Servias Ministries Blog

Everyone is outraged by the AIG bonuses in the millions.  However, AIG had to make good on its contracts in the derivatives arena (insurance claims).  So, The U.S. Government gives our money to AIG who then pays out these claims so that the system will not fail.  Some of this $180 Billion appears to have gone to banks who were also given direct bailout money by the Treasury.  Double Dippin’ makes taxpayers very angry!

See: http://www.slate.com/id/2213942/   

Psalms 106:36  And they served their idols: which were a snare unto them.

Predictions fall into two basic categories: physical and spiritual, or seen and unseen.  The physical realm of cause and effect includes the economic principles we use to navigate through the muck and mire.  Economic principles address supply and demand of rational human behavior given a set of circumstances with a little culture mixed in.

When a group of people create a problem, do you think that same group can solve it?  Only by a new revelation can the problem be solved by the people involved.  However, the people involved are not known for their revelatory abilities.

Let’s look at the economic players “of change”:

Barack Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. He worked as a community organizer in Chicago prior to earning his law degree, and practiced as a civil rights attorney in Chicago before serving three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. He also taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004.  Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, Obama was elected to the United States Senate in November 2004. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama  President Obama has no background or experience in economic or financial matters and he is the final decision maker.

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner spent six years as the President of the New York Federal Reserve, the most influential of the twelve banks. Since the founding of the Federal Reserve banking system, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in Manhattan’s Financial District has been the place where monetary policy in the United States is implemented, although policy is decided in Washington, D.C. by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The New York Federal reserve is the largest, in terms of assets, and the most important of the twelve regional banks. Operating in the financial capital of the U.S., the New York Fed is responsible for conducting open market operations, the buying and selling of outstanding U.S. Treasury securities.  See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Bank_of_New_York.  Geithner is not new to the problem, he help create the problem.

Lawrence Henry “Larry” Summers (born November 30, 1954) is an American economist and the Director of the White House’s National Economic Council for President Barack Obama.  Summers is the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He is the 1993 recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal for his work in several fields of economics and was Secretary of the Treasury for the last year and a half of the Bill Clinton administration. Summers also served as the 27th President of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006. Summers resigned as Harvard’s president in the wake of controversy over a talk in which he speculated that women may have lesser aptitude for work in the highest levels of math and science. Summers has been criticized by some liberals for the centrist economic policies he advocated as Treasury Secretary and in later writings.

Larry Summers is Geithner’s mentor.  Mr. Summers is calling the shots for the Administration and he is not even elected or approved by Congress.  Mr. Summers worked under Bill Clinton who promoted the current path of economic failure.  Clinton’s Administration promoted sub-prime lending, tinkering with unemployment numbers, and other fiscal components to manage public perception of the economy.  Barack Obama’s promise for change and fresh thinking is simply to re-install the players who were involved to some degree in the current economic crisis.

Obama has called on these two men who were involved in creating the problem, to solve the problem.  That is not going to happen.  Their level of “awareness” is at the same level of the problem.  Only someone with a higher level of awareness could solve this problem.  This is precisely why married couples go to a counselor after exhausting their attempts to restore their marriage.  They assume the counselor has a higher level of awareness.  When you are sick and are not improving after taking all of the remedies at your disposal, you finally go to a doctor expecting him or her to have a higher level of awareness in the area of health.

Larry Summers has all the accolades one can have in the area of Economics.  Unfortunately, he needs something else- revelation.  Revelation provides a higher level of awareness from Our Heavenly Father’s point of view.  From His “point of viewing”, He knows the entire big picture and has all of the wisdom, knowledge, and understanding required to resolve this crisis.  Globally, it looks as though we are quickly moving toward a Dollar Crisis.  The Premier of China now wants reassurance that our government will protect China’s investment in Dollars.  China is concerned about the solvency of the U.S.

