Recession: Part 1

Today was a really sad day at work. I was completely shocked to find out that many people at our company were laid off this morning. No notice, just gone. Friends that I have worked with for years were told today to pack up and leave, I didn't even get to say goodbye to them. I just kept thinking about how difficult that must be. Especially for people with children, who are providers for their families. We had major restructuring, and my role at work will look different now, although I'm not quite sure exactly what that will look like. I have a new supervisor. There will be lots of changes. Things will be busier as we have the same amount of work to do with fewer people. I still have my job for now and for that I am very thankful. It was a pretty emotional day thinking of all the people who were sitting at home after having just lost their job. It could have been me. I know that lots of companies have already had major layoffs. I know we are in an economic recession, but I guess I hadn't felt the effects of it THAT much, until today.

I was looking on John Piper's website, and saw that he gave a sermon last week on the purposes of the recession. You can listen or read all of his sermons online, so I read through it. I thought it was really good, so I wanted to share it. It is really long, so I am just going to start out with part of it. I will give the intro of his sermon, and the first of five purposes that he expands on. I am still going to condense it a little bit so that if you don't have time to go to his website and read or listen to the whole thing, you will still get a really good summary. The following is directly from Piper...

This is a message about God’s purposes in the recession. By recession I don’t have any sophisticated definition in mind. I just mean various financial setbacks like business slowdown, decreasing profits, massive layoffs and joblessness, the bursting of the housing bubble, thousands of foreclosures, personal and business bankruptcies, bank failures, investment company collapses, the loss of retirement funds, and the social ills and unrest that go with the downturn.

God is sovereign over these things, he foresees them all, he causes or permits them all, and when he causes or permits something, he does so with purpose and design.


The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord. Proverbs 16:33

Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. Proverbs 19:21

The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples. Psalms 33:10

[The Lord] declares the end from the beginning . . . saying, “My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.” Isaiah 46:10

So none of the recessionary events has surprised the Lord. His purposes and designs are being fulfilled according to plan. And what I want to do is draw your attention to some of those purposes.

Now what are some of God’s purposes in this recession? I will mention five:

1) He intends for this recession to expose hidden sin and so bring us to repentance and cleansing.

God brought his own faithful servant Paul to the brink of death so that he might learn more deeply to rely not on himself but on God. If that happened to Paul, we may be sure that God is doing that for us as well in this recession. That we may rely on him and not ourselves.

At the bottom of every Christian heart—no matter how advanced in faith and godliness—there is the sediment of self-reliance. Then God shakes our lives, sometimes to the foundations, to show us our self-reliance and clean it out with a new, deeper reliance on him.

And, of course, the recession is especially good at exposing the sin of wasting other people’s money (or our own), and the sin of selfishness and greed in the mortgage business, and the sin of fear when everything starts coming down, and the sin of grumbling and impatience. And on and on. What a gift the recession is in the exposure of sin. May the Lord give us all the grace to repent and receive the forgiveness that God offers in Jesus Christ.

Purpose #2 will be my next post, and it is - To awaken us to world poverty. This one is really convicting. Stay tuned!