Covenant Church

Imagine buying a house for $100,000 and it being worth $130,000 one year later. Good times rolled. Optimism ignored warning signs. The ship sailed on into the night oblivious to the troubled waters ahead.

In our prosperity personal dreams captained the ship. Practicality took a vacation. Want became King. Passions replaced values. We shaped our conscience to values, without shaping our values by God's Word. We massaged our conscience, conforming it to our desires and pretending that God likes what we like.

Personal pleasure and selfish ambitions chose immediate goals. Existentialism dictated. Now was the urgent. Yesterday was history. Tomorrow might never come.

We laughed at sin. We played with the devil. We found ourselves at the bottom of the hill wondering how it happened.

Danny, our eldest son, was about 4 years old. We visited an aunt. Looking out the window at the children, Laila and I were shocked to see Danny standing at the top of a very steep hill. He began walking down. To keep from falling he ran faster...faster...faster! We held our breath...waiting for him to tumble end-over-end to the bottom. He ran it out and stood gasping for air. We bragged on his heroic run. He looked at us, at the hill, back at us, and exclaimed: "It made me do it!"

We have the story. We climbed to the top in excitement and adventure. We disregarded caution. The hill made us run down.

Here we are in a bottomed-out recession, hoping it will not become a depression.

No, for the record, God did not do it to us. We did it to ourselves. In the Good Times less than 40% of Americans went to church. Lakes were covered with boats. Ballfields of children played on Sunday mornings. Stadiums were packed with fans paying outrageous prices for tickets to sit and watch, while tithing and missions giving were quietly shelved.

In the country in old days roads crossed farms. Each boundary line had a gate. One bar left down could allow animals to cross into another farmer's field.

We left the gate down. We loved prosperity preachers who told us that righteous living would surely bring a Cadillac from heaven. We read "Christian" books about how to be healthy, eat right, make money, and exercise. Too often a Sunday sermon on TV was enough religion for the week. We justified ourselves in our pride and sin because a few preachers violated their calling. Instead of measuring God by who He is, we measured God by sinful man. Big mistake.

Here we are. Fear has cast its net. Bad news brought a panic. One bank had people rush in and withdraw 17.5 billion dollars in one day. The bank failed.

A news story says: "Fourth quarter GNP was the worst in 27 years." The final line of the news story was: "However, the report was much better than had been expected."

Why not begin the news report with: "Economists are encouraged that the Fourth Quarter GNP was much better than had been expected"?

Oh, NO. We first say: "A plane with 155 passengers crashed into a river."

Later we get the real story: A pilot guided a plane to a textbook landing in a river. Every person lived.

Fear feeds on fear. Fear increases tension. Tension leads to loss of judgment. If fear is not controlled it leads to anger taken out in depression or lashing out to hurt others.

In such times when cash is not flowing as it once did we are wise to do what we should have done in the Good Times. Pray. Take a new interest in the Bible as the Book of Truth, Love, Hope, Wisdom, Knowledge. Gather with others who are not negative. Pool our resources. Make sure that we share what we have with those less fortunate.

Hopefully, we are at the bottom of the hill, or close to it. If we can get fear out of the equation the turn-around will come sooner. My personal hope is that this time of challenge will bring millions of people in the United States back to humility, prayer, and a willingness to live by values that are Christ-like.

Prayerfully,

Pastor Bare

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of love, and of power, and of a sound mind (I Timothy 1:7).