Godonomics

If you have never learned about the Ibex, this video is stunning and very helpful in understanding the Psalms’ prayer that God would give him hind’s feet.

Introduction:

Wasn’t that video from the BBC video amazing.   Deer that can literally walk on the side of mountains.  While I was in Israel, I was able to see the type of deer in the Middle East that have a similar ability.  The deer are much more like a Ram.  The Ibex.  Here is a photo I took of one in the middle east.   Imagine having the ability in life to jump and handle such rugged Terrain:

A Stable Footing Comes from an Unstable Craving

What do you have that can give you strength in unstable times?

• Your parents relationship is deteriorating

• Your health has some uncertainty

• Your kids are not obeying like they used to.

• Your spouse has changed since having kids… Since empty nest.

• You feel stuck between raising teenagers and trying to find time to care for your parents who can’t drive and need help with the essentials.

• You have a big deal that took a bad turn

• You got a subpoena to appear in court.

• You find yourself in new territory of temptation that is really drawing you in.

It’s during these times of instability, we long and look for something to anchor ourselves into.   What can we anchor ourselves to that will sustain us, strengthen us, and help us in difficulty.

God offers us a stable footing in times of instability.

Let’s look at both aspects, a Stable Footing and an Unstable Craving.

I. A Stable Footing

Psalms 18:33  He makes my feet like the feet of deer, And sets me on my high places.

Here David described how God prepared him for battle, giving him strength, agility, and efficiency; how God gave him victory over his enemies, pursuing, crushing, and destroying them The predominant thought throughout these verses is that David attributed every ability and victory of his to the LORD. Everything he had done and everything he now enjoyed was due to the Lord’s enabling.

The picture above comes from En Gedi, the very area David wrote many of these psalms as he was hiding from Saul.   He literally was hiding and lurking in the mountain caves hiding from an enemy out to get him.   As he looked at the mountains all around him. All the jagged edges and points, David thought, “This is what life is like!!  Tough, Rough, Difficult…  I could ask God to “flatten the mountains in my life…”  But Instead I am praying for Stable Feet.  I want the ability to walk up cliffs.

Perhaps you remember the story of Terry Anderson from the Lebanon hostage situation…. He found that God and having others “suffering with him” was the secret to survival in the book SURVIVOR’S CLUB. God gave him stable footing in the most difficult situations.

 The gun at his ear was the first clue, followed by a rough shove into the backseat of the green Mercedes. Terry Anderson remembers thinking: I am in deep shit. I am in real bad trouble. And it’s not going to be over soon. His instinct was absolutely right. The Associated Press correspondent in Lebanon would be blindfolded, chained to a wall, and held hostage for 2,454 days. Early on the morning of March 16, 1985, Anderson had just finished playing tennis with a friend in West Beirut. On a narrow road, he encountered three scruffy men with guns. “Get in. I will shoot,” one man said, pointing the pistol at his head. He hurled Anderson to the floor and threw an old blanket over him. After a short drive, Anderson was bound in tape, blindfolded with a filthy strip of cloth, and interrogated. Later he was chained to a steel cot with his hands and feet in shackles. He could not stand, let alone sit up straight. He was forced to relieve himself in a putrid plastic bottle next to the bed. After twenty-four days prostrate on the metal frame, Anderson thought he would go mad. He told one of his captors: “I can’t do this anymore. I’m not an animal. I am a human being. You can’t treat me like this.” “What do you want?” the guard asked. “A book. A Bible . . . You must loosen these chains. I will go crazy.” The next day, Anderson’s restraints were relaxed, and they brought him a brand-new red Bible. They let him take off his blindfold to read for thirty minutes. He savored the smell of the fresh ink, the new binding, and the first words of Genesis: In the beginning . . . When we speak, Anderson is finishing a home-cooked lunch of pasta and salad. He’s drinking a glass of South African pinotage, a red wine. He keeps seven hundred bottles in his cellar, and there’s room to grow. It can hold three thousand. He lives on a 250-acre ranch in Athens County, Ohio, where life is good.* He boards and trains about a dozen horses. Earlier in the morning, he tried to teach some manners to a two-year-old Missouri fox trotter named Scheherazade. Now he’s looking out over a two-acre pond, horse pastures, stables, and paddocks. I ask him how he and the other hostages survived all those days in captivity. “We all had to reach inside ourselves to ?and whatever we had,” he explains. “It is extraordinary what people are capable of doing.” A marine in Vietnam, Anderson was a correspondent on three continents and reported on every kind of natural and human disaster. In his long career in journalism, he regrets that he didn’t write more about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. His most fascinating laboratory was his captivity in Lebanon, where he met nine other hostages. He’s kept careful track of the others over the years. Of roughly twenty long-term hostages who made it home, Anderson says, one went straight to a mental hospital and never emerged while another spent ten years in and out of institutions. “All of us were damaged in some ways,” he says, “but I believe we have recovered well..” “Survival is one thing,” he continues. “Survival with grace and dignity is another.” Anderson believes one of the greatest surprises of his ordeal was the way his fellow hostages got through the very worst without compromising their decency and humanity. He remembers some of his worst days when he wanted to give up, when he couldn’t face any more abuse, isolation, or the revolting bowls of fatty lamb and rice. “I can’t do this, God,” he would say. “I’m finished. I surrender.” “But at the bottom,” he writes in his powerful memoir, Den of Lions, “in surrender so complete there is no coherent thought, no real pain, no feeling, just exhaustion, just waiting, there is something else. Warmth/light/softness. Acceptance, by me, of me. Rest. After a while, some strength. Enough, for now.” Anderson believes that he reached this state of grace once or twice. “A few hours later, it fades, and the anger and frustration and longing are back,” he writes. “But the memory is there, the sense of presence. And sometimes the place is reached again, briefly. Not often, but sometimes.

