Good Sunday morning! God has sent messages of encouragement and peace to me today, and I am glad to be here with you. What? No one e-mails on the weekends? :-) Looks like many of you only look at your personal e-mail at work, shame, shame! Actually, we deal (dealt in my case) with so much e-mail at work, that I am glad that some of you take the time away from e-mail on the weekends. For me, writing is now my job, and a few minutes to write a devotional on the weekend is a pleasure and not what I would call "work". If you don't read this until Monday, that is fine with me. I will continue to write these devotionals as I feel led at the time, no stockpile of prewritten messages to go out on a schedule, no plan or strategy. I think that the best messages come from simply sitting down each morning and letting the Holy Spirit speak through my writing at that time. My new "work", and I believe it to be work in only the loosest sense of the word, will be so much better than what I did until last Tuesday that I cannot imagine the extent of the difference God will make in my life and writing. This week, my plan or goal is to gradually increase my writing until I am writing for 4 hours each morning. Pastor Osteen is at this very moment speaking about God perhaps wanting us to try something new in our lives; I do believe that I fit that to a "T", and that God is very much in control of this new situation that I find myself in.
What about that situation? This morning I went to the grocery store, just like most weekends for the past few years when I began the habit of grocery shopping at 0700 on Saturday or Sunday. The sky looked cloudy and it was a bit rainy. However, I was most stunned by the newspaper reports of fear. What? I have more reason to fear than most folks, and I have felt that fear in the past week. However, it is time for us to look to God, and not at the shadows of fear and defeat in the news media. If this current economic situation makes us look at our habits and stop some of them, it may very well be for the better. As a people, Americans eat too much, gamble too much, and carry too much debt; if the fear causes us to get rid of these habits then we will be better for it in the future. If the fear causes us to stop spending anything, then we may do more harm than good. Maybe we don't need to eat out every night or go to every movie that comes along. We don't need a new car every two years, perhaps a new vehicle every 4 or 5 years is good enough. However, I would hate to see us all get so scared that we only buy the barest necessities. I have heard of many businesses that are doing well and making a profit right now. Their stock is down because the entire market is down due to fear. We can stop this! I am not saying that you should empty your savings to run out and buy stock, but don't get in a panic and sell all of your stock. Panic selling simply plays into the hands of those who are even now buying up stock at bargain prices. They will sit on the stock until the market recovery begins, and it will, and then they will be selling at a tremendous profit to those who not that long ago were selling in a panic. Stopping the panic is not a matter of who get elected president next month, stopping the panic begins with you and I. Look to the Lord of all Creation, and look in hope and peace. We need not fear the events of the world.
God bless you on this new and glorious day in Christ Jesus!
Bucky
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