Again, it's long! You're under no obligation to read it but some have asked (gluttons for punishment!)
Finding God in Cancer
Psalm 71:18 is
the theme verse for our (Diane and my) return to the field in Germany. Diane reminded me of that the other day and
read the surrounding verses. Wow, was it
and is it appropriate to the story I’m here to tell today
14 As for me, I will always have hope; I will
praise you more and more.
15 My mouth will tell of your righteous
deeds,
of your saving acts all day long—
though I know not how to relate them
all. (And
I don’t have time enough today)
16 I will come and proclaim your mighty acts,
Sovereign Lord;
I will proclaim your righteous deeds,
yours alone.
17 Since my youth, God, you have taught
me,
and to this day I declare your marvelous deeds.
18 Even when I am old and gray,
(or maybe
even bald!) do not forsake me, my God,
till I declare
your power to the next generation,
your mighty acts to all who are to come.
19 Your righteousness, God, reaches to the
heavens, you who have done great things.
Who is like you, God?
20 Though you have made me see troubles,
many and bitter,
you will restore my life again;
from the depths of
the earth
you will again bring me up.
21 You will increase my honor
and comfort me
once more.
Greetings
How many of you have prayed for me?
Apologies to those who suspected I was sick and I brushed it
off
Qualification:
1.
None of this is meant to magnify me. Please take everything I say as a
magnification of the glory of God – pray that the words of my mouth flowing
from the meditations of my heart will be acceptable to our glorious God. If I boast I am boasting in and of God.
2.
I will use the word “I” often today but right at
the outset I want to say that most all of this experience was an “us” thing for
my wife Diane and I. In stories like the
one I am about to relate the Caregiver’s role is no picnic - Diane was and is
an amazing woman and wife, partner and friend and she has extended so much
love, support and plain old grace through this.
I’ve known her now for forty years, been married to her for thirty-two
plus years and have never been more crazy about her. Thank-you love – I married well!
3.
This is not a three-point exegesis of a relevant
biblical text. This is a chapter from a
life story followed by some of the things learned or learned better within
it. That’s only if I stick to the script
– we’ll see. You all have stories, those stories have chapters and you all need
to be looking for the lessons within. I’m sure most of you do.
Tell the story:
A year ago, a new chapter
Diagnosis
Realization
Announcement to community and the prayer explosion (read
letter from student)
Early reactions – don’t be afraid to rage at God
Treatment
The Low Point – absolute giving over to God
Recovery
“Cure”
Today, a new chapter & where I’m at now (feeling quite
good! Happy to be back at work, back in community – six enforced, unplanned and
tenuous months can fan the flame of passion for your calling).
We’ve only got so much time to live in this mode – walk by
faith, push past doubt, face the enemy, invite future saints – then its over –
we’ll be vastly better off but it is so exciting now and finite. Around the campfires of heaven we’ll get to
tell stories of walking by faith – let’s get some stories going!
Lessons (forgive me, I teach and therefore how I think and
react, much to the frustration of those not really hoping for a lecture, is by
pontificating about the lessons embedded in life)
Here are the Big 3 things I know better having had
cancer. They’re things we all “know” and
most of us have done some learning the hard way.
God is
God is love
God is good
God is….
In the beginning
God….when there was nothing God is, when there is nothing now, God is. The “I am” still is and will be forever. God was before the notion of “before” was
brought into existence –
-we haven’t always been
- BUT we will forever future be with or apart from God
-and God just plain IS.
The “I Am” still is!
How could I know, how can anyone know “God is”?
From an acquaintance with God, found in the broad sweeping
pages of the biblical narrative coupled with a personal history that is
informed and influenced by the mercies of God. These can help to prepare you
for the big challenges of life by giving you the requisite knowledge of head
and heart. You can experience gratitude
for what God has done but don’t stop there – expect that He will continue to do
His work of grace in and through you.
The Bible is said to be many things. We often go to it for advice, for principles
by which to live, for correct doctrine by which to make necessary
judgments. Let’s always remember that
all Scripture is inspired and profitable for instruction, reproof, correction
and righteousness training but let’s also remember something else. Read David’s Psalms and hear how he loved the
Law. Was he waxing rhapsodic over
Levitical do’s and don’ts? His
exuberance always seemed a little overblown until I thought – maybe he’s not so
much in love with the details - which, granted, are super important – maybe he’s in love with the broad and
powerful portrait of Jehovah painted by the law and the realization that that
same Jehovah loved him, loved David.
Read Psalm 145 if you need to feel what David felt.
I said it’s the biblical narrative and one’s personal
history. God has been faithful in my
life, in the lives of Diane and I as a couple.
I think I can say that a brush with mortality in the assurance of God’s
eternal love for us is not
the worst thing that we’ve experienced together
But, granted, it was no picnic!
Here’s one place I found God certainly is:
Even though I through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear
no evil, for you are with me;
your
rod and your staff, they comfort me.
