#STRask - If Christians Believe God Answers Prayer, Then Why Do They Buy Health Insurance?

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

Questions about why Christians buy health insurance if they really believe God answers prayer and whether or not one should end all prayers about desires for a spouse with “If it be your will.”   Why do Christians buy health insurance? Don’t Christians believe God answers prayer? If God loves you and cares about you, then he certainly wants you to be healthy, correct? Should I end all my prayers about desires for a spouse with “If it be your will”? Should I consider the possibility of God not giving me the spouse?

It's time for another hashtag STRask podcast from Stand to Reason. I'm Amy Hall and I'm here with Greg Kogel. And we are looking forward to getting to our questions today. We are. Well, we'll start with one from Dan. We will. Alright, here's Dan's question. Now, he's got a lot of things here, so we might have to go back through and go through a little more carefully.

Okay. But why do Christians buy health insurance? Don't Christians believe that God answers prayer? Don't Christians believe that God answers prayer? Don't Christians believe that God has the healing power to heal your ailments? Why do Christians pay for medicines and vitamins? Can't God keep you healthy? If God loves you and cares about you, then he certainly wants you to be healthy, correct?

Shouldn't Christians put their faith into actions? Shouldn't Christians walk the talk? Well, there's a lot there. I don't think he's a Christian. No, he's not. The answer to most of his questions is yes. Can't God do this? Can't God do that?

Shouldn't we ask God, trust God, etc.? C.S. Lewis made an interesting observation here that's helpful to anyone countenancing the challenges of their prayer life. The challenges are praying and not getting answers or not getting answers immediately or not getting the answers that you pray for. And it's a bit of a mystery to me, the calculus of prayer. I've mentioned this before. How does prayer work?

We go to texts that say that we need to believe and trust, and our believing in our trust is going to make a difference in God answering. And I think that's one of the principles of prayer, but it's not the only one. There are lots of times where Jesus performed a miracle, not in virtue of somebody else's faith, but in virtue of his compassion for them. There are times when people, the apostles are praying for Peter's release in Acts, what, chapter four or five, somewhere in there.

And then when he is released, miraculously, and he comes to the door, and the servant girl sees him there, and she runs in to tell the prayer group who's praying for his release, he's free, he's at the door. And they say, no, he's not. You're like, that must be a ghost or something like that, you know. So John MacArthur's pointed out that was prayer that there wasn't much faith in it, but they were persisting and God responded to the prayer. So there are dynamics here in prayer that are part of the process. Is it Dan? Dan. Yeah, Dan is treating prayer like a mechanism. You mentioned in another show about a transaction.

And Lewis says it's not a mechanism. It's not a transaction. It isn't like a vending machine. You want the product, you put in the money, you get the product. You are making a request of a person. And this is a person who has not just the power to answer the request, but the wisdom to know whether answering the way you asked

or what you asked for providing that is going to be good in the long run and in the big picture the long run in your own life The big picture in terms of all kinds of other things that God is doing in the world There's a fabulous movie. I should say fabulous in some some regards That's called I think it's called Something Almighty. It's about when Jim Carrey— Oh, Bruce Almighty. Bruce Almighty, all right. So Bruce Almighty, played by Jim Carrey, Bruce is given the power

of God for one day or something like that. And he sees all these prayers coming in. You've got mail, and he goes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. He hits the yes button, you know, and answers all the prayers. And then it turns into disaster in people's lives. And then you get a picture of that. This person won all this money. They, he said, yes, they got all this money and it ruined their lives, ruined their family, ruined their marriage, whatever. So, so he had power, Bruce Almighty, he didn't have any wisdom. He didn't have foresight. He also didn't have a deep, profound caring for those people. He had a surface caring.

Oh, I'll give you whatever you want. His care was not, I'll give you what's good for you. And you see, that's God. I'll give you maybe what you want sometimes if it's good for you, and if it consists of what's good for a whole bunch of other people in the broader, the big picture. But he's not going to give us stuff that aren't good for us, you know? And he's going to, there's a lot of things we ask for that aren't. And so Dan's request is, if God is loving, he's going to give you what you want.

So why don't you ask God for what you want? Because he's going to give it to you supposedly if God is real, and then you won't need health insurance and all the other things that he's mentioning there. When you read the book of Proverbs, as it were. You harvest during the harvest season so that you have food for the winter. I mean, these are all different ways that the writer of Proverbs kind of characterizes it. But I mean, you also have seven years of famine, But, I mean, you also have seven years of famine and seven, seven years of feast and seven years of famine there in Egypt that Joseph oversees. And he wisely, knowing what's coming, he stores up food for the future. That's not lack of trusted God.