As we have predicted, the credit card black hole is increasing in size and credit card companies are now reporting substantial credit card defaults.  Commercial real estate is not far behind.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will need more cash infusions.  AIG now 80% owned by the taxpayer will need more cash beyond the $180 Billion already injected.  Tax receipts will shrink this year while demand for cash will increase.  Several pension funds are now in trouble and will need cash infusions.  California may need to file bankruptcy before the end of the year.  The baby boomers will want their promised benefits and healthcare costs are climbing.  The retail sector will continue to suffer a decline except in the area of “do it yourself” goods.  There will be an inflection point when hyper-inflation will take over.  Nobody at the current level of awareness knows where that point is or when it will occur.

I find it interesting that Americans are focused on $165 million in AIG bonuses when Washington throwing around trillion’s of taxpayer dollars hoping something will stick to the wall.  Washington knows that someone needs to be the “whipping boy”.

It is clear that we as individuals must enter our prayer closets and seek Our Heavenly Father’s Face!  We must prepare for the tumultuous times ahead.  It will not be business as usual.  So you wanted to be an Overcomer, it looks like you are going to get the opportunity to overcome!

Proverbs 6:2  Thou art snared with the words of thy mouth, thou art taken with the words of thy mouth.

Words have lost their value in America.  Leaders have become magicians with their terminology.  Former President Clinton attempted to redefine the word “is” and phrases such as “sexual relations”.  Alan Greenspan used the term “irrational exuberance” to explain away the economic conditions that led to the current crisis.  Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke spoke to the media prior to the financial meltdown as though there was no imminent danger to the economy.  NBC talking heads promoted financial institutions’ stock days before their collapse.  Now they wonder why consumer confidence is so low!

The globe is spiraling into a depression necessitating the de-leveraging of debt.  In the past, recessions tended to be regional.  But with the recent globalization experiment, economies of countries are interconnected to the point that when one major economy is in trouble, they are all in trouble.  The dominoes are falling.

– AIG’s latest $30 Billion bailout will not be its last.

-Citibank is on its last leg.

-GM is on the brink of bankruptcy.

-The stock market is down more than 50%

-Every CEO of a failing public corporation seems to be in another universe when asked about the financial condition of their company.

-True unemployment is above 10%

-There are over $1 Quadrillion in derivatives now.

-China is now worried about all of the U.S. Dollars they are holding.

The media does little to promote the truth about the situation we are in now.  Rather than promoting journalistic integrity, reporters are promoting the agendas of those who control the purse strings.

The Code of the West was that a man was as good as his word and his word was his contract.  A handshake sealed the deal.  Now, that is the exception, not the rule.  We must now filter through all of the rhetoric to assess what was really said or meant.  Politicians believe that their words do not require any truth behind them.  Only tell the people what they want to hear and they will quickly forget the lies and the doublespeak before re-election. 

Pharmaceutical companies advertise products with worse side effects than the symptom being treated, all in the name of profit.  Do these guys really believe that they are promoting a better standard of living?  Do they really believe their own words?  Are they being drugged?

The U.S. has more lawyers per capita than any other major nation on earth.  Why?  It is because of the irresponsibility of words, written, spoken, or heard.  Words have intent behind them and we are to understand those words in the context of their presentation.  Often, the best attorney wins the case at the expense of truth.  What a travesty this country has promoted.  What happened to the ethics of doing the right thing? 

Words can promote life, death, destruction, reconciliation, trust, mistrust, love, hate, and the list goes on.  What do your words convey- life or death?

The consumer confidence index is at a record low of 21.2 (1980 = 100).

How can we be confident when we finally realize that we have been lied to by the leadership of the country?  What is the truth?  Who can we trust?  The people have been abused and misused by Wall Street and Washington passed laws that encouraged the ravaging of the average guy.  On top of that, the regulatory agencies looked the other way while schemes by Wall Street insiders such as Bernie Madoff were being implemented against the unsuspecting.  There were many individuals who blew the whistle on sub-prime mortgage lending practices only to be squelched.  Billions of dollars in bonuses have rewarded this unrighteous behavior and the victims are required to ultimately pay.

