Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Do not fret because of those who are evil
    or be envious of those who do wrong;
for like the grass they will soon wither,
    like green plants they will soon die away.
Trust in the Lord and do good;
    dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
Take delight in the Lord,
    and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the Lord;
    trust in him and he will do this:
He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn,
    your vindication like the noonday sun.
Be still before the Lord
    and wait patiently for him;
do not fret when people succeed in their ways,
    when they carry out their wicked schemes.

• Psalm 37:1-7

From the ends of the earth I call to you,
    I call as my heart grows faint;
    lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

• Psalm 61:2

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
    He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
    he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
    for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk
    through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
    for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
    they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
    in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
    my cup overflows.
Surely your goodness and love will follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
    forever.

• Psalm 23:1-6

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

• Matthew 6:25-34

I was young and now I am old,
    yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken
    or their children begging bread.

• Psalm 37:25

“We find true stability in this unstable world only when we trust in God. To trust is to be confident—to possess a strong sense of security. When we trust, we place confidence in someone or something. Trust is not an emotion that just springs up in our hearts as does anger, jealousy, or sadness. It is always a choice based on reason. We use evidence and discernment to conclude that this man or that bank or this investment is ‘trustworthy.’ Yes, God gives us the faith to act, but He first gives us a choice to make.
“To illustrate the process, let’s take a look at the stock market, which is based on high-level choices of trust. If you don’t trust in a company, you don’t buy its stock. The stock price represents an index of the overall trust people have in a company. Wise people investigate to determine if there are grounds for trust, then they depend on God to guide their decisions. Having placed their trust in God, they need not live in fear of loss. Even if material loss occurs, God promises to meet the needs of His children, and the Bible is filled with repetitions of that promise.
“For example, Psalm 23 tells us that the Lord is our Shepherd, so we shall not lack. Jesus pointed to the birds and the flowers and noted that if God feeds and clothes them, won’t He do the same for His very own children (Matthew 6:25-33)? And here in Psalm 37, David tells us that in his long life, he has never seen God fail to meet needs (verse 25). His experience has proved God to be worthy of our trust. He will work things out.”

• Dr. David Jeremiah, Hope, Living Fearlessly in a Scary World

Dr. Jeremiah’s chapter on financial collapse seems to use every verse of Psalm 37 at one point or another.  He spends a lot of time on the subject.

Financial collapse is something that I know about.  I was out of work for the entire year of 1994.  Okay, I lost my job on 20 December 1993 and got a new job on 20 December 1994.  My first paycheck wasn’t until 1995.  In those eleven days at the end of 1994, I had gone to Oak Ridge Laboratories for orientation and then returned home to pack my household goods and start the drive to Richland, Washington.

But in that “jubilee” year of my life, I had countless interviews with employment professionals who said that I had been in charge of a training program at NASA.  NASA was big time.  I would never understand working on a shoestring budget.  I could never convince them that NASA projects are lean and often mean.  The last year on that job, I estimated that to safely do the work over the next couple of years, I needed a staff of 8-10 people, but I was not allowed to hire anyone.  How did I do it by myself?  I worked off the books on a lot of it, and I fell behind.  There is great truth in what John Glenn said about the “Right Stuff.”  He said that being an astronaut was hard work and determination and learning the process.  The “Right Stuff” came in when you had a huge rocket strapped to your back, you are hurtling into space at great speed, and you suddenly realize that the rocket was designed and built by the low bidder.

Even with what John Glenn had said, the hiring professionals would not hire me.  The job in Richland, Washington required knowledge of government regulations, the training process, and the nuclear business.  With flight delays, I got less than two hours of sleep, and I half slept through the interview, but I still got the job.  Not many people had all the requirements of the job checked.  But then, the contract only lasted nine months, more federal budget cuts.

Along the way during unemployment, God never left me, but I felt deserted.  As Dr. Jeremiah mentions, trust is based on reason.  We know God is there.  We know God meets our needs.

But then, what if you are selfish, only thinking of your precious needs.  You have a financial collapse, and suddenly you cannot buy the latest hot video game.  You go through life never having played it, but your friends talk about it all the time.  You convince yourself that there is no God.  But God knew you did not need that video game.

But for the person who loves God and trusts Him, you know that God will see you through to the other side.

In looking through my wife’s little notes here or there, she wrote several times about us taking our keys to the house in South Carolina.  We took them off our key rings, and we placed them in an envelope.  After all, in two and a half years, the house had never sold, even with countless offers and countless failures to close the deal – never with us being greedy, mostly financial failure on the buyer’s part or finding a different house at the last minute.  Turning in the keys to the mortgage company would wreck our credit rating, but we had no choice.  We had prayed for weeks.  This was about seven years before my wife’s vision where she became on fire for God, but she had the ritual aspects of Christianity all her life – kind of half trusting in God as long as times were good.  But then, we owed it to our real estate agent to let her know we were giving up.  We called and she said that she would pay the mortgage for one more month.  She trusted her gut on this latest offer.  As it turned out, I paid income taxes on capital gains on roughly a thousand dollars after living in the house for ten years.  We had the keys in an envelope, but we had not put a postage stamp on the envelope yet.  God works in mysterious ways, and even though our hearts may not be able to take it, or so it seems, it is last minute.  And my wife always focused on who bought the house, a new preacher who had just moved into town.

And our house sold less than six months before the lay off mentioned above in 1993.  We had not recovered from two and a half years of having a house that would not sell before I lost my job.  But God knew what was coming.  We always had enough.

I might add something to Dr. Jeremiah’s idea that trust requires reason.  For me, trust also required a little experience.  It is why Jesus said that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven.  Jesus then said, it was impossible, but with God all is possible.

But in my experience up to that point, I had an intellect that could change from one industry and then quickly learn the next industry.  I just had a problem convincing the employment professional that I could do it, even while going from petrochemical to military to nuclear to space exploration.  Not many people have been both a nuclear physicist (of sorts, since I taught the subject) and a rocket scientist.  We had money in the bank, not much, but some money.  And I had a wife that loved moving to new places and learning about different cultures.  I was rich, and I did not even know it.

So, I had accepted Jesus long before, but God wanted me to truly trust Him.  That meant continuing to keep on going when I failed at one interview after the next, and the money had almost totally drained from the accounts.  It would have if my wife had not found the worst job she ever had – just staying with the abuse to gain grocery money.

Trust is a rational thing, but sometimes it is a scary thing.  You know God will meet your needs, but you do not know how that will happen and when the local sheriff pulls up in front of your house with an eviction notice, you wonder, ‘God, where are you?’  You don’t distrust God, but you are indeed at the last minute.

Actually, when that happened, the sheriff laughed and apologized.  He helped us pack the last couple of boxes onto the truck.  God had provided a new place to live, not at the last minute, but the last second.  The sheriff had to pull out of the driveway for us to leave.

God still works miracles.  But do not expect to have that miracle that leaves you in comfort and luxury.  Those people forget about God and start trusting in earthly things.

Lord, strengthen me.  I have experienced failure.  And I have seen You at work in those times.  Others might throw up their hands and say that You let them down, but they trusted in the things of this world and not in You.  You are an awesome God.  You take care of Your own.  Thank You for all the times that You have shown that You were there for me.  In Your name I pray.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.