In fact, I would say that this would be an example of if people do not do the responsible things, this is a way of testing God. It's putting yourself in a position that forces God to act. It's like what the devil was tempting Jesus to do, to throw himself down because the angels would lift him up. Yes, that's right. And so that's not a good thing either. Christians in ministry do that, you know, with some regularity. But this is not—Dan's question reflects a false understanding of the nature and character and the wisdom and the power of the God we worship, all right? The true God, all right? He's thinking of a kind of a cardboard character that ought to be jumping at our behest if he's real,

and therefore we don't need to do any of these other things, God will just do that for us. Of course, God doesn't do that for us in his mind because God doesn't exist, but he's making an inappropriate demand on God here or expectation if God really did exist. God is not a bellhop, and he doesn't have to jump through all of Dan's little hoops of demands in order to justify his existence. What you see here, the way Dan has responded, this challenge, is basically a clever strawman. It is a mischaracterization of Christianity.

It's a criticism against Christianity that does not take the teachings of Christianity seriously, and so he can find fault. But that's only because he's misrepresented what Christianity teaches. We can't presume on God to do things he hasn't promised to do. You know, he's promised that all of his people, he will work for their good to make them like Christ. Okay, that is how you have to look at everything else. So when Dan says, if God loves you and cares about you, then he certainly wants you to be healthy, correct? The answer is no, I don't know that. Healthy is not, we talked about this in the last episode, healthy is not his goal.

God's goal is to shape who we are. Holiness, not wealth. Yeah, it's holiness. So, sometimes that means you will be sick. You can't, he's never promised that he will take away every sickness all the time until the end of time. And also, there is this idea of, oh yeah, you know, God's going to do everything for you, so you don't need to do anything. Well, again, if God's goal is to shape us, to make us wise, to mature us, why would he

want to do everything? Imagine if a parent did that for a child. Everything the child needed, the parent did, did, did. You don't have to do anything, child. Just ask me and I'll do it for you. Well, how would that child end up? He would not be an adult. He would not be wise.

He would not be mature. He would not be an adult. He would not be wise. He would not be mature. He would not be good. If God's greatest goal is to make us wise and mature and good and know him and love him and trust him, then doing everything that they ask you to do so that they don't have to do anything, they don't have to work, they don't have to pay for insurance, they don't have to take care of themselves, that would not accomplish God's goal. So you can't evaluate what God is doing unless you know the goal of what he's trying to accomplish. Yeah, and that goal takes the longer view. Think of a young man and his dad working together so that he can be a good athlete, maybe to get a scholarship or go into professional sports or something like that.

And then the boy says, Hey man, I don't want to work out out today, I wanna eat pizza all day. That would be good for me now. I would like that, I'd enjoy it, I'd rest. What father, pardon me, what father would deny if his loving father forced his son to sweat and toil and not have the food he wants. Well, any father who's interested in the long-term good.

And now that makes, I hope that makes perfect sense to people like Dan. Yet at the same time, this is exactly the way it's characterized in the scripture. It says, physical exercise profits little, but godliness is a means of great gain, for it holds a promise not just for this life, but also for the life to come." I think that's 1 Timothy 4. So there, so it's the exact same parallel. It's that we're saying no to something we want in the short term to get something much greater in the longer term. Okay? Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4, for momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory. Yes, it's hard now, but that's because something greater,

it's not just you're going to get something greater is happening in the future. The greater thing that's happening in the future is connected to the thing that's happening now. It's the hardship that's producing the weight of glory in the future. And so, Dan just has, I'm trying to find the best word here, this is going to sound condescending, but I'm not condescending, but I'm not condescending it, but I think this is appropriate. Dan has a childish view of God, and he has a childish view of life if this is the way he thinks it ought to go. I should get everything I want when I want it right now if I think it's good for me in the moment, and why doesn't God, if he really loves me, i.e. meaning he's going to give me what I want when I want it, doesn't he give it to

me? Oh, I know why he doesn't do that, because there is no God. This is childish thinking. Maybe there just is no God that would do that. That God doesn't exist. The God that exists is good and real and cares about us. Okay, let's go to a question from Cyrus. Should I end all prayers about my desires for a spouse in, if it be your will?

I know God gives us the freedom to choose, but should I consider the possibility of God not giving me the spouse? Well, if you're single, the answer to that is yes, you should consider that, because lots of people don't get married. Who would rather be married? And I didn't get married until I was 48. That was a long time. And I wanted to get married. And so I prayed a lot, and there were many times I was discouraged about my prayer, my prayer, whether it would ever be answered. But I used to give a lot, because I was single for a long time, I gave a lot of talks to singles groups, which struck me as odd. I'd get the invitation, then I'd say, I don't know why you'd listen to me, because I haven't been successful. Because I haven't been successful in any event. Here's what I said. What if you were to know today,

let's just stipulate that God were to tell you, you will be single for the rest of your life. If you knew that, what would you do with your life? Write that down. If God were to tell you, and again, I'm just stipulating, that's the fact for this illustration. If God were to tell you, and again I'm just stipulating that's the fact for this illustration, if God were to tell you, no, you're going to be single the rest of your life, what would you do? They wrote it down. I said, okay, now do that. Do that. And that's pretty much the way I conducted my life, is that if I was going to get married, my future wife was going to have to hit a moving object, so to speak, you know?