The power of the office caused the politicians to throw out their moral values and promote the status quo.  Special interest groups and lobbyists exacerbate the situation with campaign funds and other perks.  Our Heavenly Father has answered us according to the idols of our hearts:

Ezekiel 14:4  Therefore speak unto them, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Every man of the house of Israel that setteth up his idols in his heart, and putteth the stumblingblock of his iniquity before his face, and cometh to the prophet; I the LORD will answer him that cometh according to the multitude of his idols;

You reap what you sow.  If you manipulate words to promote deception, you will be deceived.  If you pervert words or contracts in an attempt of unrighteous gain, you will lose what you have.  Utter destruction is not far behind and Our Heavenly Father will reconcile the accounts.

According to the Federal Reserve, the total outstanding Home Mortgage Debt on September 30th, 2008 was $10.571 Trillion.  See: http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/Current/z1r-4.pdf  Page 94.

The U.S. Government as of this writing as committed $9 Trillion to the Financial System.  See: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/02/04/business/20090205-bailout-totals-graphic.html

Just add a little more and pay off everyone’s home.  That will immediately increase consumer spending and fix the problem.  It’s simple!

This would eliminate the sub-prime mortgage issue, the drop in asset value of borrowers, and the derivatives tied to non-performance of bonds issued against Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac.

With no mortgage payments, families would begin to ease up on their fear of losing net worth.  Savings would increase across the board and provide banks with a new source of cheap money to lend out.

Oops! Wait a minute, we really need to take care of Wall Street instead.  Sorry America.

When the U.S. was on the gold standard, other governments could demand payment in gold.  Under the regime of the French President Charles de Gaulle up to 1970, France reduced its dollar reserves, trading them for gold from the U.S. government, thereby reducing US economic influence abroad.  This led to President Richard Nixon eliminating the gold standard in 1971.

As of today, it is reported that the U.S. has Official US Gold holdings = 8,133.5 tonnes or 260,272,000 ounces. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_gold_reserves  Of that, 147.3 million ounces are held at Fort Knox.  See: http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_mint/fun_facts/index.cfm?flash=no&action=fun_facts13  I suspect the balance is held in New York.

The U.S. debt held by Major Foreign Holders is $3,076,900,000,000 ($3.0769 Trillion)  See: http://www.treas.gov/tic/mfh.txt

If we were under the gold standard today, our gold would be valued by Foreign Holders of Debt as follows:

$3,076,900,000,000 divided by 260,272,000 ounces = $11,821.86

As U.S. Dollars continue to get created at breakneck speed, this disparity will be addressed by the marketplace.  Will a 200 year currency defy a 5,000 year currency?  You be the judge.

I agree with Jim Rodgers concerning the condition of the U.S. for the next two years:

Jim Rodgers Interview

The financial markets hit a 12 year low this last week, down 50% from the high in 2007.  A “Bear” market is characterized by falling prices for securities.  The bear market will continue until investors are finally fed up with losses in the market and leave in masses.  That has not yet happened.  Gold hit $1,000 on Friday a week ago as we have been expecting.  $1,600 is in the cross-hairs of gold and may occur sooner than we think.  As instability increases, so does the price of gold and silver.  Barrick Gold just report record cash flows for the year.  How much longer will it take for investment dollars to flow into the gold producers?  Who knows.

The entrenched leadership can’t see beyond their own self interests.

Intrenched interests in the political arena, financial industry, the auto industry, and the pharmaceutical  industry have built protective walls of preferred legal structure to protect them from invasion by public unrest and revolt.  Leadership in each of these areas has lost contact with the realities of history and standards of leadership, statesmanship, and excellence.  The U.S. is quickly moving to a tipping point when civil unrest will rise up and revolt against this detached group of leaders.

$13 a paycheck is not a stimulus!  The average American was slapped in the face by the Administration’s plan to bail out the banks and insurance industry with trillion’s and then gives the worker $13.  That dog won’t hunt.

