Reflecting on God's Provision

   

Friends, I just want to take a minute to reflect on the amazing provision God made for my family last summer when I had my operation.  Just over a year ago, I went to 3 or 4 different doctors and surgeons, and none of them could figure out if I had a cyst, a possibly cancerous tumor, or a hernia.  Whatever it was, it required an operation.  So they cut me open, found out it was a hernia (the best possible option), and fixed it.  

Three days later I was throwing up repeatedly (which has got to be the most painful thing possible after a hernia operation), so we drove more than an hour to the emergency room.  After 13 hours of having no pain medication in me (and might I add that I have a very low pain tolerance), they figured out that I was too much of a "light weight" to be taking the maximum dose of the pain medicine they had given me and that's what had made me sick.  So they prescribed a different medicine and sent me home.  That medicine made me perpetually dizzy, so I switched to extra strength Tylenol and just toughed it out.

ANYWAY, the point of this story is that our expenses added up to at least $23,000.  That includes all the doctor's visits, the surgery, the medicines, the emergency room visit, etc.  Well, we don't have normal insurance.  We participate in something called Samaritan Ministries, where basically everybody shares in paying each other's medical expenses.  Also, for every dollar you negotiate off of a doctor's bill, they credit that amount towards that month's payment.  Well, we had the operation done at a wonderful hospital that is very willing to help people who don't have much money, so we had a LOT of money negotiated off.  

I don't know all the details, but the end of the story is that we didn't end up having to pay a dollar!  God provided through the hospital and Samaritan Ministries so that the only expense we paid for through the whole entire process was the gas we had to put in the car.  How incredible is that???  It's nothing short of a miracle, really.  Our God is SO AMAZING!!!  

So there's my little story for tonight.  Never forget that our God is the same God who parted the Red Sea and caused the sun to stand still and brought down the walls of Jericho and raised so many people from the dead.  He is just as powerful today as He was back then, and just as capable of performing miracles in our lives.  

I'll leave you with this quote: "When you start 'asking anything,' you'll be surprised with how your life begins to sparkle with the presence of God."  (From Paul E. Miller's book, "A Praying Life")