“Meanwhile, the hours are endured, the days gotten through. And the nights are spent in prayer, and thought, and the effort to get back to that place.” We all can find this kind of power in ourselves, Anderson believes. It’s there. Inside us. Waiting to be released.

Terry found that God’s word and God’s promises were the power he needed to have a stable footing.   That is exactly what David is speaking about in this Psalms when God delivers him from an out of control jealous father in law who has been hunting him.   David says that God’s word and way helped him know what to do

Psalms 18:28 -30   

For You will light my lamp;  The LORD my God will enlighten my darkness.   For by You I can run against a troop,  By my God I can leap over a wall. As for God, His way is perfect;  The word of the LORD is proven;   He is a shield to all who trust in Him.

David says that he can run against armies and leap over walls when he follows God’s way.   Why is this so key…   David has been hiding in a cave, Saul who is trying to kill him comes into the cave to use the bathroom.  Talk about vulnerable.   David pulls out his knife. His men give him the hand signal that says, “KILL HIM KILL HIM.”  But david wants to do things God’s way, even in his difficult situation.    He reaches out and -instead of stabbing Saul- he cuts off the corner of his garment.      As Saul returns to the army, David will come out and say, “Look! I could’ve murdered you. I could’ve taken revenge. I could’ve been bitter for how you’ve treated me…. But I didn’t.  I showed you grace by sparing your life. I gave you mercy.   I did it God’s way.     I am trying to operate my life according to God’s way and his will… And that is giving me a stable footing.    Ironically, Saul had lost his way for not following God’s plan and instead held on to hatred and jealousy.  The reason David cut the corner of his garment was very intentional.  For a Jewish leader, they knew that obeying God meant that they were under the protection of God often described as being under the corner of his garment.  David was saying, “you are not under God’s corner of protection by the way you are living.”

We all have something we look to for our footing.  It’s the “thing” we go to for rest, comfort, and a sense of identity.      We all sacrifice and lean in on everything. .   There are people in the room who are saying, “I don’t want God. I want to be free”    Don’t kid yourself.  We all live for something. We sacrifice for it.   You have to live for something. You are in service to something.

• If our career is the footing, it will drive you into the ground.

• If the love of one person is the security.. But if they fall apart.. it will devastate you… If they reject you, you fall apart.

• If you say, “I am independent person”  I don’t need God. I don’t need anything.  You  for my stability but myself.  That means you are living for, and sacrificing for yourself.   “I don’t give my heart to anyone and I belong to myself.”  You will die lonely and will sacrifice to the altar of your own independence.