The end of abundance has arrived.  Home ownership peaked at 69.2% in 2004 and is moving back to 63%.  Housing prices have fallen 20.5%.  As Ben Bernanke stated in this week’s testimony to Congress, “Another risk arises from the destructive power of the so-called Adverse Feedback Loop in which weakening economic and financial conditions become mutually enforcing”.

The coming high level of taxation is necessary to offset the huge shortfalls in tax receipts because unemployed people don’t pay taxes.  Corporations losing money don’t pay taxes and can get some previous year tax payments back.  The following graph provides us perspective of the seriousness of unemployment.  The blue line best reflects true unemployment because the government numbers eliminate discouraged workers who have been unemployed for an extended time.  However, these people still have a drag on the economy and must subsist somehow.

Natural resources are not limitless.  Per capita demand of energy in China will continue to rise at the same time the oil supply destruction curve accelerates.  The Canadian Oil sands require $65-$85 oil to be profitable.  Ethanol plants are closing at these low prices and the farmers are feeling the pinch of lower corn prices.  Some farmers hedged diesel (locked in their purchase price) at a dollar above current prices.  Mexico’s largest oil field is on the decline.  Natural gas drilling in the U.S. is dropping with exploration companies holding costly leases that will not economically pay out.  The oilfield services industry is cutting staff daily.  Déjà vu!  I expect energy prices to begin their rise later this year into next year.

Bolivia has the “mother load” of lithium, the primary metal used in batteries.  There will be an increased competition for these resources and countries will have to make hard choices as they must be concerned about building their armies versus protecting export markets.  Politically unstable countries will see a regime change and stronger countries such as China will aggressive seek to tie up natural resources in those countries.  U.S. citizens living in Mexico may sell their retirement homes and move back to a safer jurisdiction.

A sense of entitlement has prevailed by the population of the U.S. since World War II.  We were the “new sheriff in town” and our currency became the global commercial currency.  Other countries promoted the exchange of the U.S. Dollar and encouraged schools to teach the English language.  We have come to expect our global position to be solid where everyone else caters to us.  Hostilities of the public will increase as this sense of entitlement departs and is replaced first by denial then by anger.

The current bank bailouts are designed to protect the bondholders, not the stockholders.  The stockholders in the banks have been decimated.  The toxic debt still contained in the balance sheets of these banks will challenge the U.S. Treasury’s ability to continue the funding of these bankrupt institutions.  My $5 to $20 Trillion bailout projection is coming to pass.

The 30 year globalization plan is reversing and protectionism is coming and isolation is on the way.  Multi-national companies will have increasing difficulty in outsourcing manufacturing and customer support.  “Buy America” is now the catch phrase in Washington.

The security risks will dramatically rise.  When highly skilled technology experts are broke, they will resort to Internet crime.  The smart hackers will place a virus on your PC to “ghost” your keystrokes and report those back to them.  Suddenly, they will have access to your “secure” banking accounts.  When unskilled workers are broke, they will resort to burglary and theft to make ends meet or simply eat and will justify their actions in their survival.  The security industry whether technology based or bullet based will see good times.

What are we to do?  Initially, there is an escapist attitude towards all these problems.  Let us go buy an island and isolate ourselves from this unstable environment.  Who do we take, or more important, who do we leave behind?  Our Heavenly Father did not design escape routes but did create ways to protect His children during times of turmoil.  When the death angel took the first born in Egypt, the children of Israel were not removed from the country.  They were covered by “The Blood” and were spared from death.  Only then were they sent from the land.

People will draw closer to GOD in these times.  Families and friends will build a cooperative effort in ministering to the needs of their “new community”.  Isolationism will vanish from the average American family.  “Doing your own thing” will be an action of the past.  Arrogance will be replaced by humility, charity will prevail over selfishness, and Love will overpower fear and greed.

