Fear or Faith – What’s Motivating You?
When we have a problem, awareness is the first step to cure. Consumers have a problem. As much as some may point the finger at insurance sales practices, the fact is insurance consumers are ripe for manipulation without a sales agent.
Fear is rooted in the core of every human heart and it’s the invisible foundation upon which is built all those insurance company buildings that punctuate most large city’s skylines. Sure there are unpredictable events that occur on earth (that’s part of the problem too), but those are events over which we have little influence. It is our emotional response to those possibilities that make us buy poorly.
Ever since that one act of original sin, that reluctance to trust and rest in God alone, man has been fearful. (Genesis 3:10) It was a result of the curse. Our fearful nature makes us very vulnerable to mistakes. Here are a couple of examples.
Our fears tempt us to focus on worse case scenarios, “What if?” and we list out all the potential problems. But if Jesus emphasizes, “I will never leave you or forsake you”, or “don’t worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will care for itself”, then worse- case-scenario thinking must not be of Him.
Fear can be good if it leads you in the best direction, but insurable fears are often distractions from the tried and proven path to financial freedom.
Good fears:
Fear God and honor Him with the tithe. He is your provider and protector.
Fear debt and recognize it as enslavement. Get free.
Fear the fact that you don’t know what tomorrow holds. Have an emergency fund.
Misleading fears:
So we buy a life policy, but mom gets pregnant and needs to come home from work (it helps little); we buy a disability policy, but get laid off; we buy dental insurance, but the transmission goes out. Due to the narrow nature of insurance it often doesn’t help out, whereas God’s priorities are broader and would have helped out with all three.
We are born with embers of fear smoldering within us. Commissions tempt agents to fan those embers. This negative synergy wastes a lot of dollars.
I found this post by googling fear, faith and insurance. I’ve been been convicted by the reality of fear becoming the driver of my decisions as opposed to faith. This issue is complicated by the fact that, on a certain level, fear can be a healthy force reminding me that my actions have consequences that can be destructive to my well being or the well being of others. Your article clarified my thinking by pointing out that, although fear can be a healthy force, relative to things we control, there are a whole lot more things in life we don’t control. Bingo! Faith, in God’s providence, allows us to face each of those uncertainties with the assurance that “Jesus will never leave us or forsake us…” and no matter what befalls us, God is using it to accomplish his purposes and for our good.