Greetings!

Are you a thermostat or a thermometer? That is a very relevant question for many people today with the flurry of emotion- invoking headlines that we see in the media. A thermometer simply takes the temperature, the gauge, of what's going on out there. So a person who is a thermometer gets emails that are written in bold letters and have exclamation points (!!!) and red lettering, and large letters, small letters, stating bad news. They open up the Wall Street Journal, read an article about people getting jobs cut and that person begins to worry and to have fear. They get their statement from their investment account and that person sees that their account went down (for that one month) and they begin to have fear in their life. That's the thermometer person.

My hope and my prayer for each of you is that you will be thermostats in your work, in your church, and in your own life. In doing so, you can be a light to people. Do not let the emotional invoking headlines control you by getting you to fear. I encourage you to believe God's promises and believe God's Word. The Bible says in 2 Timothy 1:7, "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind" (NKJV). The fear that you have from reading these headlines is not from God.

Hebrews 13:5-6 says point blank, "Don't love money! Be satisfied with what you have." For God has said, "I will never fail you. I will never abandon you." So we can say with confidence, "The Lord is my helper, so I will have no fear. What can mere people do to me?" (NLV) The Bible and the Lord are point blank telling us to be satisfied with what we have.

When we begin to think about the economic uncertainty around us, which by the way, God tells us is going to happen always (Eccl. 11:2), and we begin to fear, we are not living the life that we've been called to in Jesus Christ. That's pretty disturbing. It really affects everything. It affects our ability to witness, it affects our ability to enjoy life, experience God's peace and all the other humanly selfish things, but most importantly it affects our relationship with God. And for us, as Christians, that should be most disquieting.

1 John 4:18 says, "there is no fear in love. [Dread does not exist], but full grown (complete, perfect) love turns fear out of doors and expels every trace of terror! For fear brings with it the thought of punishment, and [so] he who is afraid has not reached the full maturity of love. [has not yet grown into love's complete perfection]." [Amplified] So those are pretty powerful words for us to think and pray about. It is not just applied in the area of finance and money. It is applied in every area of our life. What God's telling us may be hard for many of us to swallow, but if we're afraid, we have not reached full maturity of love. Now hopefully, that's not hard for any of us to swallow, because that means we still have some humility left in us. I would hope and pray that each of us would not think that we have full maturity of love. But there are some Christians out there who believe that, or want to believe that. However, any time you have fear, you don't have the full maturity of God's love. You're not experiencing Christ in your life, if you have fear. Fear is never from God. It is from the evil one. And we need to realize that.

I am aware, and agree, that there are many prophetic events currently taking place that are different and unprecedented in history. Things are taking place in Jerusalem and Israel. And things that are taking place in the climate over the world that the Bible talks about in Matthew-what the Bible calls "birth pangs". So certainly there are going to be some unusual things happening as we get closer and closer to the second coming or the return of our savior Jesus Christ. I do agree with that; however, there are really only four things that can happen in our economy. Those are: (1) inflation; (2) deflation; (3) a currency collapse; or (4) a government being overthrown. [We will continue this topic next week by looking at some questions to ask ourselves.]