Tragedy always strikes. Bad things always happen. Evil always sinks its claws into people and whispers in their ear, Do something about this. Make a statement. Make them see.

Good people always get hurt. Broken hearts always cry out.

This is tragic. And we all hate those stories. We all wish they never happened. That we could spare those families the agony. My heart and prayers follow those who suffer such things.

But tragedy is as old as time. It will happen. The question is:what do we do in the face of it?

Last night, watching a snip of the news after yesterday’s horrible on-air violence, I heard the victim’s father demand legislation. And I shook my head. My heart goes out to this hurting father. But I also wanted to take his hand and say, “I know you’re hurting. But here’s the thing–legislation doesn’t stop criminals. By definition, they don’t care about the law.”

So often, our human response to something hateful is limit. Make new laws! Take away freedoms!

Our response instead ought to be to fall to our knees and beg the Lord to set more people free–free of the chains of bondage that enslave them and fill them with hate. Free of the influence of evil that tells them they are the only ones that matter, and that such hatred is good.

We live in a world filled with violence. Filled with rage. Filled with people so very quick to judge anyone who takes a stand, yet shouting all the while that those people “have no right to judge me.” We live in a world where it somehow makes sense to people to picket for the rights of an endangered frog and yet sacrifice their own unborn to their convenience. We live in a world that has become self-contradictory in its effort to keep from offending.

We live in a world at the height of offensive.

We can’t protect ourselves with laws. We can’t protect ourselves with guns. We can’t protect ourselves with calls to our representatives. We can protect ourselves only by ushering revival into this land. By opening our hearts before God and saying, “Cleanse me. Cleanse every wicked way from me. Purify me, and then help me to reflect Your light.”

Because, you see, if His light floods the land…then the darkness can’t stand. The darkness can’t cling. The darkness will lose its hold.

The problems today–all the racial tension, all the hatred, all the judgment, all the insistence for “rights” that deny morality–aren’t a legal matter. They aren’t a social matter. They are a spiritual matter. And until we fight in the throne room of Heaven rather than the courts of the land, we’re just, at best, treading water.

Christianity isn’t supposed to be easy. It isn’t supposed to be comfortable. It’s supposed to demand sacrifice.

What have American Christians sacrificed lately for God? Oh, we’re sacrificing plenty to the country–giving up rights because we’ve forgotten that we have to fight to keep them. But for God? What have we been willing to give up–or to fight for–for Him?

Tragedy is supposed to break our hearts. It’s supposed to make us cry out.

But please. Don’t cry out to Washington. All they can do is change laws.

But we don’t live by laws. We live by our hearts. And we need to cry out to the Lord to change those.