In a speech earlier this month, President Obama called the current situation “an urgent and growing crisis”.  This crisis did not begin in the last six months.  Anyone with access to the consumer statistics in adjustable rate mortgage payment resets, overall debt as a percentage of income, and personal savings rates, knew that we were headed for a train wreck.  Hmmm!  The Federal Reserve had all of that information and more.  I wonder why they didn’t send us the early warning signal? Recession is a contraction in spending but a Depression is a de-leveraging of debt.  The globe is in a depression, not a recession.  Those that were caught with an exorbitant amount of debt are in for a rough ride and those with no debt but are relying on bank interest are also in for a rough ride… I guess everybody will have some challenging times.  However, there will be winners in this down cycle and those who can break away from the paradigm of the last 30 years will fare better than those who are holding on to the current mindset.Baby boomers are starting to downsize and smaller & simpler is better.  As we all know, the debtor is servant to the lender and we will now see how that reality plays out during this severe contraction.  When lenders move into survival mode, they rely on that “fine print” found in every contract.  That fine print is put there as a protection factor to guard against unintended consequences that are beyond their control.  Only Our Heavenly Father knows the future thus how can we create a contract for 30 years into the future without some safeguards?  Those whot saw the trends of the mortgage bubble knew there would be a day of reckoning and that day has arrived.  Baby boomers are shedding their McMansions for smaller, more affordable homes.  Why pay exorbitant taxes, insurance, heating, cooling, and maintenance for a house that you can get lost in?  What is the right size house for you?  Get on your knees and ask THE LORD GOD ALMIGHTY to direct you to the right house.  That is exactly what we did.  When you do that, your home becomes part of your ministry to others.Poland is on the brink of collapse as are other Eastern European countries.  The interconnections of global financial system are complex and far reaching thus requiring us to pay attention to the exposure of other countries besides our own.  The growing complexity of the current system ultimately will break, for that is the nature of complexity, it’s a monster!  When everything is in synch, life is a bowl of cherries, but when one aspect of the system fails, the domino effect results in a crash.  A $5 internal battery can cause a computer system to fail.  With the high degree of leveraging that has taken place, the house of cards is teetering at the brink of collapse.I expect a rise in commodity prices and it will possibly occur from two separate and distinct events.  First, the depreciation of the U.S. Dollar will cause prices to increase in terms of the Dollar.  Secondly, there will be a restriction of commodities due to the developing countries increasing their relative use of commodities.  China must grow or suffer civil unrest.  It has a large investment in U.S. Dollar holdings which provides a means to continue building infrastructure at the expense of the value of the USD.  The U.S. has lost the trust of other countries as the commercial monetary base of exchange.  I expect other countries to slowly disconnect from their reliance on the U.S. Dollar which will also send the value down. Demand destruction of oil is being offset quickly by supply destruction.  However, people just don’t understand that this supply destruction will come back to haunt us if demand picks up.  We saw the same supply destruction occur 20 years ago and the domestic oil industry is half the size it was.  Unused rigs will rust and the mass training of new workers has stopped.  This is not good for the energy industry or the rest of the country.  Alternative sources of energy cannot make up the difference in the short run.  This sets the stage for a dramatic increase in oil prices in the near future.Pakistan continues to be the most dangerous place on earth.  They recently signed an agreement with Islamic hard-liners, a move in favor of the Taliban.  Obama’s war will be the Afghan/Pakistan theater… Just down the road apiece from Iraq.California is in the midst of a $41 Billion deficit and they can’t print money like the Fed can.  I expect their contraction to be more severe than the heartland since their real estate was so overpriced.  They will increase “use” taxes to the point, people will migrate to lower tax jurisdictions to flee from the sanctioned extraction of wealth.On the bright side:  As I have mentioned in the past, gold is the barometer of monetary risk.  As of this writing, gold is up over 6% from a year ago.  Silver is still down 17% from last year, but compared to the value of housing it looks pretty good.  Most of us have the opportunity to buy silver and I personally believe it is a good buy at these prices.  Those of you who can step up to gold, it looks to be heading over $1,000 soon.  Gold stocks are lagging in performance compared to the metal but that may change as more people realize that financial and retail stocks have no immediate future.Remember, Fear not: Psalm 118:6  The LORD [is] on my side; I will not fear: what can man do unto me?

