"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness." - Abraham Lincoln in the "Proclamation of a Day of National Prayer and Humiliation" 1863

This was in a book on spiritual warfare I finished reading a couple of weeks ago. It served as a good reminder for me of how often I take wealth and success for granted. As I go through my busy life I quickly loose the sense of my need for God's strength. "Redeeming and preserving grace" is what I need to make it through every day, I just don't realize it when my day goes "well". Often I turn to God in time of need as though that were not my normal operating status. The truth is, I am in need every second of every day but I deceive myself. It is good for us to be reminded of our need for God, and I pray that I would not think of myself as being self-sufficient.

(Genesis 2:7)