That valley mentioned in Psalm 23 has some incredibly deep
shadows. Yet God is, He’s there.
And sometimes you just have to know it.
God often plays hard
to get. He still IS. When I was at my lowest point the only resource
that I could consciously draw on was a knowledge of God. He didn’t reach out and warm me with His
embrace. I had no visions or angelic
visitations. There was, seemingly,
nothing but a howling emptiness – or so it seemed. I never want to go back there. I’m sure God was at work in the shadows. I’m sure the intercessory provision of Jesus
and the intercessory groans of the Spirit were there but I’m also sure I didn’t
feel them.
We don’t always feel them and we have to fall back on our
knowledge.
What did I know, what do I know, what can we all know?
As I stared into the ugliness that is disease and death and
could see nothing else I knew that, right there, just outside of my spiritual
peripheral vision, was the one who hadn’t just survived death, hadn’t just
cheated death but the One who had conquered death, who had by His sacrifice and
resurrection (let’s never celebrate His death without shouting about His
resurrection) defeated death, trampled it under His heel and ground its face
into the dirt. I didn’t feel it –
believe me, I wished I had - , but I knew it!
Knowing can sometimes be enough.
In that context and in that knowledge I could surrender to
the one who conquered death and makes it so much more sacred than it is ugly.
By way of aside:
What was Christ’s
intercessory prayer for me on Friday, May 4, 2012?
Hebrews
7:25 Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him,
because he always lives to intercede for them. (high priestly role –
intercessor)
Romans 8:26
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in
our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes
for us with groans that words cannot express.
So I know better now is that God is
and
that God is love.
We read responsively last week from Psalm 139 – the refrain
was, over and over, “for His steadfast love endures forever”. There’s a whole theology in that phrase –
just try reading it out loud six times, each time emphasizing another word.
Shall we try it?
God’s love is terrible and tenacious l– he is the God we
should naturally fear but He’s more amazing in his love. The more terrible the circumstances the more
tenacious is his love – He loves in the valley of Ps 23 we’re inseparable from
His love as described in Romans 8.
God is so big, so awe-inspiring, He is the God of the
universe and the God before and beyond the universe. The most preposterous and beautiful tenet of
Christianity is that He loves you, he loves me individually, deeply,
sacrificially, substitutionally – it’s an outrageous notion in any other mind
than God’s yet He demonstrates it irrefutably in the Incarnation. Let that blow your mind!
[God’s “terrible” love]
•
Terrible comes (through the Old French terrible) from the
Latin terribilis, of the verb terrere (“fill with fear”)
•
Terrific comes from the Latin terrificus (“causing
fear”), built from terrere + facere (“make”) (this root of facere
is the reason for the suffix -ficus in Latin, -fique in French
and thus -fic in English).
So,
both come from the same Latin verb.
The third thing that this walk through Death’s Shadowy
Valley has re-affirmed in my mind and heart is that God is good.
I told you earlier that some initial advice from fellow
believers was that I shouldn’t be afraid to vent about or to God, that I should
express my outrage, my disappointment, my fears. I’ve read the Psalms, I know we can get away
with that. I know God’s big enough to
handle it. But God granted me a measure
of grace here – no credit to myself, I’m boasting in the Lord – I never got mad*
at God about my cancer. This is not to
say I never will – who knows what else awaits but God granted a peace that
passed all understanding – it was one shared by Diane as well - and I am so
grateful for that.
*scared
yes, but never thought/said “Not Fair!
The realization that came to me – and it’s as old as His mercy
and grace – is that God owes no man anything – especially me. Who am I to make demands on Him. The metaphor that powerfully ministers to me
is the one of the Potter and the Clay.
Clay has no say. But, in God’s
love and mercy and grace and goodness Clay can Pray in humility, in the will of
the Potter.
And if God is, if God is good, if God is love what the
Potter does with Clay is the Potter’s business but it ends up for us – ends
up – good and to the Potter’s glory.
It is not for my glory or my convenience or my happiness of my
health. Getting shaped by the Potter
means we get pinched and kneaded and plopped onto spinning wheels and baked in
the heat.
BUT
It ends up good because we’re His workmanship, not our own, we’re
fashioned for good works which are, in turn, meant to bring glory to God. We’re created in Christ Jesus to do good
works, our lights are to shine in a way that our good works draw due attention,
due glory to our Father God. [Same word
for works/deeds]
Ephesians 2:9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For
we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God
prepared in advance for us to do.
Matthew 5: 16 In the same way, let your light shine before
others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
And the fallout for us along the way are encounters with
God’s goodness. Sometimes we get little
sips, sometimes, great draughts but because God is forever and we’ll be forever
with Him those experiences just prefigure the time we’ll drown in His
goodness.
[[I’m right there with Peter’s complicated relationship with
water and Christ. When Peter took his
eyes off of the water-walking Lord he was about to literally drown but when the
foot-washing Christ finished with him he asked for his whole body to be
drenched!]]