• If you say, I live to help others and be a good person.  What a great thing… But is that a stable footing?   Are you good enough some of the time? All the time?  Do you really live up to your own standards?  If your footing is your good works, you’ll feel like a good honorable person at one moment, and then when you are not good, you’ll either be crushed, or you’ll justify your bad behavior, or become a perfectionist, or control freak, or give up from the pressure of trying to turn good works into a stabling footing.

General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964) was an outstanding figure in the events during and after the Second World War.  In early 1942, when leading outnumbered United States forces in the Philippines, General MacArthur prayed this prayer for his son Arthur many times during his morning devotions: “Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid; one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory. Build me a son whose wishbone will not be where his backbone should be; a son who will know Thee and that to know himself is the foundation stone of knowledge.  Lead him, I pray, not in the path of ease and comfort, but under the stress and spur of difficulties and challenge. Here let him learn to stand up in the storm; here let him learn compassion for those who fail. Build me a son whose heart will be clean, whose goal will be high; a son who will master himself before he seeks to master other men; one who will learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; one who will reach into the future, yet never forget the past.  And after all these things are his, add, I pray, enough of a sense of humor, so that he may always be serious, yet never take himself too seriously. Give him humility, so that he may always remember the simplicity of greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.”   DOuglas knew the importance of building into his son the importance of a STable Footing.

Grace from God is THE stable footing.   God is infinitely kind, wise, and loving.  And when your security and identity is anchored to Him.   When you see that Christ died for you, gave you the gift of a new identity and acceptance before God.   Now, let me clarify what the Bible says to make sure you hear how RADICAL it is.  When you become a Follower of Christ, God accepts you RIGHT NOW as if you were perfect in his eyes.  God doesn’t TAKE SAINTS, He makes saints.   The Bible says that RIGHT NOW you can be seen as a saint in God’s eyes.  God gives you the GIFT of sainthood.    As weird as this might sound, Right now, I know God sees me as a saint.   That gives me incredible footing, confidence, and boldness in my life.   And yet, if I am tempted to get arrogant, egocentric, or take credit, the same gift immediately humbles me and says, “It was a gift, you were incapable of it on your own.”    This is the stable footing that tells the person who is beating themselves up and has a bad self image that “Christ was beat up enough for you… You can stop.”  Yes, there are bad things you’ve done that are probably worthy of being beat up for… But he took it.  So be free from fear, self-hatred, and self loathing.  you can be accepted RIGHT NOW based on Christ’s work.   Do you see how stable, confidence and powerful this is.   You have hind’s feet. You “stick” to the mountain because you know God is with you… Not in a “God is with everyone way”  but a “God is living in me” because I invited him to way.  You have hind’s feet because you don’t know “god loves everyone” so he loves me… That won’t change your heart. That’s a big yawner.   You know this God died for you, chased after you, pursued you, and now lives in you because you received his gift of adoption, peace, joy, and death on the cross.

 For more information, check out www.godonomics.com

Parrot God’s Control to Yourself

Parrots repeat back to you what you tell them.  Worry is like that. Worry is a parrot telling you what you already know.  Things are bad… “Things are bad.”   I don’t know what tomorrow holds… “I don’t know what tomorrow holds.”   True.  We parrot worry, fear, anxiety back to ourselves.   But Jesus challenges the inner parrot we all have and asks us to parrot God’s control and concern to ourselves.  God wants to become our inner Parrot.

27 Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?28 “So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin;29 and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?31 “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Jesus gets so practical about worry.   He says, worry parrots back to us with several lies.  We think

1. Worrying makes us taller than God vs 27.

2. We think worrying will produce clothing.  vs 28

3. We think we can control tomorrow vs 30

Jesus says… Let’s get practical.

