Lord God, teach us to leave all our worries in Your hands, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
ObamaCare–the Affordable Care Act: have you heard anything about this? It is a government-regulated program for health care in this country. There are those who strongly support it and those who strongly oppose it. Some say it is good for the country; others say it is bad.
Furthermore, there have been some real difficulties in getting this huge program off the ground. The TV and radio pundits are talking about the difficulties people are having trying to get into the program, and the difficulties others are having who are losing their present health insurance, apparently because of the program. On both sides are people who are worried about their need for health insurance. Who is going to take care of them? How are they going to survive if they do not have insurance? What worries people on both sides is that they may not have access to modern health care because they have no insurance.
What about us? Should we be worried about this? Will there be no one to care for us? Will there be no insurance plan for us?
Well, I have learned about an insurance plan that has been in place for a long time. It is a plan that the government can neither give us nor take away from us. It is entirely independent of government control. It is called “God-care”: “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your anxieties upon Him, for He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:6-7).
What wonderful words: “He cares for you.” God cares! Can there be any doubt about this among us? What does God have to do to prove that He loves us? How about being willing to give up the one thing that is most important to Him and to do this just for us? If He would do this, then will we believe that He cares?
You know the answer. “In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him” (1 John 4:9). If God didn’t care about us, why would He have made such a great sacrifice? There should be no doubt about His love, His concern for us. God-care is the only insurance plan that is truly built upon the Rock. All problems in this life are a direct result of sin. Some of them may be the result of particular sins that we commit, but many of them are simply the result of sin being in the world.
God’s care for us has taken care of the cause of our problems. Therefore we can expect that God-care will extend to the problems themselves. It will be as He says, “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32)
Yes, God-care covers all our problems. It is the best insurance that we can have. In fact, without His blessing, every other form of insurance is of no value. With His blessing, all will go well even without any man-made form of insurance.
Having said this, we need to realize that divine solutions to problems are not always agreeable to our human desires. A man may say, “I prayed to God, but He didn’t do anything about it.” What the man really means is that God didn’t do what that man wanted Him to do.
In such situations, we need to “humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God.” We need to acknowledge that we do not always know what is best for us. Under God-care, we have no guarantee that life is going to be comfortable for us…no guarantee that every illness will be cured…no guarantee that every financial difficulty will be resolved with an outpouring of money…that every human conflict will end in everyone loving us. In fact, we are told that “we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).
On the other hand, we do have better guarantees. God-care assures us that whatever God does will be exactly the right solution to our problems. You know the passage: “All things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). What man-made insurance policy can claim this?
But once again, we must humble ourselves under His mighty hand, never telling God what has to be done, always laying forth our desires but then saying, “Your will be done.” He who sacrificed the One He loved the most just for you will make everything work out for your good.
You know, of course, that the final solution to your problems will not be in this world, but in the world that God has prepared for those who believe in Jesus Christ. There all the sufferings that have been brought about because of sin will be gone, never to plague us again.
What insurance program can make such a promise? Only God-care. He alone will exalt you in due time—and oh, what an exaltation it will be!
Father in heaven, we know that You love us, for You gave Your own Son for us. Strengthen our faith, so that at all times we cast our worries upon You, knowing that You care for us. Hear us for the sake of Your Son. Amen.