It's hard for me to have a firm grasp of the economic situation back home.  All I can see is the progressively dismal news on the Drudge Report when I check it every morning.  I see and hear stories of people losing homes, jobs, and huge chunks of investments - actually I can check my own investments to see how the crisis is hitting me personally.  I can also see it here in Mongolia as prices for daily goods go up 100-200%.  

The economic downturn has spread overseas as well.  Most of the news seems to focus on bigger, more staggering pictures, but the whole mess trickles down to smaller levels, too.  The Mongolian church is holding their national missions conference in three weeks, the biggest gathering of Christians (about 700) every year.  So far, two Americans scheduled to speak have had to cancel because they couldn't afford the flights to come out.  For global Christianity, America is the primary source of funding for missions and as things get tight economically back home, that tightening gets felt by other Christians around the world.  I'm sure the situation here is a drop in the bucket compared to what's happening other places.

My purpose in writing this though is to say that with calamities of this size there is an individual aspect to it and, more importantly, with every challenge there is an opportunity - one not just to weather the storm and to return to business as usual, but to make some permanent, radical changes.  This opportunity is one that is laid out well by the following video (Piper) and sermon (Erre).

Use this link to download the sermon audio.

A wartime lifestyle...

What do you think?