1. Worry doesn’t make you taller; it produces toil in us, and tries to control things beyond your ability (tomorrow).

2. God watches the birds, clothes the grass… so have faith he will take care of you.

 Perhaps you immediately find yourself objecting.  You know and have seen birds killed by predators, by accidents, or problems.  I was on my way home from Nashville last month.  As I mentioned to many of you in our last series, our Church produced a curriculum called FAST TRACK that takes you through the whole Bible, so I had just finished a week of shooting in studio and having a great time.  On the way home, I am in the far left lane, when a red Hawk swerves into my lane.  There is no time to turn or change lanes.   Next thing I know, He is smashed up against my grill with his wings open wide.   I pull over to the side assuming that the wind resistance is what is holding him there.  I assume that if I stop the car, he will “drop down” and be able to fly away… I was wrong.  This poor bird is alive, smashed into my grill, and looking at me with a look that says, “What did you do?!” and his eyes have the look of an animal.  We called 911 who sent a Hawk expert out to get him free. Amazingly, the bird man was there within 15 minutes.

PARROT THE TRUTH

Years ago, I did a series where I taught my “video projector” concept of how people think.  It is a visual version of what the Bible calls “soul talk” in Psalms and what Psychologists today call Cognitive therapy.  It’s a process of learning to Parrot truth to yourself.  It’s exactly what Jesus is talking about.  It’s a process of learning to not see our lives as ACTION-REACTION… Life flips a switch and we suddenly project worry, fear, anxiety, but instead realize that when our “switch is flipped,”  it turns on a series of reels, which then light up what we feel.  Our emotions respond to our thoughts.   Many of us have reels in our heads filled with lies: Lies and patterns from the past, our parents, or our culture.  We then play these reels and become BIRD BRAINS parroting the lies to ourselves

- I can’t handle anything else.

- If one more thing happens, I’ll just explode

- I am responsible for making others happy.

- I must know what will happen tomorrow.

- If I think about this enough, I can change the outcome

- If I worry about this, it will be better

- I know I can’t trust God or others, so I better handle this myself.

These are some of 1000’s of Parroting messages we send ourselves.   Bad news comes and flips our switch, we parrot these lies to ourselves, and then feel Angry, depressed, upset, irritable, and annoyed.     Those feelings burn holes in our stomachs with ulcers, and drill our emotions into the ground affecting our relationships and what is projected in our lives is “worry wart, control freak, anxious, bothered, etc.”

If we learn to Parrot Truth to ourselves, we switch reels, We begin to encounter the same bad circumstances with new truths.

- I don’t like this, but I also can’t control it.

- I don’t want more of this to happen, but if it does, God will give me strength

- I like it when people are happy, but I am not in charge of other’s feelings

- I can’t know what happens tomorrow, but I’ll do my best with what I know today.

-Worrying is destructive and an attempt to play God.  I’ll leave Him in charge of the universe

- I can trust God to handle the unknown better than me.

DO you see how these truths parroted to yourself turn on a light bulb of feelings that are not only less anxious, but hopeful, joyful, peaceful, and more freeing?

WORRY IS FOR THE BIRDS

Go BIRD HUNTING

As you look at this week, I want you to pick one bird. one parrot that has kept you in bondage for years.  one worry, fearful, anxious message.   Pick one.   The one you know you hear chirping in your ears every day.  Then pick one truth and bird to parrot truth to you.   In fact, a great one is to take this passage from Jesus, in Matthew and write it out.  Place this on your mirror as you get ready in the morning.  Commit to Parrot this to yourself all day long.  And go bird hunting for any bird chirps that come against this.

For more information, check out www.godonomics.com

We had a giant python at our church for our safari series.  We were learning lessons God had for those who looked for Him in His creation.

Sparrows Know God Watches Over Them.

Matthew 6: 24 “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. 25 “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on.  Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

God has placed incredible care and concern over the animals…   God knows if even one sparrow falls to the ground.  God attends the funerals of birds.  Jesus tells us that our biggest issues with worry, are actually a lack of knowing what the birds know… They know God watches over them.

