Get Ready

Haggai 1:9 "'You looked for much, but indeed it came to little; and when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why?' Says the Lord of hosts, 'Because of My house that is in ruins, while every one of you runs to his own house.'"

Haggai, another prophet to the people of Israel. He spoke to them around 520BC. And his message was basically: your priorities are all screwed up. You care about your houses. They are beautiful paneled houses and the house of God lies in ruins. You only care about yourselves and what you have and how much you can obtain and all your stuff and you don't care about God. The result of this self centered living was: "You have sown much and bring in little; you eat, but do not have enough; you drink but you are not filled with drink; you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm and he who earns waged, earns wages to put into a bag with holes." V6

After listening to a program on the radio yesterday and hearing the reality of what is going on in our country as it relates to our deficit spending (We will spend one trillion dollars more than we take in every year from now to who knows how long.) and the fact that this is unsustainable (See http://www.ethanpope.com/) I can see that America has lived like Israel in the past, and unless we drastically change our ways and our hearts we are going to soon sow much and have little, eat but not have enough, drink but still be thirsty, clothe ourselves but still be cold, and earn wages that will go right through our pockets.

The problem, though, is not our deficit spending. This is just a symptom. It is a symptom of the screwed up priorities that we have been living for at least the last forty years. We have eliminated God. We have told Him :"We don't need You. We don't want You…beat it." And God has said: "OK, I will leave you to your own stupid ways. Watch what happens." The result? We became self centered, me first, I want what I want when I want it and who cares about the future, people. Now we are watching our country go right down the tubes and it is getting ready to bite us big time. Ethan Pope predicts that if we keep going this way it will result in a one world monetary system that is currently being proposed by the International Monetary Fund (See http://www.imsreform.org/) Go figure. Just what scripture talks about. A one world economy. We are watching prophecy played out right in front of our faces.

What do we do? What does a believer in Jesus Christ do? What do I do? Panic? Run for the hills? Build a cabin in the wilderness? No. We do what the people of Israel had to do. We make sure that our priorities are right. We make sure that God is central in our lives. We repent of our own self serving, materialistic ways and we seek His kingdom and His righteousness first and realize that everything else will be taken care of through His provision. We trust that His word is true when He says that He will supply all of our needs. And we pray. I pray. I need to pray more than ever that God would get a hold of the hearts of our leaders and save them. I pray that they would once again start governing based upon the principles in His word. And I pray that God would protect us and prove who He is through all of this. And frankly, I think that we need to be prepared for a much different world than what we have become used to and be ready to help others like we never have before. We can do that by getting out of debt, saving and developing our marketable skills. Frankly, we need to get ready