The unity, focus, patience and energy of those opposed to faith and freedom in our country is a thing to behold. It’s sad that those of us who prize faith and freedom often have the opposite traits — impatience, apathy, division and distraction.

Those who oppose our country’s founding principles have worked tirelessly and strategically to capture one institution after another — the courts, the universities, Hollywood. The list goes on and on. They have even managed to hollow out an institution older than any government — marriage. And they did all this while we were quarreling among ourselves, often over trivial things. We should feel embarrassed.

So successful have they been in their united onslaught that now a police officer can lose his job for politely declining to participate in a celebratory motorcycle show for a gay pride parade in conservative Utah. People of faith must respond with a unity, patience and energy equal to that arrayed against us.

Jesus prayed for supernatural unity in John 17. The call was clear. What are we waiting for? For every one of us to first agree on every point of doctrine? Let’s be united in Christ now.

There’s a place for discussing our differences, for iron sharpening iron. But let’s be united in defense of the things we know are precious and in danger of being swept away.

It is time to stand for freedom like a mighty, united army, a spiritual force. We must reclaim the nation birthed through faith, prayer and personal sacrifice in order to bless, once again, the American people and the nations of the world.

The framers of the Constitution knew the liberty they offered could only be sustained by a responsible and vigilant people. A woman asked Benjamin Franklin if the meeting in Philadelphia had created a monarchy or a republic. Franklin answered, “A republic — if you can keep it.” Well, we are on the verge of losing these blessings.

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction,” Ronald Reagan said. “We don’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected and handed on to them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States when men were free.”

I do not want to be among those struck speechless when asked what we were doing when freedom died. Let us not be indifferent and allow freedom to die on our watch. Let us continue to pray, profess and openly call for a return to God-given principles.

The sobering reality is that our nation is lumbering toward the death of freedom and the destruction of meaningful national life. We are following the course of once great nations that we can read about in our history books, where intellectual, moral and economic systems decayed and eventually collapsed. May we as Christians and lovers of freedom stand together to prevent it. We can witness a glorious future of freedom, or its tragic demise.