Are You Willing to Live for Your Country?

Many people are willing to die for their country, but how many are willing to live for their country? This is a question asked by Jimmy Graham in an article published at The Blaze.

Independence Day is a national day to honor the men who pledged “to each other [their] Lives, [their] Fortunes and [their] sacred Honor.” The signers, all fifty-six of them, offered their lives and their fortunes to preserve and protect the rights given to all people by God.

Just as the signers of the Declaration of Independence offered their lives for our freedom and liberty, we should be willing to offer our lives for the freedom and liberty of Americans who will follow in our footsteps.

Graham wrote that it is often easier to offer to die for our country than it is to live for it. When asked, many Americans have said that they are willing to die for the red, white, and blue. However, most of them would think more deeply if they were asked to live for their country. Graham asked a young man training to become a Navy SEAL if he were willing to die for his country, and he nodded solemnly. Then Graham asked him if he was willing to live for his country.

That shift in wording – so simple – completely changed his posture. The romanticism of martyrdom dimmed in the light of daily responsibility. Living for something demands consistency, humility, and effort. It’s the long haul.

I then asked him to add “your family” and “my family” to the sentence. “Would you live for your country, your family, and my family?” That’s when the gravity hit him. Because if you won’t live for them – serve, protect, uphold – then you don’t deserve the honor of dying for them….

We are living in a destabilized America. The erosion didn’t begin with foreign powers. It began when we stopped holding ourselves and each other accountable. We began to celebrate selfishness over service, confusion over clarity, and chaos over order. When morality and justice become flexible, small government becomes impossible. That vacuum invites control. And when people abandon responsibility, tyranny grows in its place.

I’ve worked in environments where destabilizing a country was the goal, where operations were designed to light the fuse and let the people do the rest. Sadly, I see a similar fuse burning in our own nation.

When law is no longer tied to truth and truth becomes subjective, the foundation cracks. Evil ideas dressed as compassion are pushed forward under the guise of progress. But make no mistake: Confusion is not compassion. Chaos is not freedom. And evil, when legalized, is still evil.

So what do we do? We take ownership. We return to righteousness….

When I look around, I see a nation waiting for leadership – not from Washington, but from our homes, churches, and communities. Men, it’s time to get back in the fight. Not with fists, but with faith. Not with rage, but with righteousness….

This Fourth of July [and over the next year as we prepare to celebrate 250 years of independence and freedom], don’t just wave the flag – embody what it stands for. Choose to live for your country. Live with integrity. Live with purpose. Live in a way that honors your family and the generations that came before us.