Hi, my name is Rick Bloodworth. This is the Common Sense Christian channel, and it's Friday, so we're going to be talking about financial things today, and after having talked about so many different topics concerning the concerning financial state that we have within our nation and around the world. I wanted to, to talk about something that I believe is very important for us and that's that we keep the proper perspective as we start looking at different financial things. And by that I mean it's very easy to be getting to be getting caught up in all the bad financial news. There's an awful lot of things that, that are going on that should rightfully distress us. And there are things that could happen. It's true that throughout the history of the world, there have been financial calamities and there have been times of, of, of great financial upheaval. And so, while that certainly is a possibility, and perhaps it's even more of a possibility now than it was just a few years ago, and while we need to be prudent about these things, we also need to be very careful and not about not getting too caught up in all this. I can remember back in, oh, probably the, the late And, and my, my wife and I, Carolyn, had just started to get ahead a little bit financially. We had gotten a lot of our bills paid off, which is a wonderful thing. And, and for the first time in our married life, we were starting to have a little bit of extra cash that we might actually start thinking about. for investment purposes. And so I had I started watching the business channel back then, and, and I started looking at all the different business publications. I started taking the Wall Street Journal when I was still in college, since I was getting a business degree at that time. And I started buying it again at the newsstand, and just reading different financial articles and looking at different financial strategies, and I had even ordered a a stock market invest, investing kit for Morningstar. Morningstar was a, a group that rated the different stocks as far as the safety and the growth potential and just on and on. And so I was really involved with that. And we were just on the brink of investing in the stock market. And again, probably about the late 1980s, when I read a book, I can't even remember who gave it to me, but it was a book called The Coming Economic Earthquake by Larry Burkett and, and it really kind of scared me as far as trying to, to even think about making any investment plans for the future. Now, Larry Burkett, I believe is a very wise and a very bright man. He passed away a number of years ago, but the thing I liked about Larry Burkett was he really looked at financial things very from a godly perspective. And he really encouraged people not to get too carried away with things. But then he wrote this book, The Coming Economic Earthquake, and he just talked about all the different financial problems that America was getting involved with, including the continual rising of the national debt, which he was very concerned about, and rightfully so. And somebody asked him one time, How long do you think it'll be before we have a financial collapse in America? Well, he had always avoided giving that answer in the past, but finally he just said, I can't imagine us continuing to keep going beyond The turn of the century the year 2000 and so I kind of took that to heart even though he He said he was not making any kind of a prediction or a prophecy. He was just saying that that the financial Problems within america just looked like they couldn't And if they weren't, that by the year 2000, we would face a Great Depression, the likes of which we had never seen. And so, I backed off really quick. We backed off very quick on our idea about investing in the stock market. And we kind of hunkered down financially. And it became even worse when I bought another book. that I saw the headline on at a bookstore. It was called Bankruptcy 1995. Well, now there's a book title you can sink your teeth into, isn't it? And again, this was written by a couple of pretty intelligent men. One, a man by the name of Harry Figge who had served on a on what was called the Grace Commission under President Reagan's term, where President Reagan just commissioned a huge group of businessmen from around the country to get them to try and make some suggestions that we might be able to use so that we could cut the wild spending from the budget. And so led, led by Peter Grace and, and a number of very influential businessmen, powerful businessmen, they, they came up with quite a number of cuts that would really, get the balance in budget and, and then they presented it to President Reagan. Well, by that time he was involved in other things and he thanked them very politely for their report, but he never instituted any of the measures or very few of the measures that would have gotten the budget under control. And so Harry Figge, with a man by the name of Gerald Swanson, wrote this book, Bankruptcy 1995. to try and warn people that if we didn't do something about our economy that, that the, the United States of America would be bankrupt by the year 1995. Well, now I'm really hunkering down financially, and the idea of investing in the stock market was just something that I no longer even thought about, even though I had started to think about maybe getting back into mutual funds or something like that. And but, but continuing to read books like this, I just thought it's not very wise to do so. And so we just did nothing. And, and of course, as you know, the economy in America did not collapse. It didn't collapse in 1995, and it didn't collapse in the year 2000. We had a few hiccups during that time. Prior to all that, in 1987, the stock market just plunged in one day. I think it was like 22 or 23 percent in one day, and that was a big scare, but the economy kept up and going again after that, and, and we seemed to recover nicely. Around the turn of the century in the year 2000, we certainly had a a stock market correction, especially in the NASDAQ with all the different high flying stocks that were involved with that. And it seemed like maybe their prophecies or predictions were going to come, come true. And then in, in the year 2000 and, and, and one, 2002, right after 9 11 and the country was kind of shaking from, from the terrorist attacks that we had then, it just seemed