Pundits on TV tend to make us believe that commodities are in unlimited supply with improved technology as the basis for finding this "unlimited" supply.  For the first time in 16 years, the price of gold has surpassed the S&P 500 Index.  For the previous 18 years, the S&P Index number exceeded the price of gold.  This would suggest a reversal in investing philosophy in the marketplace.  Gold closed the week at $927.10.  Gold producers’ cash costs in U.S. Dollars are benefiting from currency gains against the Dollar.  I expect the Gold stocks to start moving back up as the investing public sees the profit improvement in this industry.

There is not an unlimited supply of gold just as there is not an unlimited supply of crude oil.  This does not mean we have run out of either of these commodities.  It is estimated that the world supply of known oil reserves has passed the halfway point thus peaking.  Our Heavenly Father established gold as being "precious". In Genesis 2:11 the first mention of gold occurs: "The name of the first [is] Pison: that [is] it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where [there is] gold".  Pison means "increase" and Havilah means "circle" or never-ending.  The next mention of gold was to describe the wealth of Abram in Genesis 13:2: "And Abram [was] very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold."  Therefore, God’s Word established gold as a store of value.  It provided an adequate medium of exchange versus herding cattle, sheep, or camels when you wanted to acquire something new.  Gold has been a store of value for thousands of years.

Once the U.S. currency was disconnected from gold, the trouble began.  Gold slowed down economic growth and by removing the dollar from the gold standard, determination of value was placed in the hands of man.

Politicians are expected to print 2-4 Trillion Dollars to fund the new aggregator bank where they plan to place the toxic assets of the banks.  That is a bullish event for gold.  Nouriel Roubini, professor at the Stern School, New York University, estimates the cost of this bank to be about $3.6 Trillion.  Even though short term price gyrations and de-leveraging events can impact the price of gold, sustained excessive fiat money creation will cause the price of gold to rocket skyward.  By using the new "don’t tell the public the real cost of the problem" multiplier, we could see up to 8 Trillion Dollars before it is all said and done.

Compared to one year ago, gold is up 3/10 of 1% whereas the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down about 35% and housing is down even more.

"Critical Status" is where many retirement funds are heading.  Historically retirement funds view their investments on a 40-50 year picture.  Short term fluctuations are not as important as cash for distribution of benefits.  They MUST have liquidity to meet their monthly obligations.  There is no financial based entity shielded from the current crisis.  There are some retirement funds already modifying and limiting withdrawals.  Over the last thirty years, retirement plans for the average American have been methodically dismantled in favor of Wall Street.  Defined benefit plans were replaced by individual contribution plans.  By establishing 401K plans, Wall Street effectively added millions of new stock investors to buy what Wall Street was selling.  Share volumes exploded on the upside as a result.  Instead of the boring 5% return received on bank and Treasury products, the American public was duped into believing that stock were a sure bet and could only head one direction- up.  "Boring" looks good now and a 0% return on investment looks much better than the losses now being suffered by most retirement vehicles.

We have recommended you take possession of your stock certificates and precious metals.  For those of us who focused on silver, it is more cumbersome than those who were able to buy gold simply due to the weight difference.  Brokerage firms do not want to transfer stock certificates to the owner because it reduces the possibility for revenue.  There’s been a move to eliminate paper certificates all together.  Instead, the industry would prefer all electronic media which makes their job easier and more profitable.  However, it also makes illegal activities easier and harder to investigate and prosecute.  Anytime you place someone between you and your investment, you increase the risk of loss.  See: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C01E5DE173BF936A35753C1A965948260&sec=health&spon=&&scp=1&sq=AUDIT%20AFTER%20GOLD%20DEALER’S%20SUICIDE%20SUGGESTS%20CUSTOMERS%20LOST%20MILLIONS%20&st=cse

The cleansing of epic proportion is underway.  It appears that we are heading for the cliff of currency devaluation.  We are less than 24 months from my 1/11/11 watch date.  Could we be at the end of an age?