Now, you may not even know if you believe God made the world.  Years of Evolutionary teaching in college or medical school may have taught you that God didn’t take care of the origins, let alone the present.   Dr Jobe Martin felt that way.  He was a biology major, and Dentist who got out of the air force and even worked aboard  Air Force where he was the dentist for the Presidential flight crew of Air Force One, he established a private dental practice at NASA in Houston.   He began his scientific career as a dentist, and a believer in Darwinian evolution, as he had been taught in numerous courses in high school, undergraduate school, and dental school.  Some of his Christian students at the Baylor College of Dentistry challenged him to prove to them that evolution was a correct, complete and accurate explanation for the origin of the earth and all of its abundance of unique life forms.  As he began to relook at the evidence and question this assumption, he began to see many things that challenged his belief that God was not necessary for life (then and now)

Everyone talks to themselves.  We play out worst case scenarios, or we hope for the best. We have fantasy conversations where we say such and such to a person we are mad at, then they say such and such, and then we say…   On and on, we worry, we talk to ourselves, we try to control the future, the unknown with worry.   But the birds know something we don’t… God made them and watches over them.       Another person who went through this journey of understanding how God is in control, despite her questions was Anne Rice.

Anne Rice wrote the Vampire Chronicles like “INterview with a Vampire”.  Her Erotic Vampire movies became legendary and made her a billionaire , but she had questions.  Wonderings about God and the Bible, and Jesus… She was an investigative journalist and researcher and began to explore the Bible and it’s claims….  Many had told her that the Bible was written years, many hundreds of years after the events which is why so many wild stories had crept in… She read the Gospels and noted that none of them even mentioned the destruction of the temple in 70 AD.  How could they not mention this… Unless they had been written before it happened…. This placed them between 33 and 70 AD, well within the timeframe of the eyewitnesses.    Her intellectual journey brought her to Christ and eventually even overwhelmed her questions…  She had many questions, doubts, and things in the world she was living for… but  came to a moment of living for someone else…  She wrote in her confessions” “In the moment of surrender, I let go of all the theological or social questions which had kept me from Him for countless years. I simply let them go. There was the sense, profound and wordless, that if He knew everything I did not have to know everything, and that, in seeking to know everything, I’d been, all of my life, missing the entire point. No social paradox, no historic disaster, no hideous record of injustice or misery should keep me from Him. No question of Scriptural integrity, no torment over the fate of this or that atheist or gay friend, no worry for those condemned and ostracized by my church or any other church should stand between me and Him….I didn’t have to know how He was going to save the unlettered and the unbaptized, or how He would redeem the conscientious heathen who had never spoken His name. I didn’t have to know how my gay friends would find their way to Redemption or how my hardworking secular humanist friends could or would receive the power of His Saving Grace. I didn’t have to know why good people suffered agony or died in pain. He knew. And it was his knowing that overwhelmed me…”

 Anne Rice, Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession

I love that line, “It was his knowing that overwhelmed me.”  That’s what happens to worry and doubt as we understand God is in control.

For more information, check out www.godonomics.com

A few weeks ago, our church went to the birds, including me wearing a bird brain head.   We spoke about how the birds from how to trust in God better than we humans do.  

When I was around 10, I went to a Safari type animal place called Alligator Land in Florida. While we were there, I had one of the most worrisome moments of my life.   We had just purchased our first VHS video recorder and I was in charge of the camera.   My dad, who always wears a hat, brought us over to the ostrich area.  These two ostriches were running around in the enclosed area, but it was not “caged.”   Meaning, that the only thing between us and them was a three rail, split rail fence.   So, if you got too close, the Ostriches could not only reach you, but “Grab” your shirt… or  even, your hat… One of the Ostriches jumped at my father and tried to grab his hat… He successfully avoided the “attack”… Then he decided to “egg them on” by tossing his hat from hand to hand… He was whining for a while, then one of the Ostriches snapped into the air, grabbed his hat and ran it deep into the back of the Ostrich cage….   The ostrich threw it on the floor and stomped on it… Almost to “show my dad”.   This was my dad’s FAVORITE hat… He  couldn’t live without it… SO he decided to jump into the Ostrich cage (Don’t try this at home, this is highly irregular and not recommended…. )   Dad quickly says, “Chad, roll the videotape…”  Before my mom or I could tell him to “STOP” he jumped the fence, grabbed the hat and then tried to OUTRUN the Ostriches…   Mom and I were worried sick!!!   My video camera work looked like this… (Nice and steady) and then (Drop camera to the ground) Dad, watch out for the Ostrich…!!!  Dad!! Dad…  seconds later, he jumped back over the fence with his hat safe and sound… The video I shot only showed my right knee cap… I am convinced that video would have either won us $1 million dollars on America’s Home Video or landed my father in prison.  After he returned to safety, my mom and I informed him how worried he made us and how unsafe it was to try to outrun one of God’s fastest birds…

