GOD HAS THE ANSWER

The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations I have been told has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith;
from spiritual faith to great courage;
from courage to liberty;
from liberty to abundance;
from abundance to selfishness;
from selfishness to apathy;
from apathy to dependence;
from dependency back again into bondage.

I don’t know about you but I would say that western civilization is at the abundance to selfishness stage. The very thing that has brought us undone financially and thrown us into recession is greed or "me, myself and I."

If that is the case, the next stage is going to be from selfishness to apathy. It has been said that the world goes the way of the church. That being so, it is not surprising that the western church in general is very apathetic.

In one town I tried to get the churches together to form an evangelism task force with a representative from each church. Together we could pool our resources and embark upon evangelism in the town.

The response was that they didn’t have time for evangelism as they were too busy running their churches. A case of not really bothered if we obey the scriptures or not. I know some of you will say you are having a dig at the church. That is one way of looking at it. The other is that I am telling the truth which we as a church have to face up to if we are going to be able to fulfill our mission to enable God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

We as a church can save the world from its excesses as we model and carry out the will of God for the simple reason that we are called to be an alternative kingdom that has quite different values to that of the world. But are we?

Are you worried about the financial meltdown? If so why? Because you have lost a lot of money? So what? Doesn’t the scripture say that Jesus will meet all our needs; take no thought for tomorrow; seek first the kingdom of God and all these things (food, clothing, your health) will be added to you; do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth.

It seems clear to me that our wellbeing is the responsibility of God, not us. If you won’t let God take care of you, how can he?

Now is a good time to show the world that God is the best secretary of the treasury that a person can have. His treasury doesn’t have financial meltdowns or run short of money. We need to start putting our faith in God, not the secular systems of the world.