Our recession list

Our list is growing. One couple will not be able to afford their mortgage soon and were living month to month. One couple with multiple kids. One friend who just began his unemployment last week and looks for a new career. One couple out a job with a pregnancy well under way. One family who looks to raise support for a new calling in the midst of a lot of tight fists. A few families through my sweetheart's company who were let go a couple of weeks ago. And more will be added to the list.

If you are on that list, we love you, we're praying for you and we aren't ignoring the spot you're in.

When some of these needs began popping up in our community group - which is about 20 people who gather in our home on Tuesdays for bible study and friendship - I began to feel burdened. I already was feeling uneasy about the recession. About what the news had to say, about what our politicians had to say, about what our stocks were saying, and especially just hearing the word itself. Apart from just losing jobs, you began to hear about many losses, and it puts a feeling into your being. All I can say is it's uneasy.

And the uneasiness was first about me. Am I going to be okay? Is my family going to be okay? Will we get to keep our job even if the other people don't? The uneasiness is definitely a check of my heart on my own affairs first because my heart of flesh is always about me first and foremost. It's a check on me and where I put my treasure. The uneasiness is the overflow of my heart.

And then I had the uneasiness in my heart that was about anything outside of me. So I definitely confess that I wish my heart were more pure. More lovely. More right. More others-oriented that in a recession I would immediately find myself interceding for that list. And that it wouldn't just be a list, but it would be as 1 peter 1:22 encourages, that I would have sincere love for my brothers and sisters and love them deeply from the heart. And over a number of weeks, especially as the list grew, I saw that the overflow of my heart that Christ had put in me developed a genuine concern for our culture, our community and finally specific names of you.

On our way up to our babymoon a couple of weeks ago Jason and I listened to a sermon by John Piper about not wasting the recession. I believe he has written a number of "don't waste your (fill in the blank)" and I just like that he is big on not pushing trials and circumstances away from you as fast as you can, but maybe sitting in them to ask God what he allowed them for, since he is sovereign and loving. I want to list his five main points and then chat about one of them.

Piper said that in a recession God intends:
1. to expose hidden sin
2. to wake us up to the constant condition of the developing world where there is always recession
3. to relocate the root of our joy
4. to advance the gospel especially when the church has the least resources to do it
5. for the church to take care of its body so that no one would be in need

I think maybe the recession is purposed for each person in a different way. Is one of these intentions above meant for your life in this recession? All of them?

I like word pictures a lot. One of my friends has a spiritual gifting of discernment and it seems to come in the form of word pictures a lot to teach people in a way they will remember. A word picture Piper used in this sermon is that we are like beakers filled with water with dirt that has settled on the bottom. The water appears to be fresh and clear, just as we appear to trust God and to not have sin lingering sometimes. But if you give that beaker a little bump, the water gets cloudy to show what was really there all along and it's so quick to permeate all of the beaker with that ugly dirt. He emphasized that the sin (the dirt) we all struggle with is self-reliance. We all need to go deeper with our trust of God. And - and I love this part - GOD IS SO GOOD to expose our motives and what a gift it is to not be blind to your unbelief. I think more than any one thing in the past two years almost God has been peeling layer after layer back on my sin issues, telling me, "I'm not done yet. I'm not done yet. Here's more. I'm still working here..." and two years into him just setting my eyes straight on the subject of confessing sin, I still can't believe he's still working on certain areas of my sinful heart. GOD IS SO GOOD TO HELP US SEE OUR UNBELIEF = OUR SIN.

Another big point both from John Piper's sermon and also just the Lord speaking to me about what to do during this recession, is the reminder that generosity has nothing to do with having an abundance. 2 Corinthians 8 reminds us that the most generous people who encouraged Paul were the ones who gave out of their nothingness, NOT from their prosperity. Not from their prosperity! We tend to want to, or be open to giving when we have that extra portion. And we feel good giving at that time. But what if our cheerful giving that the Lord delights in came from us when we did not have that extra portion. When the recession is hitting us hard in some way, YET the Lord prompts us to share our crumbs? Piper mentions wisely that this kind of giving comes from EXPERIENCING GRACE and being in awe of a God who has been so kind and generous TO US. We learn from the Lord's generosity to us in giving us his most treasured love, his Son, when we didn't even ask for that gift, care about that gift, or notice that the gift had been given.

So the biggest burden on my heart for a long while, confirmed by Piper, is this: what is the church to do, to be, during this recession? Typically we do something like...take prayer requests over those in need and try to remember to pray over them once that week. Or we forget to pray but we remember the need just in time to ask about it the next week. Or we might do none of that. I think I fall into those categories a lot. But what more? What does it look like to obey 1 Peter in these times and to have a sincere love for our brothers, loving them deeply from the heart? Because inside the hearts of the ones on my list is a struggle with faith, fear, perhaps depression, sins of anxiety and despair and also the real needs of groceries, bills, payments, etc. What is the church to do? Who are we to be?

Acts 4:34 says that there was not a needy person among them.

Jason and I are praying over this. Asking God what this means for our family. I mentiond earlier that the Lord may have purposes for each of us in this recession, possibly one of the five purposes Piper listed. I know for sure one of those purposes for me is what it means to not waste the recession by being blind to the body of Christ. I feel the Holy Spirit asking me to pray and listen about what to do. I can't say there is an exact plan but we feel his leadings and we are waiting and praying.

What might the Lord want to do in you? What is being brought up from the bottom of your beaker, so to say? Are you embracing this recession?