Thanks so much for all the posts you guys have made! They’re awesome! I’ve mainly posted up to now about nuts-and-bolts “how to” stuff, but now I want to reiterate what God put on my heart for our current message series.
When I first conceived this series a few months ago, I was thinking of practical messages showing us how to “batten down the hatches” of our own financial lives in light of the Perfect Economic storm going on in the world. You know, the kind of stuff I’ve been posting here. (BTW, you can purchase last year’s series “Money for Dummies” at Guest Services…it was a practical series like that (or you can come to our house tonight (Fri, Nov 21) at 7pm for practical strategy, and you can read this blog).
But God had other plans. Through our Creative Team meetings (thanks, Sheila!) and His leading in the study, He said to me, “Yes, there’s a storm out there, but David, there’s an internal storm in the hearts of the flock of the sheep as well: fear, lack of trust in Me, discontentment, greed, and idolatry. Just telling them how to squeeze their budget down will have no lasting effect if they don’t look to Me to quieten the storm inside.”
I’ve tried to listen to the Lord and make this series about surviving the storm in our hearts regarding money. I’ll start another post to recap our first message in the series.
On a side note, I’ve gotten lots of positive response to the messages so far; but my prayer for all of us is that we will heed James 1:22-25:
22 But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.
23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror;
24 for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was.
25 But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does.