All that being said, life is not a cakewalk and tough times
or circumstances often suggest different ways to distrust God. Life is and will be hard.
When life really starts to rattle your cage don’t be afraid
to ask the “Oh really?” questions of God – reverently I’d advise. Trial times are great opportunities to get
rid of theological clutter and do some deep reflecting on God’s truths.
God is sovereign, nothing happens in our lives but that God…
- “Oh, really?”
All things work together for good to those that…. - “Oh,
really?”
God is the Healer…- “Oh, really?”
God must not favor me because …- “Oh, really?”
Or maybe one of Job’s friends offers advice….- “Oh, really?”
Ask the - “Oh, really?” questions. It’s OK. Then search the Scriptures, recall
God’s graces in the past; always remember God’s character and you can sort the
wheat from the chaff.
And get acquainted with the mysteries of God, the God
paradoxes that aren’t answerable this side of heaven. You know they may never be fully answerable –
that’s OK, another reason to celebrate in heaven.
And be grateful to God for all His mercies – worship that
way and spend enough time looking back that you have reason to trust in his
future mercies and his future mission for you and your future reward in Him.
And now, today,
before we pass on, we can comfort others with the comfort with which we’ve been
comforted. Cancer’s a tough thing. I know it’s tough for someone who hasn’t
first or second hand experienced cancer to reach out and minister. It’s a disease loaded with emotional baggage
and physical visibility and a fear of betrayal by one’s own body. Cancer stinks – I don’t even like seeing
pictures of myself with no hair and I’ve lived through the whole deal. I’m thankful to those who tried to be
comfort. I’m especially thankful to
those who comforted me with the comfort with which they’ve been comforted –
fellow members of the cancer club. So
whatever your big deal has been redeem it further by using it to comfort someone
else. Encouraging someone who has
ministered to you when they are in dire straits helps them wrestle with the questions
that come with such straits.
Anjali – former
BFA now working in oncology as a PA – great heart for her patients, great
example of how God can call us to ministry?
What will I miss? I’ll, oddly enough, miss long sessions in the
chemo-lounger (at least with the less toxic administrations of chemicals). Those times were an enforced period of meditation
in the face of dire circumstances. There
you are with a potentially fatal disease and poisons dripping into your IV
tube. You get the situation and you’re
pretty much exposed before God. Whatever
your trials have been or will be when you’re at that point of being seemingly
hung out to dry take the opportunity to meditate on the truths of God. I know I had some truly sweet times in that
chair and in the long periods of enforced idleness and isolation at home. God can fill those sorts of voids.
Does that mean
I’d welcome another go-round. I know I
don’t miss it that much and God has other, sometimes less and sometimes more dramatic
ways of letting us experience Him. No, I
wouldn’t welcome another round. The thought of it is dreadful now that I better
know dread. I hope I will recognize His
“more than sufficiency” whatever the next chapter has in store.
This experience
is one I would not wish on my imaginarily worst enemy. It is one I would pray against in the life of
someone for whom I care. But, as cliché
as it may sound, it is an experience for which I am grateful.
What if the
prayers of the saints had been answered differently in my story? What if I died last year. We surely know as individuals and as a
community that sometimes that’s the way things work out. If any child of God –
you think of that person that comes to mind - who had passed over to God’s
presence would be able to appear here, right now what might they say? Would they say that God blew it? Would they complain that their healing had
come only in God’s presence? Would they
say they wished it had all worked out differently? You know the answer to that. You know that they would be speaking with a
true everlasting perspective that we should all cultivate now. They’d speak as one who had beyond all doubt
and all reservation seen that God is, that to drown in Gods love is amazing and
that God is good beyond all imagination.
I want to read
the lyrics to a song written in response to a personal tragedy. (friend Stephen killed in car wreck) I loved
this song before I knew its story but now, knowing the background, I love it
even more. (popularized to me by Crowder & that’s the way we usually sing
it)
And He is jealous for me, loves like a
hurricane, I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and
mercy
When all of a sudden I am unaware of these
afflictions
Eclipsed by glory and I realize just how
beautiful You are
And how great Your affections are for me
And oh, how He loves us, oh
Oh, how He loves us, how He loves us all
And we are His portion and He is our prize
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes
If His grace is an ocean, we're all sinking
And heaven meets earth like an unforeseen
kiss (sloppy wet kiss)
And my heart turns (burns) violently inside
of my chest
I don't have time to maintain these regrets
When I think about the way
That He loves us
Oh, how He loves us, oh
Oh, how He loves us, how He loves all
How He loves
(And here’s the
verse we don’t sing but we ought to knowJ
I
thought about you
The
day Stephen died
And
you met me between my breaking
I
know that I still love you God
Despite
the agony
See
people they want to tell me you’re cruel
But
if Stephen could sing
He'd
say its not true
Cause
you’re good