The connection between worry and birds is mentioned several times in the Bible.    The connection between Ostriches and God’s care is also in the Bible… You see God teaches us that…

WORRY IS FOR THE BIRDS

Let’s look at Ostriches, Sparrows, and Parrots

1. Ostriches Run Under God’s Care

In Job, God describes an Ostrich that forgets to watch over her young… and yet He, the heavenly Father watches over her.  And though the Ostrich is not wise… God watches over her and God loves to watch her run… she runs so fast she can scorn the horse and it’s rider with her speed.

Job 39:13-17 “The wings of the ostrich wave proudly, But are her wings and pinions like the kindly stork’s? 14 For she leaves her eggs on the ground, And warms them in the dust; 15 She forgets that a foot may crush them, Or that a wild beast may break them. 16 She treats her young harshly, as though they were not hers; Her labor is in vain, without concern,

Ostriches Don’t Watch Over Their Young. Ostriches live in family groups consisting of one cock and several hens. During breeding season, the male will mate with the dominant female and one to four other hens. Each hen lays between two and eleven creamy white eggs in a communal nest which can be nearly 10 ft (3 m) across and is simply a hollow in the ground formed by scraping and body weight. When egg laying is complete there are usually ten to forty or more eggs in the nest; the most ever recorded was seventy-eight. Only about twenty can be incubated, however, so the dominant hen will reject any surplus eggs by pushing them out of the nest. She always ensures, however, that her own eggs remain. Note that what we have here is a perfect example of the ostrich leaving — indeed, forsaking — the eggs “belonging” to her as dominant hen of the communal group, to the dust out where they can be trod upon. The cocks and the hens take it in turns to incubate the eggs; the hens sit on them during the day and the cocks at night. This shift system lasts for an average of forty-two days until the eggs hatch. When the chicks emerge into the world, it is the male who cares for them. So it seems momma is “hardened” against her young ones after all — Dad is the one who does the job of parenting after hatching.

The behavior with eggs is even further confirmed by Brian C. R. Bertram’s The Ostrich Communal Nesting System (1992).

17 Because God deprived her of wisdom, and did not endow her with understanding. 18 When she lifts herself on high, She scorns the horse and its rider.

God notes that she lacks wisdom… and yet, God notes that what He did give her was the ability to run.   God tells Job that he watches over her as she runs… When she lifts herself on high, she scorns the horse and its rider…. God is bragging on the ostrich. He tells Job how much he loves to WATCH her run. WATCH her do what she was meant to do.   God WATCHES over his creation.

Last month, we had one of our first Saturday worship services for the year.  I shared some insights from my trip to Israel.   And talked about trusting God — even in the face of worries.  As the service finished, Mark WHitacre was sitting in the audience.   I had heard the name.  He was the man who the movie THE INFORMANT, with Matt Damon was based on.   He shared with me how God helped him during one of the most anxious times in his life.    Since he has agreed to come to Horizon and speak at our next series, I won’t tell you the whole story, but just this.   He was responsible for one of the biggest corporate price fixing frauds in US history.   He went undercover with the FBI for two years after turning himself in.  Months before going to prison, he tried to commit suicide multiple times.  A man from a Christian group called CBMC came to his house and offered to lead him in a Bible study — to show how Christ could help him in the midst of his losing his freedom, his family, his marriage, his 13 million dollar a year salary, and spending 7-10 years in prison.   Mark shared with me how real and powerful the peace he received from God in the midst of the most anxious and worrisome time in his life.     Though he was functionally alone, he knew he was not truly alone anymore, and suddenly understood what Jesus is saying, “Worry is for the birds…”  And the birds know something he needed.. God watches over them.

For more information, check our www.godonomics.com