The US Financial Crisis 2008

It seems these days that everywhere you look on the news, everyone is talking about the financial crisis in the United States. Just last night, Washington Mutual was sold to JP Morgan for 1.9 Billion dollars. Banks are falling, crumbling like crumbs from stale bread, and people are losing their homes all because of people's greed. I am by no means a financial guru, but I did sell cars for 2 years while I was in Texas. One thing I started saying after my first 8 months of selling cars is that something like this would happen. This is why:

I have seen my fair share of credit reports, and the average American is is within a month of bankruptcy at any given time. People are so far in debt because they want things they can't afford (the same is true with Canadians). However, the US government is in the same boat as the average American. As of September 27, 2008, the US National Debt is $9,853,481,831,514.09. That is just shy of 10 Trillion Dollars! Now I don't know anything about the buyout plan the Bush government is proposing, but I do know that there are a lot of people against it, saying it will raise taxes and increase inflation.

It looks like the United States is in need of a financial saviour. Someone to cancel the debt of Wall Street, the debt of the nation, and the debt of the common family. Just for that national debt to be erased, each American, (man, woman and child) would need to pay $33,000 each! For a family of four that would be $132,000 and that is just to cancel the debt, that does not include government funded programs, wages, military and the like! In 2003 the average American family was in debt over $18,000 not including mortgage or car loans! It seems like America has a problematic lifestyle of debt that is next to impossible to dig out of.

Now before we go and start pointing the finger at the Americans for their debt we need to look at ourselves first. We all have ENORMOUS debt called sin that makes the US financial crisis look like a minor mishap.

We have sinned multiple times against Almighty God. That is a very scary idea when the Bible is very clear that only 1 sin will land you in hell for eternity. There will be no purgatory, do not pass go, go directly to hell.

Most of us think that we are good enough to get into heaven, but lets look at it this way. Let's just say that you are a really good person and only sin 3 times per day. That is 1095 sins per year. Now lets just say that some of your days were better than others and you only sinned 1000 times per year. The average person in North America lives to be over 80 years old. So, a really good person would sin well over 80,000 times in their life. Remember 1 sin lands you in hell, and so a really good person deserves to go to hell 80,000 times over. Where are you standing right now?

Just like America needs some sort of financial saviour, we need a Saviour who will cancel our debts also. Imagine that you are in a court room and the judge looks at you and tells you that you are guilty of committing 10 of the strictest laws in Canada. He tells you that you will spend the rest of your life in jail or pay a $9,853,481,831,514.09 fine. Chances are you don't have that money since the US government doesn't have it either. So what's going to happen? You are going to suffer the consequences by rotting in jail.

Just before the judge slams down the gavel, somebody you don't know walks into the courtroom with a brief case. He says, "Your honour, I love the defendant very much." opens up his briefcase and shows the judge $9,853,481,831,514.09 in cash and says that he would like to pay your fine. What would you do? Would you take the free gift or would you go to jail for the rest of your life?

You see, that is what Jesus Christ did for you on the cross. He payed your sin debt so you didn't have to. It is a gift, but a gift needs to be received for it to truly be a gift. So how do I receive this gift?

You need to believe that Jesus paid your penalty and stop living life your way and start living life His way. The Bible says that we need to confess Jesus as Lord. That means He will become the boss of your life instead of you. You will live life on His terms.

You may be saying that you don't want that. Let's just review for a second. Banks are folding, people are losing their homes, the government is saying the dreaded "R" word, and we all know that it looks worse than the dreaded "R" word. Do you really think that if the Americans were able to get all of their debt canceled - from Wall Street, to US Government, to the average American family - would really say, "Wow, that was great, let's go into debt again!" Or would they rather put up new laws to prevent themselves from ever getting there again?

The question now becomes, do you want to live your life like a financial crisis, or do you you want to live it with eternal security?

Awesome Night

We had an awesome night last night. It was the very first night for the Medicine Hat College Christian Faculty prayer night. I was the only non-faculty member their last night. There were about 12 fine Christian faculty at the prayer meeting, all wanting to see their students come to know the Living God, Jesus Christ. I was asked to share the vision of Pathway, so I did, and let the faculty know that I will be starting a student ministry on campus also. They are excited about that opportunity. There are some underground Christian groups right now through ESL, but nothing publicly recognized within the College. Please pray that God will open up the hearts of those students at Medicine Hat College and that we would be the light of Christ in a very dark environment.

Scare

As many of you know, we had quite a scare with our 2 year old son this week. He stopped breathing on Monday afternoon, I (jason) was able to revive him as the ambulance was on the way to our house. While at Medicine Hat Hospital, he stopped breathing two more times, but they gave him oxygen and he was fine.

As soon as I could, I got onto my facebook account and sent out mass prayer notices for our son. We have seen God's healing power, our boy is back to his normal self, but got to take a plane ride to Calgary for testing. Thank you for all your prayers.

Jason

Hurricane Ike

We were in Texas long enough to experience Hurricane Rita, and we knew that we never wanted to go through that again. Leigh's parents live just outside of The Woodland's, TX and everyone is without power. Leigh's dad just emailed us from his blackberry and told us that they have experienced major house damage and have lost one vehicle. The eye of the storm was about 5-10 miles away from them.

While reading channel 13 news from Houston this morning, we see that there were tens of thousands of people who did not adhere to the mandatory evacuation pronounced by city officials. These are those who will be like the refugees from Katrina.

Please pray for all of these people who have lost their homes, vehicles and loved ones during this tragic times.

Bible Study

We will be having Bible Study this Saturday night at the Steer's home in Crescent Heights at 7:00pm. We will be going through series on the churches in the Book of Acts, what they looked like, what they did, the unique aspects of the culture of the times and how that all applies to us in Medicine Hat. We will also have some good food, coffee and some tea going on too.