Saw the following on Glenn Teal’s site and wanted to share it with you all. I’m really glad to have a person like this leading our country and remaining strong in his faith. Be praying for him as he faces hard times with the Iraq situation, and as the next election approaches.

GREAT BUSH STATEMENTS ON FAITH

At home, the job of a president is to help cultures change. The culture needs to be changed. . . This is one of the reasons I got into politics in the first place. Governments cannot change culture alone. I want you to know I understand that. But I can be a voice of cultural change.

Part of the responsibility era is the responsibility that comes with promoting–taking care of your bodies to the point where we can promote a culture of life. Father Richard [Neuhaus] helped me craft what is still the integral part of my position on abortion, which is: Every child welcomed to life and protected by law. That is the goal of this administration.

Part of government’s role is to foster responsibility and hope by standing with those who have heard a call to love a neighbor, which is the second point of the faith-based initiative that I think is one of the most important domestic initiatives that I have pushed, if not the most. It recognizes the rightful relationship between hearts and souls and government. Again, my job is to try to distill things down so that average people can understand it. Here’s the way I put it, “Government can hand out money, but it cannot put love in people’s hearts or a sense of purpose in people’s lives.”

Or I like to tell people, “If you’re a drunk, sometimes a psychologist can talk you out of it, but generally it requires a higher power. If you change your heart, you change your behavior.” And government must recognize that those heart changers are an important part of changing society one soul at a time.

So the faith-based initiative recognizes that there is an army of compassion that needs to be nurtured, rallied, called forth, and funded, without causing the army to have to lose the reason it’s an army in the first place. . .

And finally, I say to people all the time, “Thank you for your prayers.” Something’s happening in America. Although I’m not the perfect guy because the focus groups I tend to be in front of are loud, are large, and you know, pretty well made up their mind. But when I’m walking the rope line people say things different than they did four years ago.

The thing they say different now than four years ago is, “Mr. President, we pray for you.” That happens a lot–at least from my perspective, what I’m able to see. When I’m shaking those hands, I bet you every other person or maybe every third person says, “Mr. President, my family prays for you.”

. . . Just as an aside from a personal perspective, if you’re interested: I read Oswald Chambers every morning. To me, he is good. He helps me understand how far I am on my walk. I mean if you can figure out everything he’s saying, then you got a depth of understanding of the gospel beyond the emotional. He’s a great Christian writer. And then I’m reading a devotional by the former chaplain of the Senate, Lloyd Ogilvie. And next year I’ll read the One-Year Bible again. I read it every other year and a half.

People say, “When do you pray?” I pray all the time. All the time. You don’t need a chapel to pray I don’t think. Whether it be in the Oval Office, I mean, you just do it. That’s just me. I don’t say that to try to get votes. I’m just sharing that experience with you. . .

President George W. Bush