National Bible Week

Floor Speech

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Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Colorado (Mr. Lamborn) for those overly kind words, and I certainly appreciate his sentiments for my service. And I, too, will miss our Armed Services Committee hearings and sitting beside him. He is a terrific God-fearing man, and I am better for having known him in that regard.

Mr. Speaker, I was blessed to be raised in a God-fearing Christian family. Not everybody gets that blessing, but I did. I have never not known about the Bible or Christ or God throughout my entire life.

My mother believed in being at church every single Sunday morning, regardless of the consequences or whatever else was going on.

At the age of nine, I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior. And you can become a Christian with knowing a limited amount of the Bible, but I don't believe you can lead a good Christian life without studying the Bible, without understanding God's truths that are contained therein and the instruction that that gives us as to how to conduct our lives.

Mr. Speaker, Second Timothy 3:16 has already been quoted, but I will quote it again. It says:

All Scripture is breathed out by God, the Word of God, and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.

Mr. Speaker, this Nation is at a crossroads, and we are a divided Nation across a lot of lines, the partisan divides we fight in this House day in and day out. There are other moral lines of which our Nation is divided across. The Bible is important because it is that one place where the truths never change.

Customs come and go, ideologies come and go, but the truths of God don't. So if we are to heed the instructions of our Founding Fathers, that John Adams said, as was mentioned, that are a moral and religious people, then we need a guidebook. We need an understanding of what those morals are based upon. If the morals are based upon what I think are correct or you think are correct, then that is a pretty flimsy stance to take. We need a foundational truth that is there regardless of who is Speaker, regardless of who is President. God is always on that throne, and so, the Bible is obviously important for that regard.

Mr. Speaker, there is a verse in Second Chronicles that I think contains both a promise for our Nation and a solution for our Nation. The backdrop on that was that the Nation of Israel, God's chosen people, if you read through the Old Testament, they had a running narrative of where their hearts would be good, right with God, things would be going well, and then within a generation or two they would fall off, their hearts would get wrong with God, they would be doing things that would offend God and their mighty ways, and God would use awful, horrible things to reset that narrative, reset the Nation of Israel's hearts, so that they could, in fact, be his chosen people.

That tool is still in God's toolbox. I believe the United States is a Nation of God's chosen people. If you look at what our Nation has done over the last 100 years, I would argue that no Nation on Earth has ever done as much good as we have done for the rest of the world and asks so little in return as this Nation.

Mr. Speaker, I believe that is God's divine mission for us as a people. But do we continue to be worthy of that mission?

And I would argue that as God looks at this unblessable thing that is going on in our Nation that we may be rapidly becoming unworthy of that mission. And if we lay that mantle down, if it is taken away from us, Mr. Speaker, who will pick it up?

Russia, China, radical Islam?

I don't believe so.

I believe it is important not only for America to continue to be that God-fearing Nation but also important for the rest of the world.

That verse in Second Chronicles 7:14 says:

If my people, who are called by my name love themselves, turn from their wicked ways, seek my face and pray, then I will hear them in Heaven. I will forgive their sins, and I will heal their land.

Our land needs healing. That is God's promise. It is written in stone. God doesn't change any of his promises. And that promise is available to us as a Nation. That is the promise.

The solution, however, lies with us. We must be that people who will turn from our wicked ways, seek God's face, pray, and then he will hear us from Heaven, he will heal our land, and forgive our sins.

Mr. Speaker, our land needs healing, probably more so than at any time since the Civil War. We are a divided Nation, and only God's guidance and God's divine intervention, I believe, can make that happen. We have to be, however, God's instruments to make that happen.

The Bible is important to me. It is important to our Nation. It is important for the ongoing safety of this world. God bless each and every one of you. God bless Texas. And God bless the United States of America.

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