Over the last few years, following a strategy that proved effective for advancing pro-life protections, states like Texas have been laying creative groundwork to hold adults accountable for experimenting on young people struggling with gender identity. Having these laws in place is incredibly important, given the astronomical rise in the number of young people identifying as transgender and how quickly transgender ideology went from being unthinkable to unquestionable in so many aspects of society.  

In Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, President Joe Biden told young people with gender dysphoria that he will “always have (their) back.” Though he didn’t specify what exactly that means, presumably it had something to do with extending Title IX protections to include allowing men full access to women’s facilities and sports; extending mandatory insurance coverage for “gender reassignment” surgeries; and restricting any counseling, treatments, or public advocacy that does anything less than fully affirm one’s gender dysphoria.  
Immediately following the President’s late-speech shoutout was a call to pass the Equality Act, something that remains (at least for now) dead in the Senate. The Equality Act would be a kind of legislative nuclear option, rendering the approximately 250 so-called “anti-LGBTQ” bills under consideration across America pointless, and leading to serious restrictions on religious liberty, especially for religious schools.  
Over the last few years, following a strategy that proved effective for advancing pro-life protections, states like Texas have been laying creative groundwork to hold adults accountable for experimenting on young people struggling with gender identity. Having these laws in place is incredibly important, given the astronomical rise in the number of young people identifying as transgender and how quickly transgender ideology went from being unthinkable to unquestionable in so many aspects of society.  
For instance, the field of so-called gender-affirming “medicine” is the only example of medical treatment that attempts to alter the body to accord with the mind, as opposed to helping the mind align with biological reality. That was a $316 million industry in 2018. By 2026, it is projected to be a $1.5 billion industry.  
Children, in particular, are the subjects of these social experiments, which are only one example of how reality is being reimagined along the lines of sexual autonomy. 
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“We are, as it were, God’s agents—used by Him to do His work, not ours. We do our part, and then can only look to Him, with others, for His blessing. If this is so, then Christians at home can do as much for foreign missions as those actually on the field. I believe it will only be known on the Last Day how much has been accomplished in missionary work by the prayers of earnest believers at home.”

One of my favorite biographies is that of J.O. Fraser. As a single missionary serving in very hard places, he pioneered Gospel efforts among the animistic Lisu tribal people of Southwestern China. His life is an inspiring tribute to God’s grace in both his life and in those who came to Jesus through his ministry.
The book that I refer to here is Geraldine Taylor’s biography him, Behind the Ranges: the Life-Changing Story of J. O. Fraser.  There is another biography of him that is also well-read, Mountain Rain.
Fraser is best known for his strong emphasis on intercessory prayer. Intercessory prayer is pleading with Christ on behalf of another. Fraser was very serious about people back home praying for his missionary ministry. I would like to share several of these quotes on prayer to encourage you in the ministry of intercessory prayer.
The vital union must be maintained.
“Now the first thing was to strengthen the spiritual base of the work. Called to a forward movement, Fraser realized not only his dependence upon the Divine Leader but also upon the support of fellow believers, one with him in Christ. He might be the hand reaching out into the darkness, but not a hand cut off and thrown ahead of the body. The vital union must be maintained. He was about to start on an exploratory journey to the Lisu of the Upper Salween, a district then wholly untouched by missionary effort, but before doing so he felt he must give expression to a desire which had long been growing.
I know you will never fail me in the matter of intercession [he wrote to his mother in January] but will you think and pray about getting a group of like-minded friends, whether few or many, whether in one place or scattered, to join in the same petitions? If you could form a small prayer circle, I would write regularly to the members.”
Lasting missionary work is done on our knees.
“I am feeling more and more that it is, after all, just the prayers of God’s people that call down blessing upon the work, whether they are directly engaged in it or not. Paul may plant and Apollos water, but it is God who gives the increase; and this increase can be brought down from heaven by believing prayer, whether offered in China or in England.”
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Arbitrary government is where men rule without accountability as to personnel and standard. Pretty straight forward. If people have no “choice or allowance,” meaning active selection or passive confirmation, and where men judge on a whim—with will but without reason—there is arbitrary government. God alone has no accountability beyond himself. Winthrop maintained that Massachusetts in 1644 was no home to usurpation of God’s singular prerogative.

John Winthrop was governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony for twelve years between 1630 and 1648 and was either deputy governor or assistant the rest of the time. At the time of his Arbitrary Government Described and the Government of Massachusetts Vindicated from that Aspersion, he was deputy governor. What we see in Winthrop’s Vindication is a standard by which all governments may be judged. The occasion for the public defense on behalf of the administration of which Winthrop was a part will become clear below but ultimately need not detain us. In a nutshell, the government had been charged with ruling and administering according to whim. Winthrop obviously took issue with that “aspersion.”
Arbitrary government is where men rule without accountability as to personnel and standard. Pretty straight forward. If people have no “choice or allowance,” meaning active selection or passive confirmation, and where men judge on a whim—with will but without reason—there is arbitrary government. God alone has no accountability beyond himself. Winthrop maintained that Massachusetts in 1644 was no home to usurpation of God’s singular prerogative.
Winthrop makes his case with appeal to a true transference or delegation of sovereignty, the right to authority, viz., royal grant. Then there was no other possible basis for Englishmen, and it is worth noting that the inherent, so to speak, authority of the colonies turned states over a hundred years later was predicated on the same basis, at least for the preexistent communities—the later state additions were a different story.
Imbedded in the royal patent or charter of Massachusetts Bay is the structure of colonial governance: the governor and a deputy governor as well as eighteen assistants (the executive and its board), and then the company (freemen or stakeholders, so to speak). The board of assistants was one house of the legislature as well as the highest judicial court. The governor was the president of the board but not an assistant simultaneously, and also functioned as a magistrate in the court. But as Herbert Osgood (The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century) discerned, “the governor had no status apart from the board and the legislature… and therefore was bound by the action of the board…. the system of government in the corporate colony was one in which the weight of the governor among the assistants, as elsewhere, depended much on his personality.” This was only partially true. For as Winthrop had declared in 1632, the patent had to be read in light of common law precedent. Therefore, the governor possessed the powers typically associated with that position. This granted the governor some discretion not afforded to the assistants qua assistants, albeit the highest level of discretion was enjoyed by the governors and assistants as the executive branch.
During the first five years or so of the colony’s governance, the assistants played an outsized role, one later diminished. And they were empowered, as a sort of law enforcement agency, to issues warrants, summonses, and attachments. The board itself issues land grants, wage rates, and the like also. After 1634-1635, with the expansion of freemanship beyond the initial class, the assistants were relegated to more administrative and judicial considerations. And yet, the magistrates (assistants) maintained a negative vote (veto power) in the legislature.
Returning to Winthrop’s text, it is the former body, the governor and assistants, that has authority and the latter, the freemen, that has liberty, says Winthrop. Freeman has the liberty to elect and to counsel the state. This is not a merely passive liberty but of active selection and input. Hence, consent to and participation in lawmaking in the General Assembly via four General Courts annually. Not to mention annual elections of the governor, deputy, and assistants. Therefore, the government, in its foundations, was hardly arbitrary. True authority established it, and true participation was present in its operations. So too are the duties of each part of government explicitly handed down in the charter. None of this had been altered either by the incumbent administration.
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