WARNING

Warning: You may disagree with what I'm about to say. That's o.k. I just want us all to be led by the Spirit---but I feel the need to warn my family & friends.

I wouldn't post this if I weren't concerned. Have you read the headlines lately? Just today on FoxNews.com here are some of the headlines:
*Russia Sends Warship to Caribbean--a warning to the U.S.
*Iranian President Blames U.S. for Global Market Collapse
*Mind Scan Against Terror
*Rescue Planned for Woman Trapped in Home by Giant Pig (Just kidding---really a headline, but has nothing to do with what I'm about to say!)

For some time, I've been feeling the need to prepare for disaster. And then when we had so many hurricanes this season, that feeling was reinforced. I'm not a gloom & doom prophet. I don't think we all need to run to the hills and hide in caves. But....there's just something in me saying we need to prepare. This feeling was reinforced when I shared my thoughts with some friends and they'd been feeling the same way! It may be a natural disaster that hits, it could be the collapse of our economic system, it could be anything. What I'm proposing is this: Talk to your spouse. Pray together. And see if God leads you to prepare in any way. It could just be stocking up on water and flashlights with batteries. Blankets, food, oil lamps, a generator. I don't know. But just consider it and pray about it.

I know firsthand what people do when they get desperate. I saw it when I walked into Living Water yesterday. God tells us in II Timothy 3, "But understand this, that in the last days will come (set in) perilous times of great stress and trouble [hard to deal with and hard to bear]. For people will be lovers of self and [utterly] self-centered, lovers of money and aroused by an inordinate [greedy] desire for wealth, proud and arrogant and contemptuous boasters. They will be abusive (blasphemous, scoffing), disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy and profane. [They will be] without natural [human] affection (callous and inhuman), relentless (admitting of no truce or appeasement); [they will be] slanderers (false accusers, troublemakers), intemperate and loose in morals and conduct, uncontrolled and fierce, haters of good. [They will be] treacherous [betrayers], rash, [and] inflated with self-conceit. [They will be] lovers of sensual pleasures and vain amusements more than and rather than lovers of God."

Here's a website to check out for disaster preparedness by The Red Cross:
http://www.redcross.org/services/prepare/0,1082,0_77_,00.html

And finally, I leave you with this word from God: II Timothy 1:7, "For God did not give us a spirit of timidity (of cowardice, of craven and cringing and fawning fear), but [He has given us a spirit] of power and of love and of calm and well-balanced mind and discipline and self-control."