Economic Distress

There has been much in the news over the past few weeks concerning the current evaluation of our country's economy. There are differing opinions everywhere you turn but there seems to be a consistent line of thinking that says we are heading for uncertain economic times. This has many people reeling as they are concerned for their way of life. There is one who is not reeling and His name is Jesus. His sovereignty is not shaken. His foundations are not being rocked. The self sufficient one calls us to see Him as sufficient for our needs. "And my God will supply every need of yours according to His glory in Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:19. We love this promise of God to meet our needs while we seldom look to what extent He meets them. This verse says he meets our needs according to His glory. What does this mean? It means that God meets our needs not just to take care of us but He meets our needs because it glorifies Him. And when God receives glory we receive joy because our highest delight should be in Him. He is supreme to all things especially money. He gives us something of more lasting value, namely Himself. There is nothing more joyful than knowing we enter difficulties often times so that God may tear away our false securities and see him all sufficient.
C.S. Lewis writes in the book The Business of Heaven, a piece entitled The Necessity of Tribulation
"I am progressing along the path of life in my ordinary contentedly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in a merry meeting with my friends for the morrow or a bit of work that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers that threatens us all with destruction, sends the whole pack of cards tumbling down. At first I am overwhelmed, and and all my little happinesses look like broken toys. Then slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, I try to bring myself into the frame of mind that I should be in at all times. I remind myself that these toys were never intended to possess my heart, that my true good is in another world and my only real treasure is in Christ. And perhaps by God's grace, I succeed, and for a day or two become a creature consciously dependent on God and drawing its strength from the right sources. But the moment the threat is withdrawn, my whole nature leaps back to the toys: I am even anxious God forgive me, to banish from my mind the only thing that supported me under the threat because it is now associated with the misery of those few days. Thus the terrible necessity of tribulation is all too clear. God has had me but for forty-eight hours and then only by dint of taking everything else away from me. Let Him but sheathe that sword for a moment and I behave like a puppy when the hated bath is over - I shake myself as dry as I can and race off to reacquire my comfortable dirtiness, if not the nearest manure heap, at least in the nearest flower bed. And that is why tribulations cannot cease until God either sees us remade or sees that our remaking is now hopeless."
Let us therefore pray for tribulation that would strip us of our comforts that we my see Christ as our treasure. If He is supreme to all things, which He is, then there is no one nor anything better for us to be enamored with. "Christ is all and in all" Col. 3:11
DAW