The economic crisis the United States is going through has been compared in the media with “The Great Depression” of the 1930s. The proposed solutions to the problems facing the U.S. also harken back to that era.
FDR and the “New Deal”
One of the ideas that the media puts forth is that Franklin D. Roosevelt and the “New Deal” stopped the Great Depression and saved the American economy. A second New Deal, therefore, should be able to save today’s economy. A closer look at FDR’s policies will reveal that the New Deal did not solve the Great Depression; it did not save capitalism, it actually prolonged the Depression and vastly expanded government’s reach. Previous U.S. depressions, like the panic of 1837 and the depression after World War I that started out worse than the Great Depression, had ended more quickly and with less pain.
Read the rest of the article →
Let’s delve into the empowering aspect of God’s life (his dunamis power). Let’s explore what it is; how we get it; and, how we learn to depend on it.
Last month we explored what I believe is the most important thing we can do as believers. And that’s to learn to love Him. Only if we love Him can we then love those God has put in our lives.
We examined the First Commandment and what it means to “love” Him. We found that the verb “to love” used in Matthew 22:23 is the verb agapao, which means “what we are totally given over to,” what we relinquish our lives to and what we put first in our lives. When we learn to love God like this, not only will God’s Love come forth from our hearts, but also His wisdom and His power will be shown in our lives. This is what it means to “exchange lives” with Him. We give Him ours (our own thought, emotions and desires); He then gives us His (His Love, wisdom and power). In other words, we give Him our hurts, our anger, our insecurities, our resentments, our doubts, our guilt, and so forth; and in exchange, He gives us His Life.
Read the rest of the article →