like everything was unsettled. And it did seem like things were going to fall apart, but they didn't. In 2008, we had something called the Great Recession, and at that point, the stock market did plunge, and it went down a whole lot. whole lot. And there were a lot of people back then in 2008, 2009, who lost their jobs around the country. And for them, it wasn't just a recession, it was a depression. Somebody one time defined a, a recession as, as when people around you are losing their jobs, but a depression as when you've lost your job. And so depending on where you stood in that, it was either a recession or a depression. But again the country righted itself and we've been going along fairly nicely since that point and, and, and my point of all this is just this. From the time I had first started thinking about investing in the stock market, it has doubled and tripled and quadrupled and had we started doing that and making prudent investments, we probably would have shared at least a little bit within the, the increase of the stock market. But we were too afraid to do anything. We were hunkered down financially. Now, the reason I bring that up is because on this channel, on Fridays, we do talk about financial things and especially individual financial things as far as budgeting and getting your credit card debt paid off and starting to have some kind of a reasonable and balanced investment plan to where you are actually. putting money ahead for the future. But we've also talked about some of the nation's financial problems, and they do appear to be more serious now than they did a few years ago. And there's certainly always a chance of some sort of financial calamity depending on what the political scene is around the world and depending on what the finances are in the country from year to year. And so while that's a very real possibility, the thing that I really want to encourage you on is not to get too caught up in the doom and gloom sayers who make their living off of selling you things that, that will keep, that will make you feel more secure in your fear from the things that you know are certainly going to happen. I will say this from a financial perspective. Maybe, maybe an example from the physical world will help. If you find that you have termites in your house and, and you just find a little spot here and a little spot there and you take reasonable precautions to, to address them. You, you you kill the, the, every termite that you can find and, and, and you put termite poison out for the rest of them. And if you do find a spot or two that's got termite damage, you replace that you can see the, the, the problem is pretty well mitigated. But if you go into a house and the termite damage is so much that every once in a while when you take a step your foot goes through the floor, you do realize that you've probably got a problem that's a little more imminent. And you're not sure if the entire structure is going to come down or not someday because of those termites. And, and so I do believe it is wise for us to be perceptive and to be observing the condition of our surroundings. That's, that's true with termites and it's also true with, with the financial world. And I think you'd have to agree that we probably have more than a few termites within the financial structure, not only of America, but of the entire world. And certainly we could have, you know, something that, that's big happen someday. It could happen tomorrow. It could happen 40 years from tomorrow. But the question is, what do we do about it? And, and hopefully, as we've talked about these different financial things, you can see that, that at least my emphasis has been on taking proper precautions, but not getting too carried away with it. Not laying awake at night worrying about what's going to happen and not being frozen into inactivity. I can remember there's been a time or two, a president or two, that's been elected and my wife and I have actually talked about do we need to, to kind of cut back on things. Do we need to be careful on some of the plans that we had to do things. And especially to do things for God. And our conclusion has always been, no, we just need to keep on doing. We need doing the things we're doing. We need to be prudent in that. But we need to be going forward, not, not retreating backward in, in fear. And as far as your finances go, that's a really good way to do things. You need to be going forward, not retreating in fear. In Matthew chapter 6, in one of the most familiar passages, I suppose, in the entire Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said this, Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you'll eat or drink, or about your body, what you'll wear. Is not life more important than food and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not more much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life. If you and I look at the financial difficulties that, that may be looming on the horizon, and, and we take proper precaution, maybe we do stock up a little bit, on different things. Maybe we do become something of a prepper which for some reason has gotten a bad reputation. But prepping has always been a good idea as long as it's prudent, as long as we're not getting to that point that Jesus warned about where we're tearing down our barns so that we can build bigger ones just so we can store things up to take life easy. But, but taking prudent steps is good. But when we start worrying about what's going to happen, when, when we start listening to those voices of gloom and doom to the point where they distract us from getting on with our duty to serve God to the best of our ability, then we're going too far for two reasons. One, we're, we're spending way too much of our focus upon physical things. But two, we're, we're losing a trust in God and trust in God has never been intended to be an insurance policy against anything bad ever happening to you to allow you to live in an imprudent way. I'm not talking about that. I'm simply talking about trusting in God that if you act as reasonably as you think you need to be acting as a steward of his goods, then, then you trust him to take care of the rest. And if hard times do come, you trust him to help you through those hard times. And you try and help other people get through those hard times as well, especially if, if maybe you have