The Life that Americans Long for Doesn't Work!
- Andy McIlvain
- Dec 5, 2021
- 2 min read
Updated: Jun 30, 2024

The Life that Americans Long for Doesn't Work!
We value our success and accomplishments more than our spiritual life. Our success is measured by numbers in the bank, on Facebook, Twitter, etc. followers, and likes.
Today in our culture in the most wealthy nation in history more and more people are killing themselves.
There is of course the sad downward spiral to death by opioids, drugs, etc. which is at its root a spiritual problem as well. But wealth, accomplishment, and following your heart's desire have proven to be of little value without Christ. People try to fill their lives with "things" but ultimately things do not satisfy and many despair about life.
Deaths of despair and despair of life are on the rise and it is happening across all of society. Recent examples are Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain. Both wealthy and successful yet suicidal and depressed.
They had the life so many in our nation aspire to but it was not enough, it did not work.
When we ignore God, we deny the source of our lives and when left to our own devices we self-destruct.
We live in a broken world where things are spiraling out of control and have been since the Fall. Many people have mental illness and they need our support, patience, and empathy.
Mental illness is real and generally unaddressed in our nation.
Concurrent with mental illness is the little-understood and recognized action of Demonic Spirits in people's lives. Unbelievers experience these attacks while believers are attacked with temptations. Our general disbelief in the spiritual realm allows these creatures to attack many people.
Author M. Scott Peck wrote a book "People of the Lie" which recounts his experience with some of his patients who had been attacked by demonic creatures. Most cultures around the world recognize that there is a spiritual realm that intersects with our physical realm.
As scripture says in Ephesians 6:12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
On our own we are impotent, we need God to navigate life. Godlessness leads many to contemplate self-death.
None of these things inherently lead to suicide, but believing that these things make us significant does lead to hopelessness so deep that we eventually feel that we have nothing and we are nothing. The cultural things we strive for don't bring us life, and in some cases could end in our death.
As history shows us, for those who care to observe it, we cannot fix ourselves, nor can a politician, or ET.
Do you want to be part of the remnant, the solution to our nation's self-destruction? Then become the most Godly person you can be. This is what our Lord asks of us and that is what we need!
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