To Prepare Or Not To Prepare

Q

This evening a friend of mine related what a pastor and his wife said to them over dinner. He told them that, as Christians, they need to start preparing for the worst as things are going to get real bad, real fast after the election. He said believers should store up food and hoard what they have, and pull all their money out of the bank and hide it. This is nothing less than frightening. How does he know this? Is he right–should we all be doing this?

A

A growing number of religious and secular observers are predicting that things are going to get much worse soon. They’ve come to this conclusion because current trends are not showing any improvement and since they don’t think anyone has any real solutions to the world’s problems, they believe things will get worse, not better.

In my opinion, the real question is not whether we should prepare for this. The real question is how we prepare, and that’s determined by our world view. A secular world view is based on self-reliance and argues for stocking up and hunkering down. A Biblical worldview favors reliance on the Lord and following His instructions. In Matt. 6:19-34 the Lord told us not to store up treasure on Earth and not to worry about tomorrow. He said to seek His kingdom and His righteousness and all our needs would be supplied. Paul said believers are to live by faith, not by sight (2 Cor. 5:7) In other words, we shouldn’t react to the conditions we see or fear, but should trust in the Lord to keep His promises.

Sad to say, a great majority of Christians, and even many pastors, have a secular world view. But if things get as bad as some experts are predicting, no amount of preparation and storage will see them through. Only faith in the Lord will suffice, and the sooner we get used to living by faith the better prepared we’ll be no matter what happens.