Congressman Gary Palmer issues challenge during Chamber breakfast

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Today’s world can be a difficult and sometimes hostile environment for Christians, but there are many believers in Washington, D.C., striving to live for Christ, Congressman Gary Palmer told the Shelby County Chamber at a prayer breakfast Tuesday morning.

There are Congress members meeting for prayer three to four times a week, but it’s not always easy to operate in a Christlike manner in that environment, Palmer, a Republican from Hoover representing the Sixth Congressional District, said in his speech at the Pelham Civic Complex.

“I work in an environment where that’s a challenge every day,” he said. “There are some people that I really don’t like. It’s hard to keep in mind that … I need to have the same heart toward them that God has. I’ll do what I can to defeat the ones that I think need to be defeated, but I don’t want to have an attitude, almost a vile attitude. They need Jesus.”

Palmer said he sees a lot of darkness in some people, but “we need to be praying for God’s light to penetrate the darkness. … I am praying that over our Capitol, over Washington, over our state capitol, over people who are trying to serve. Let there be light.”

The directions of Christ are counter-intuitive to today’s culture and mindset, Palmer said. When challenges, persecution and temptations come, Christ’s direction is to “take up your cross and follow me,” Palmer said.

He quoted Luke 9:23-24 which says: "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.”

When Jesus talked about taking up your cross, he wasn’t talking about the one people wear around their neck on a necklace, Palmer said. He was talking about the one people laid across their shoulders and the ones to which people were nailed, Palmer said.

“It meant death. It meant a whole change of perspective in terms of how we live our lives,” he said.

Palmer quoted 15th century theologian Thomas a Kempis, who wrote a book called “The Imitation of Christ,” saying “the more completely a man dies to self, the more he begins to live for God.”

Palmer encouraged those in attendance Tuesday morning, when confronted with a challenge or temptation or when trying to determine priorities, to answer the question: “Are we willing to give up what we want for ourselves in exchange for what He wants for us?”

That’s a tremendous challenge, he said.

Charlie Kirk, the leader of the Turning Point USA conservative political organization who was assassinated in September, was a remarkable young man who lived up to that challenge and who was willing to pay the cost to be a disciple of Christ, Palmer said.

“What I have been praying for is for a great awakening to sweep this country from one end to the other, and I believe it’s coming,” Palmer said. “I think we need to do everything we can to encourage young people.”

He gives tours to a lot of young people who visit Washington, D.C., and he likes to show them paintings in the Capitol that have Christian symbolism. One of them shows Pilgrims signing the Mayflower Compact, a document signed by most of the male passengers on the Mayflower ship that came from England and landed at Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in November 1620, setting rules for how they would live together as a society.

“Our entire system of government is based on a covenant, and that covenant goes all the way back to Abraham,” Palmer said of the Mayflower Compact’s call for “advancement of the Christian faith.”

Palmer said he’s praying for more people who are willing to pay the cost of discipleship. “I tell people that God owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and I’m just looking for some Christian cowboys to round ’em up.”