Health care is one of those issues that sparks a lot of stress and anxiety in people. Insurance is costly. Medical care is costly. When you have a need, how do you afford it? Where can you turn for help? Insurance may not be the best option, so what do you do?

Several years ago, my wife and I were becoming more and more frustrated with the rising costs of insurance. In order to keep our payments in a reasonable financial range — which was becoming more and more unreasonable — we had to keep increasing the amount of our deductible. We eventually got to the point where our deductible was so high, I was beginning to wonder if the costs of insurance were even worth it.

So we started doing some research. A good friend of our had just joined a ministry oriented, medical share program. I was a bit skeptical, but we sat down with them and discussed their experience with a medical need not long after they joined. It sounded too good to be true, but the more we talked, the more I realized this might be just what we needed to look into.

Not long after this conversation, we discovered that many of the mainstream insurance companies used the premiums that came in — my premiums — in ways that we didn’t approve of. Many of these companies used this money to pay for abortions and to provide for various other medical procedures that we were uncomfortable with. So we decided to step out on faith and give this new option a try.

The ministry we chose to work with was Samaritan Ministries, although there were a few other options we considered. We talked with several people who had had very positive experiences with Samaritan Ministries, so we submitted our application, and in 2010, we jumped into the world of Christian medical sharing.