths!” Yet, even a behemoth is born as a baby behemoth. Nothing starts fully grown, except of course when God spoke creation into existence! Every other political party has started as a thought in the imagination of some person or persons. Membership for those parties, no matter how gargantuan they are now, started small. After that, they started getting others to join in the cause, and after some or many years, grew to be big.

So, when people point fingers at us as “vote-dividers,” take heart, we all start small and need to remember that there is work to do to make the African Christian Democratic Party grow!

2008 is the year that we need to work hard to gain more members and supporters. The next general elections are in 2009 (GE2009), and if we want to make a difference in the political arena, we are going to have to work hard this year to effect that difference.

That difference will not simply come around like a magical Santa Clause dropping votes through our proverbial chimneys. Getting votes, and membership in the party for that matter, are not some magical process. Someone has to make the effort to renew the membership of existing members and also to gain new members.

As Christians in South Africa, we are simply too accommodating to the evils of our society. While certain parties continue perpetrating all kinds of evil in the name of freedom, doing so by enacting those same evils as law in parliament, there are Christians who continue to vote and support those parties.

As Christians in the ACDP, we need to start speaking out against those evils and to bring those evils to light. This should not be left to the leadership in the ACDP. This is something that each ACDP member should be a part of. Each one of us should be involved in exposing the evils that have become law, and exposing those parties that support these laws. We should be actively pointing out these evils and the parties that support these evils in the Christian community.

Each one of us must be involved in learning and spreading a Biblical Christian Worldview in order to gain many more that can do the same. When we can do this successfully, our membership will grow, and as a result the number of votes we gain in the next elections will grow exponentially!

So, see this year as a challenge to make party membership grow. If you are a member already, make sure that you renew your membership and start by gaining new members for the party. If you are not a member, and you think you have the same worldview (philosophy of life) as the ACDP, then join us and help to gain more members. For those living in Tshwane (Pretoria) simply go to our website to get our contact information.

May the Lord Jesus Christ bless you with a great and wonderful 2008!