In 2026, we’re celebrating 250 years as a nation. This is no small feat or minor accomplishment. Rather, it’s a testament to God’s faithfulness, mercy and blessing upon the United States.

I don’t believe that God’s blessing is an accident.

From the very beginning—as they were declaring independence from Britain—our forefathers were simultaneously declaring our great dependence on our Heavenly Father.

Did you know that the Declaration of Independence has four separate references to God?

Did you know that one of the first acts of congress was to elect chaplains to spiritually lead the assembly?

Or that the U.S. House Chamber, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, the U.S. Capitol and more are inscribed with Scripture or appeals to God?

And that’s just scratching the surface. There are countless other examples of how our young nation depended on God, called on God and honored God.

Is the United States perfect? No. Do we have dark moments, both in the past and today? Absolutely.

But from our very foundation we have declared our dependence upon God and embraced His Holy Scripture. As Psalm 33:12 says, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.”

And, my friends, we are blessed.

We should be joyful and at peace. Certainly, we should be praising our Father in Heaven for His many blessings. Yet—across our country—the opposite is happening.

Record numbers of people are dealing with brokenness and depression. Instead of joy, we’re seeing a flood of emptiness, loneliness and hopelessness.

Studies have shown that more than one in five U.S. adults now live with a mental illness, including increases in depression, anxiety and psychological distress. Our teenagers and young adults are especially being impacted. (National Institute of Mental Health)

Why is this? How can this be?

Intellectually, this makes no sense. But it does make sense spiritually.

You see, the problem is that we’ve drifted from that initial foundation of faith instilled and insisted upon by our wise forefathers.

The United States has moved from Scripture to secularism … from the Word to the world … from the Bible to brokenness.

We’ve largely walked away from God. We’ve become self-reliant, and we’ve told God that we don’t need Him anymore. He’s out of date. He’s irrelevant.

Now, we may not use those exact words. In fact, we may go to church on Sunday morning. But our Bible sits on the shelf and we spend the rest of the week as self-made men and women, living our lives like God doesn’t exist.

We aren’t living for Him. We aren’t the “light shining in the darkness,” as the Bible says, and then we can’t understand why the world around us seems to be godless and crumbling.

My friends, I’m going to say this as clearly as I can: We all want to see revival come to the United States—but if that’s going to happen, it has to begin with us.

Let me say that again: It has to begin with us. 

We’ve talked about our nation and our collective dependence upon God, but there’s a deeper issue we all must consider, and that’s our personal standing before God—our personal dependence on Him.

There’s only one answer to the problems that we face. Like the Prodigal Son in Luke 15, we must return to our Father—our Savior Jesus Christ.

It’s time to return to the faith upon which this nation was founded. We must return to the cross of Christ.

Only when we do that individually—in each of our own lives, each of our own souls—can we expect to see the direction of this nation point back toward God.

It has to begin with us.

Will Graham is visiting all 13 of the original colonies this fall to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ as part of the Declaration of Dependence Tour. Learn more at DeclarationOfDependence.com.