In this complex world we are confronted with discerning intent on a daily basis.  Intent is purpose, an anticipated outcome that guides your planned actions.  Intent has a beginning point and a direction.  Direction is established by a beginning point and at least one additional point or position, effectively a double witness.

There are many powerful people with intent who can impact the economic picture.  For example, George Soros single-handedly extracted a billion dollars from the Bank of England on September 16, 1992.  Oklahoma native Sam Walton built Wal-mart and wiped out thousands of family-owned businesses across the country.  Former President Bill Clinton formed a foundation and has received hundreds of millions in contributions from the who’s who in the global community.

Our Heavenly Father established a purpose for everyone on earth:

Ephesians 1:11   In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:

Each of us is called to a purpose and our intent should line up with our purpose.  Purpose would denote an outcome while intent is an action or actions guiding you to that outcome.  Intent has anticipated consequences whereas risk has unanticipated results.  As we walk through this life, our goal is to minimize risks and fulfill our purpose.  The best way to minimize risk is to seek the counsel of GOD’S will for you.  With over 6,000,000,000 people on earth with varying intents that may affect each of us in a distinct and unique way, it is critical that we assess our intent on a daily basis.

Each of us is responsible for our own actions.  Who knows what you should invest in?  Our Heavenly Father.  Who knows when you should "pass" on an investment?  Our Heavenly Father.  Who knows what house you should buy?  Our Heavenly Father.  There are influential people out there who understand mass psychology and use it to manipulate people toward their agenda.  Bernie Madoff is a case in point and his Ponzi scheme is still being unraveled.  Could Bernie have achieved success if each of the investors, with a pure heart, had sought Our Heavenly Father and received His counsel about the intent of Madoff?  NO!  Bernie Madoff relied on the "idols in their hearts" to further his scheme.  Did Madoff begin his investment career with this intent?  I don’t believe so.  Bernie’s intent changed over time.  He started off making money for his clients but veered off course slightly and as time passed his ego kicked in resulting in the Ponzi scheme.  Once his comfort level rose and without scrutinizing his intent and purpose, the rest is history.

"Idols in the heart" present one of the greatest challenges to be overcome by each of us.  You can be broke and still have the idol of riches.  You can drive a jalopy and idolize a Mercedes or Lexus.  Investors are challenged by their lust of money and that is why over 90% of the day traders consistently lose money.  Their ego and emotions overpower that "still small voice".  Investments with greater complexities should be avoided by the small investor.  If every investor focused on his individual purpose and reviewed his intent in investing, borrowing, and spending, the country would not be in the current financial crisis.  You might say that this is an impossibility.  When unity with GOD occurs, nothing is impossible.  The Creator has ownership of the created and has given us the capacity to be in one accord.  However, Our Heavenly Father imparted ownership to us and then provided us with laws concerning ownership.  Ownership has conditions attached to it.  If you operate according to the idols of your heart, you will lose title to those things you have been given or you will be unable to attain those things you seek after.

Psalms 84:11  For the LORD God [is] a sun and shield: the LORD will give grace and glory: no good [thing] will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.

As we walk uprightly in our intent, no good thing will be withheld.  Judging the intent of others can get you into trouble.  Only judgment through GOD’S eyes can the intent of the person be determined: 

John 7:24  Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.

The questions to be asked when you are being confronted with an unexpected negative situation:

1.  Is there an action I took that caused this to occur?

2.  Is there an idol in my heart motivating me?

3.  Did I ask My Heavenly Father about this matter before I became involved?

4.  Is this a test to see how I respond thus to uncover a "heart issue"?

5.  Is the loss I might suffer a matter of salvation?

6.  How would Love respond?

7.  Will this result in refocusing my efforts toward my calling?

When discerning intent, be careful that you are pure in heart:

Titus 1:15  Unto the pure all things [are] pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving [is] nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled.