Does America need a bailout from God?

By Kevin Fobbs

On September 29th, 2008, my wife and I and our oldest grandchild waited patiently in a nearby park while our newest grandchild was about to be born. That Monday, several hundred miles to the east, America's financial community was literally given its economic walking papers as Wall Street delivered crushing economic news.

This week with gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, political pundits are wondering if these elections will be a measurement of President Obama's handling of the economy a scant year after that ground zero month of September.. Has the political fix-it plan worked? Was there another way?

That day Dow Jones plunged 777 points and the market lost an incredible 1.2 trillion in market value — the largest single-point plunge in America's history. It withered main street America retirement plans, college savings plans, and housing mortgages. Each successive week brought an escalating tidal wave of job losses and layoffs totaling in the millions.

The approaching Golden Years had turned to rust while companies downsized in a rush to survive and families downsized from wants, fancy holiday plans, and expected bonuses to necessities like keeping the family alive on dwindling credit cards and shrinking checks or borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. America's Dream was turning to dust and it seemed that for many there was not only loss of hope but also loss of God's intervention.

But had God truly abandoned America or had America abandoned God? Consider this; what if you were a loving God who saw that first there is a movement in the nation to take your word out of the schools? What if there was another movement to take prayer away from the young as well as not allowing children to pledge allegiance with "one nation under God"? What if every possible symbol of you or your son Jesus Christ was removed from any public display, or if prohibiting a prayer to open up public sessions in a town, a state legislature, or Congress was either contemplated or legislated?

How is a loving God to feel when he sees a child who he had given the breath of life to taken from this earth as Terri Schiavo was because a nation decided and a state allowed for her life to be terminated? What is a loving God to do when everything that is part and parcel to him and his word is dismissed? Where then is there any room for his possible intervention? Maybe a day of prayer that was sincerely embraced by many more Americans would have been in order.

Well it seems the conventional wisdom at that time was to allow our presumed economic experts to join the former President or the two presidential candidates and come up with the most effective political solution. Well that certainly worked out well for us, didn't it?

Perhaps we should have been looking upward for a more powerful solution. Maybe instead of looking to Washington D.C. for an answer from a Bush, an Obama, or a McCain we should have been looking for a Holy Father Bailout Solution.

But in a nation that has become far too secular in its pursuit of deep-seated practices that intentionally steer us away from holy principles and that has adopted more "me-isms," quick fixes, love thyself and sacrificing tomorrow for today, we were blind and could not see.

Sure there are those who will claim that this is a very complicated process. In fact it was so complicated that even our nation's best minds could not figure it all out without first sitting down and concocting a trillion dollar bailout that was predicated upon Congress not insisting upon any accountability from financial firms being bailed out.

Yet the Bible teaches us that accountability is the very foundation of being an obedient servant of the Lord. All people are responsible for their actions and their words; Jesus was very clear and our nation should understand the removing of his and God's existence is an accounting we must answer to. "I tell you that on the day of judgment, people will give an account for every worthless word they speak." Matthew 12:36

So when Congress was insisting that the scions of Wall Street's collapse at least have some transparency and accountability, too many quick-fix Capitol Hill leaders urged the Congress to move onward and upward with a bailout, which only pardoned the moneychangers but did not disrupt their onerous practices.

This is evidenced by the recent practice of bailed-out banks and other financial firms continuing to pay out tens of billions of dollars in bonuses with impunity while the government extends a massive bailout. Meanwhile according to U.S. Government statistics over 7,000 former workers run out of unemployment benefits every day.

So day-by-day and week-by-week the Wall Street moneychangers seek for Americans to turn to other diversions in our lives. They want us to be more focused on the upcoming holidays and the Thanksgiving parades or the fewer toys to be set around our holiday trees, than the billion dollar bonuses neatly tucked inside their leather-bound briefcases.

Well it is about time for America to leave the political solutions to the politicians and join together to ask the most appropriate expert at resolving problems to help our nation out of this mess. That best solution holder would be God.

What are the steps that we should take? How do we approach a God that many have walked away from but who has never forgotten us? It is quite simple. If we are to pray to God for an answer then it should be one based upon our faith and our need for true change in America. "Promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved." 2 Peter 2:19

Think about it, would God want to help a nation that has adopted a culture that places no value on life as only he can create and give? Does prayer ask for help for a nation that decides through its leadership that we will abandon the homeless, starve the widow and the child, and shatter the viability of the shelters that provide sustenance to the hungry and homeless? "Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin." James 4:17

You see the God of our youth is the same God of our dawn as he is of our dusk. We can write to him in a letter as we did when we were young. Remember how your mom or dad told you not to ask God for something if you really don't mean it? So be sincere and truly mean it.

Come on, it isn't that difficult. When you were asking for a baseball mitt but you really needed your dad to keep his job so you could have food and decent clothing; or when you wanted to ask God for an Easy Bake Oven but what you really should have asked for was new shoes for your mom so she could make it to her next work shift at her job. Just when we were children and we asked for the most inappropriate things we truly knew in our heart what we and our family genuinely needed.

Just how wonderful would it be for God to hear millions of Americans asking for his intervention in their lives as we ask for what is genuinely needed and to bless the companies of our nation that build the goods or provide the services so that the true believers could do more to worship God and His Will on earth as it is done in heaven?

Yes, now that is an economic and a spiritual bailout that can begin to work for America. It is guaranteed by a loving God who doesn't ask for legislators to pass trillion dollar handouts. This rescue plan is something much simpler, cheaper and guaranteed by his word. "And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." Luke 11:9.

When we can let God hear our sincere voice and show him that we can be strong in his word and in his spirit within us, then the Wall Street meltdown will become a thing of the past. Give his bailout plan a chance and let him hear your voice. It's like eating spinach, it will make you strong, and it won't cost America another trillion dollars!

© Kevin Fobbs