Real Ultimate Taxpayer Protection

Two previous posts raised seemingly disparate ideas. Dumb Requests and Good Prayers posed this question: What is the best personal request you would make of God? In Ultimate Taxpayer Protection, I quoted and considered Henry Paulsen's testimony before the Senate Banking Committee. Both of these posts orbit around a single pole.

Last week, I was talking with someone from the East Coast who was exploring what God is doing in Memphis. As we were about to part, she asked, "How can I pray for you?" I said something at the time but kept rolling this poignant question over in my mind for days afterwords: What would I MOST WANT people to be praying for on my behalf? And is my answer to that question one of which God WOULD APPROVE?

Now about a week later, here is how I would answer the "how-can-I-pray-for-you" question: "Please ask God to help me become a man who is full of faith." Faith is simply believing what God has said. As faith is exercised, it changes the course of a man's life, it works. I want to become a man who is able to believe what God says when "what God says" is hard to grasp; I want to believe what God says when our culture disagrees; I want to believe what God says even when it requires a dramatic course correction.

So what does this have to do with the current economic situation? When people don't trust the other guy, they are unwilling to do business with him. A "crisis of confidence" is threatening to freeze the market. Freddie, Fannie, Lehman Bro's, and AIG (and countless others?) have really blown it. Congress, the Fed, and the Treasury have made it worse. They have all let us down, they have all given us reason to question whether they have our best interests at heart. But NOT OUR GOD - He can be trusted 100%.

If your security rests on the state of the economy, you're in for a bumpy ride. But if your trust is placed in God, it couldn't be better placed. I am convinced that Jesus wants me (and you?) to have a strong faith and that this is a request that He would be pleased to hear. I am convinced that the "current economic crisis" is a good reminder of why having an ever greater faith in God is the only true protection plan.

Comments

[Austin]

You know, the first ripples of the credit freeze are starting to make their way to my fellow law students. A friend of mine received a notice from his lender that it was "having difficulty" obtaining his money. The possibility that I might never have the money to finish school seems very real right now. Thus, your exhortation to have faith in God couldn't have come at a better time. I need to place my faith and hope in Him--not a mere career or some paper with funny S's on it.