condemnation

“You must love Connecticut if you want to win Connecticut. You cannot win without love.”

It is that time of year again.

FIC’s Summer Fundraising Campaign has begun. Those of you who are on our email list know the details by which we can raise $60,000 by mid-summer to carry on the fight for life, liberty and marriage here in our home state.

You know the incredible victories God has granted FIC, even in 2013, even in Connecticut. It is important for us to acknowledge it: that our victories come from God. Thanks be to Him.

And it is important to let you, our members, know of our needs. FIC has a reputation for being the group “that does a lot with a little.” People are frequently shocked when they learn the small size of our annual budget. “But you do so much,” they tell us. Yes…and we can do so much more to win Connecticut, if we have greater funding.

But about that: “winning” Connecticut. It’s been on my mind lately. Haunting me, really.

The reason is a Pastors’ Breakfast I attended in Bridgeport three weeks ago, a follow-up to the Night of Healing and Hope for Newtown concert. (As the six-month anniversary of the Newtown shootings approaches, the horror of that day is still very much with all of us.)

At that breakfast we heard a message from David Wagner, a prophetic voice among evangelical Christians. His message:

You must love Connecticut if you want to win Connecticut. You cannot win without love.”

I have been thinking about it ever since. And what I want to say is: Yes, I do love Connecticut. And I think you do too.

We mourn the setbacks to faith and family that have occurred on our watch: the court-mandated re-defining of marriage and the passing of a “transgender” law that denies basic reality.

But we also celebrate the victories: securing the strongest religious liberty exemptions to same-sex “marriage” in the nation and defeating assisted suicide.

And we are not going away. The pro-family movement is sometimes allied, but not to be confused with, other movements that oppose the status quo.

We are not the ones calling talk radio to say we are leaving Connecticut. We are not sitting on our front porch, shaking our fist at our neighbors and hollering “What is wrong with you people?” Ours is not a bitter zeal.

We are in Connecticut’s pro-family movement because Connecticut is our home. It is where we live and work. It is where we raise our children and grandchildren.

We want to leave to our descendants a Connecticut that is a blessing to them and not a curse. And we are not going anywhere. We are staying right here and fighting for our home.

And our opponents? They are not our true enemies. They are in the grip of our true Enemy. We love them too and we pray for their liberation.

This is not a normal kickoff for FIC’s Summer Grant Campaign. But it has not been a normal year for Connecticut.

I wanted to break from our normal template to share with you what is in my heart this morning. And to tell you how much I do love Connecticut…and all of you.

We have come a long way together over this past decade. And someday we will look back on it as just the beginning.

I hope you share my love for our home state and that you will continue to fight for her by clicking the link above. Thank you so much – for everything, for all that we have been through together, shoulder-to-shoulder in good times and bad – and God bless you.