How to Keep Your Job in a Recession
The latest national employment report was terrible. Almost 700,000 jobs lost in a single month. Over 5 million jobs lost since last year. And the Great Recession is only beginning. At some estimates, America may be losing 1 million jobs a month by 2010.
There has never been a more important time to beef up your job security.
But how is job security even possible in such conditions?
First, know that God wants you to be happy and prosper. Somehow, many people equate Christianity with poverty. This is wrong. The Bible is full of examples of wealthy men that God describes as righteous. In fact, God challenges each of us to see if He will not open up the storehouses of heaven and shower down riches upon us (Malachi 3:10). Abraham had 318 servants that he was able to arm to battle the king of Assyria. Counting their wives and children, Abraham’s household would have numbered more than a thousand. Job, possibly the wealthiest man of his age, was a man so perfect that even Satan couldn’t find fault in him. Jesus Christ, too, came from a family of above-average means.
God does not intend any of His people to be poverty-stricken, dressed in rags, living in penury. Jesus Christ Himself said, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). “I wish above all things,” God says through the Apostle John, “that thou mayest prosper and be in health“ (3 John 2). It is God’s desire that we have happy, healthy, abundant lives!
But in order to have this kind of life, you must practice God’s laws of financial success.
Let’s open our Bibles to learn what God has to say about financial success—specifically, how to succeed in the workplace. Let God show you in the pages of His Word how it is possible for an honest Christian to be a financial success. You can actually increase your income more than you ever dreamed possible!
The Recipe
If you were to survey the world’s most successful “self-made” billionaires, regardless of industry, you would find one commonality: diligent, hard work. Lots of it.
As former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once said, “I do not know anyone who has gotten to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but it will get you pretty near.”
From the very beginning of human life on Earth, God purposed that man should work diligently, and thus reap the benefits.
During creation week, on the seventh day, God created the Sabbath by resting. But the commandment to rest on the Sabbath has another, often overlooked side. The Fourth Commandment (Exodus 20:9) also commands: “Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work.” That part of the command is just as important as the part requiring man to rest on the day God made holy.
God gave this commandment to keep us in a right relationship with our Creator. That Creator works. He created and now sustains His creation. God intends us to become like Him. By laboring—working and building—we learn to become creators too!
The intent of this law shows that although man is expected to rest on Saturday, he is to keep busily engaged in gainful work during the first six days of the week. God produced His wealth—His creation—through labor during the first six days of the week. We are to do likewise.
