Keys to the Kingdom

I stepped out onto my porch and saw him walking toward me, leaving his big honkin’ tractor-trailer rig idling in the lane. He greeted me, joined me on the porch and drawled, “Car-o-line, how’re we gonna do this?“ I answered, “You’re the expert, you do whatever you need to do to set that 600 lb. fireplace insert right here on the porch.“ (You could’ve   pushed me over with a feather when I saw a Fed Ex 18-wheeler instead of a normal-sized box truck like I was expecting.) He was grateful to know he had permission to  maneuver through my yard/pasture area, because he needed it to get into proper position to drop his load. I’d been waiting six months for this backordered item and it finally arrived when it was 85+ degrees. Seven trees, a fire pit, and a flag pole later, he proved he’d been skillfully doing this for 28 years. I was astonished from the moment those big wheels rolled across my entrance until they rolled out 40 minutes later. If you ever order an elephant or hippopotamus, you should ask for Eric to deliver it ‘cause he‘s the best!

As the All-Knowing Expert, God has my permission to sit in the driver’s seat of my life. He knows where I’m supposed to go and how to get me there at the right time. He knows what He’s doing and He doesn’t need my help with the steering wheel, accelerator, or brakes. On the way to church one morning, I set the cruise and a few miles later I noticed my foot was on the accelerator. I thought, “This is the way a lot of believers live. At our wit’s end, we finally ask God to help us. Then we get impatient and rack our brains trying to figure out how we can do it without Him.”

A really good bad example is found in the first book of the Old Testament. God told Abraham and Sarah they would have a child. After several years of waiting, Sarah got impatient and decided to help God out. “She said to Abraham, ‘The Lord has prevented me from having children. Go and sleep with my servant. Perhaps I can have children through her.’ And Abraham agreed with Sarah’s proposal” (Genesis 16:2 NLT). In today’s culture, I think we might call that a FAIL. This was not God’s plan in any way, shape, or form.

“Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go, He’s the one who will keep you on track” (Proverbs 3:6 MSG). There are two voices that speak to believers and it’s absolutely essential to know the difference. Jesus said that His sheep know His voice and the voice of another they will not follow. Satan is cunning and he’ll lie to us in an attempt to steer us off the straight path onto a wild goose chase that’ll crash and burn.

God‘s driver‘s manual states that we are to, “Mark out a straight path for your feet; stay on the safe path” (Proverbs 4:26 NLT). There was nothing straight about the layout of my property. However, it was obvious the truck driver had given careful thought as to how he would proceed before he visited with me. There are plenty of detours on life’s highway that are as crooked as a dog‘s hind leg. God repeatedly warns us not to leave the straight path. I appreciate the promise in Psalm 37:34 TLB: “I won’t be impatient for the Lord to act! I will keep traveling steadily along His pathway and in due season He will honor me with every blessing.”

The Key: Give Him the driver’s seat and let God be God in your life.

The growth of government regulations has advanced at a vigorous pace over the last several decades, and is accelerating.  From 1970 to 2017, the number of words in the Code of Federal Regulations nearly tripled from 35 million to over 103 million, according to a 2019 article published on Forbes.com, authored by Adam A. Millsap.  His study showed that a 10% increase in regulation increases consumer prices by 1%.  This excess hurts all of us, but the burden falls disproportionately on the poor and rural Americans.  Estimates are that the national poverty rate is 2.5% higher because of government regulations.  Consider the following:

• The annual cost of regulations is estimated at $2 trillion a year, which is higher than the Gross Domestic Product of all but nine countries in the world.
• In the last 22 years, federal agencies have published more than 88,000 final rules, of which 15,458 have been identified by federal agencies as having a negative impact on small business.
• In the last 60 years, the United States population increased by 98% while the federal regulatory code increased by 850%
• It is estimated that by 2025, the average additional cost of an automobile due to government regulations will be $7,200.

One specific example, my bank employer is a public company with over $1.5 billion in assets managed.  We are required to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act passed in 2002 in response to the Enron scandal which requires the generation of a voluminous number of internal reports.  The law is extremely complex and the penalties for non-compliance are substantial; so much so, we choose to undergo an independent audit just to make sure we are in compliance with this one law.  The internal cost to comply is hard to discern, but we do know that we spend $220,000 annually on the external audit alone.

The result of this additional cost of regulation requires a business to grow revenue or watch profits go away.  In banking, the number of charters has gone down 73% since 1970, and the shrinkage has occurred disproportionately in rural counties.  Why is Western Insurance gone?  The primary culprit is the cost of increased regulation that required consolidation in the insurance industry.

Some amount of regulation is necessary for public safety, but we have created a huge bureaucracy whose incentive is to advocate for more laws to enforce in order to perpetuate their own existence.  Politicians love the chance to make their mark on what they perceive as the public good.  For a deep dive on this subject, visit the Reason TV channel on YouTube and search for “Great Moments in Unintended Consequences.”  You will be shaking your head while you roll your eyes.

For the sake of the poor, small businesses, and rural America, we have to hold our politicians accountable to defeating this hidden enemy of rural communities by decreasing unnecessary and harmful regulations.