Because I did not want my life to be on hold in any sense while I was waiting for this stage of my life to happen, when I had no certainty that that was going to happen in my life, okay? And so I just, that was my counsel to them and it's my counsel to anyone else. But I kept praying, you know, there are a number of things that are huge in my life that I've been praying for for a long time that have not been answered. And James says, you have not because you ask not. And what I have told the Lord regarding these things, and getting married was one of those things way back when, twenty-seven years ago, what I've told God is, it will never be said of me regarding these issues that I have not because I ask

not. I am going to keep pounding on the door. Ask, seek, knock, I think how Jesus puts it, you know. I'm just going to keep doing that. And if God decides not to answer that prayer, well, that's up to him, but it will not be for lack of prayer and banging on the door. You know in Romans chapter 1 Paul talks about his desire to go to Rome, but he's been detained so far, but he's going to keep trying. And the language he uses there is, if at last by the will of God I can succeed in coming to you. He had a good purpose, he had a good plan, he hadn't been able to get there, the door wasn't open, but that didn't stop him from banging on the door.

And so my recommendation is to keep banging on the door. Don't stop praying for things that you deem important in your life. And I'm speaking from personal experience here, not just on the marriage issue, but on a lot of other issues. And so I get it. I get the frustration. My recommendation is just to stay in the game, so to speak. Keep praying about that which

you want. Now your attitude, as was mentioned in the comment, should always be not my will but thine. And that's an attitude of surrender. Whatever you decide, I'm just going to make my peace with that and trust you that it's the best thing for now. But nevertheless, I'm still going to ask and I'm going to seek, you know, and I'm going to knock and I'm going to keep pressing on. There's nothing wrong with that, and in fact, I think it's a virtue. As long as you also have this attitude, as expressed, that God can choose to do whatever he wants, and he can say no for a season, or he can say no forever. But if he does say no for either reason, either kind of no, for a season or forever, it's for a good reason.

And that's our sense of, not my will, but thine be done. I think there are some people in churches where they think that if you admit any sort of doubt about God giving it, that you hurt your chances of getting it. So I want to just say that is not true. That is not true. Even you know, was it James who said, you know, don't say I'm going to go here or there, but God wills it. I'll go here or there.

Now, that wasn't a prayer, but it's this attitude of I don't know the mind of God and I'm not controlling him with my prayer. And this goes back to the idea of God not being a vending machine where we do certain things and we get certain results. He's not a vending machine. You're not going to hurt your chances if you say it wrong. Okay? Don't worry about that. The idea of saying, if it be your will, is you're reminding yourself of what's most important. And this goes back to our episode where we were talking about Job in the last episode. The goal here is to love God more than getting a spouse. And maybe you're not there. Maybe you're not there right now. But as you say, if it be your will, you are expressing your desire to love God and trust his wisdom and his choices and

his shaping of your character more than your own desires. Now how do you increase that? You have to work at building up your love for God so that you can be okay with submitting to him. Because if you don't trust him, or you don't really, you're not really convinced he's for your good, and you're not really convinced that he's worth giving up something you want so badly as a spouse, then you're going to have a hard time with this. You're going to have a hard time praying if it be your will. But if you can come to the point where you do trust him, you can pray that freely. And it's a way of worshiping

him. It's a way, just as Job said, the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away. You know, he tore his robes and then he worshiped because he was trusting God. So, you need to build up your trust in God. You need to read the Bible. You need to think about Him. You need to worship. All of these things will help you to submit to Him because you know He's trustworthy and he loves. That's what it really all comes down to. I feel like almost every question comes down to this. Do you love God more than your own desires? That helps with sin, that helps with hopes and dreams and suffering, and almost everything. Do you place him above every other desire that you have

for comfort, even for happiness, for short-term happiness? And that's what we're working at as Christians, as we go through our lives, is to know God better. That's what he wants for us more than anything else. Okay, we're out of time. Thank you so much, Cyrus, and thank you, Dan. Dan, we always love hearing from you. So feel free to keep sending your questions. I really do want you, Dan, I really do want you to have a more three-dimensional view of the Christian God. And that's sometimes hard to get if you're going online and looking at snippets here and there, or you, I don't know, I'm not sure how anyone comes to a position where they have such a narrow view of God, but hopefully, you know,

we're happy to keep answering your questions and trying and help you understand the scope. Maybe you went to a church when you grew up where you just really didn't get a larger view of God. But I assure you, he is bigger than you are thinking right now. All right. Well, we'd love to hear your questions. So you can go to X, use the hashtag STRask, or you can go to our website, just go to str.org and look for the hashtag STRask podcast page and you'll find a link there to give us your question. We really hope to can go to our website, just go to str.org and look for the hashtag straskpodcast page and you'll find a link there to give us your question. We really hope to hear from

you. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kockel for Stand to Reason.