Paper Companies

Remember Enron?  Enron was an energy company in the 1990's.  They were making bundles of money.  They employed 20,000 people and had a stock price that seemed to go up without limit.  But it was all a fake.  Well not everything.  They did employ all of those people and they did buy and sell energy and other resources, the fiction was in the profit.  Enron had created multiple other companies to hold the debt and liabilities for them.  These other companies didn't really exist.  They didn't have offices or employ people or have a company softball team, they existed only on paper.  Their purpose was to hide the bad stuff from investors and make Enron look more profitable than it really was.  These types of schemes always come to an end, and so did this one, taking the rest of the company out with it.

I think that many people set up "Paper Companies" in their own lives.  There is the public persona, the way we look to our friends, family and community; but then there is the other stuff.  The other stuff is not found on the public ledger sheet.  The other stuff is our personal liabilities that we want to shelter away and keep off the books so that our public value is not decreased.

A few weeks ago, we had part of a tree come down during a storm.  On the surface this tree looked like a healthy oak.  It turns out that the inside was hollow, with no support.  It was only a matter of time before it came crashing down.  Life is like that.

I think each of us has our own paper companies.  We have our personal issues that we would rather not share with the world.  I think that on a personal level, it isn't that important that it all be out in public.  But there does need to be a total, honest complete accounting between you, your paper companies and God.

God wants every part of us.  In the short term, it is easier to hide away the bad stuff.  But God wants our whole life and all that we do to be an act of worship to him.  It is only by bringing our whole life forward, the good and the bad, that we can move into a true relationship.

Watch this clip from Pastor Chris.

The paper companies of Enron set them up for the inevitable fall.  Our issues that we try to hide from ourselves and God set us up too.  But unlike investors or government regulators, God already knows about our paper companies and false earnings reports.  God is ready to wipe away the debt as soon as our accounting is done.