stocked up a little bit. The problem comes in obviously when we just stop. We stop going forward. We hunker down. We wring our hands and, and we, we, we are are worried about what might come up. We grumble and we complain about everything that's not going our way. We just lose our focus. And before you know it, we find that maybe we've been doing this for a period of years and years to where life is starting to pass us by. Because we're so worried that we might lose part of our stuff. If you're as old as I am, you realize very, very clearly that you are going to lose part of your stuff from time to time. That's okay. God allows you to have certain things and to enjoy them and you should be appreciative when he does. But when your things start to reduce in number and you don't have as much stuff today as you did yesterday, don't worry about it. God takes care of the birds of the air. They don't have to store up in barns. They just have to do their tasks on a daily basis. Now we're not birds. We're human beings. We live longer than that. And we do need to, I believe, take a little bit more thought than the next day or two. That's part of being a good steward of God, but, but we can't spend our life worrying. We can't so listen to the, the voices of gloom and doom that it paralyzes us into inaction for the master. We have a lot of important things we need to do in life. And there's also a lot of things that are more than acceptable for us to enjoy. And I believe that within all bounds of reason, we need to enjoy them and then be thankful to God that he's allowed us to enjoy them. And we need to take proper precautions in a reasonable fashion. But, but we don't need to get so caught up in the what ifs in life that we no longer function. Jesus went on to say this, again in Matthew chapter 6, he said in verse in verse 31, so do not worry saying, what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear? For the pagans, The worldly people, the pagans run after all these things. And your heavenly father knows you need them, but seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. And all these things will be given to you as well. That doesn't mean they're going to fall from the sky as gifts, but it does mean that if you're seeking to do God's will, first and foremost, if you're trying to be the best stewards, you can, then God will give you the opportunity. to be able to work for the things that you truly need, because he has put us here on this earth in part to work and, and to earn the things that, that we enjoy. But, but again, You just don't need to be worrying about whether you're going to eat tomorrow or not. If, if today everything just collapsed, if spiritually you are in the right position with God, if you are saved, if you've obeyed the gospel, and by that I mean you've just done the very simple things that the New Testament has instructed. You, you've read the word, you believe Jesus is the son of God. You've called on his name by confessing your belief that he is Lord, that he's the son of God. You've truly repented of your sins. You've determined you're no longer going to live that way, that you're going to start. Living for God, you've made that 180 degree turn. You've had your sins washed away in those holy waters of baptism. And now you are doing your very best to walk in the light, to live the life that God has called you. If you're doing that, you're taking care of the most important. Then you can start to focus on some of the physical things that I believe we are expected to at least take into consideration and to be prudent over. Part of the test of life is whether we'll be prudent with the resources that God gives to us. But I can assure you that prudence does not extend to the point where we are tearing down barns and building bigger ones so that we can take it easy or so that we can feel a little bit more comfortable that now we've got things stocked up for five years instead of just four and a half years. Or going to the other extreme and not doing anything and just worrying about, about when the collapse is going to happen. Your life here is for a very short time and it's for God. If you can try to serve him to the best of your ability and help others to do the same, and be prudent with your physical possessions. including storing up a little bit when, when the time calls for it, you'll be doing well. But, but if, if you're scared to death over what might happen to where you're paralyzed and cannot do anything, You're missing out on the abundant life that Christ has came, came to give you. And so Jesus concluded, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. It's true that the economy could collapse tomorrow. It's probably more likely that it collapses tomorrow than yesterday, because it didn't collapse yesterday. But the fact of the matter is whether things are going well or whether things are not going as well as we would hope, if we will just continue to steadily progress forward. And if part of that is, is because you have a little bit of extra set aside and you can make prudent investments as you go forward, not getting too carried away, thinking your investments somehow are going to save you, but trying to be the best steward of God's resources that you can, and then using the profits from that. for his kingdom. You're, you're going to do really well. But again, I want to encourage you in this, in this one thing, the voices of gloom and doom are all around us. They've been around us, I suppose, as long as the world has existed. And sometimes the warnings from the gloom and doom do come true. And there are certainly elements of truth within each warning of gloom and doom that we hear today. Just don't let your life be controlled by it. Take the proper precautions that you need to and then live for God each and every day. And you're going to do pretty well. God wants you to enjoy life. He doesn't want you to worry. He does expect you to be prudent, but he also expects you to seek first his kingdom, and he'll make sure that you have the opportunity to get everything else. Well, that's the lesson for today. It's a little bit different than most of our financial Fridays, but I thought it was time to maybe bring this up to where we didn't get going off in a direction that, that might be unproductive for, for a proper servant of God. Appreciate your tuning in. We'll see you next time.