Category: healing

Aug 16

Is Jesus REALLY Enough?

 

 

 

 

 

My cancer diagnosis  in 1990 was especially upsetting to my husband because he had lost his first wife nearly 20 years before to ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) while they were still newlyweds. To watch me then face a life-threatening illness and an uncertain future was more than he felt he could bear.

One day as he was riding home from the hospital after visiting me during my post-surgical stay, he came upon a car with a bumper sticker that read:

As a seminary graduate, my husband theologically knew the right answer to that question. And as a longtime pastor, he often had preached the affirmative answer to that query. But that day he was so overcome with worry and fear of losing yet another wife that he wondered out loud: “Is He really?” “Is Jesus really enough?”

 

Have you asked that same question?

If I lose a breast…is Jesus enough?

If I get sick during treatments…is Jesus enough?

If I lose my hair to chemo…is Jesus enough?

If I have to quit work…is Jesus enough?

And worst of all, if the cure doesn’t come…is Jesus really enough?

 

My husband answered that question for himself two weeks later when he stepped into the pulpit on Sunday morning and preached one of his most powerful sermons ever, entitled “Jesus is Enough.” In it, he reminded all of us—and himself—that God doesn’t need to do another thing for us on this earth. He has given us His one and only Son, and in Him we have everything we need to cope with this life and every promise for eternal life. No matter what else does, or doesn’t happen to us, God doesn’t need to do another thing to prove to us that indeed, Jesus is enough.

 

Dear Jesus, It feels unfair to have to face this illness after I’ve tried so hard to live for You. And then I remember that You lived completely for your Father and life still was very unfair to You. I’m glad You understand what I’m feeling and most of all, I’m so grateful that Your presence living in me is enough for me. Please help me deal with the changes that this disease is bringing into my life/my loved one’s life. I pray they all will be temporary ones and that health will be restored completely. But even if it’s not, I pray that my soul will be satisfied in You alone. I pray all this in Your name. Amen.

Today’s Tip: Listen for the word “ENOUGH” in conversations and when you hear it, remind yourself that Jesus IS enough.

(This blog is adapted from a devotional I had published in the book Praying through Cancer:Set Your Heart Free from Fear, copyright 2006 Susan Sorensen and Laura Geist, W Publishing Co., a division of Thomas Nelson Inc.)

I know I included this same song recently, but I LOVE it and it fits better than any other I could find–please enjoy it again! 🙂 

(If the music video doesn’t automatically load, please copy, paste and insert this link to enjoy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6fA35Ved-Y&list=RDB6fA35Ved-Y )

Jul 19

Does Following Jesus Make Everything OK?

 

 

 

 

“Why I Follow Christ”
Reprinted by permission from Believe in Miracles, But Trust in Jesus by Adrian Rogers, Crossway Books, 1997. (Taken from a letter Dr. Rogers’ friend wrote to his own daughter–Emphasis mine.)

I have not seen clear statistical evidence that fewer Christians die of cancer than nonbelievers, or that they are immune in greater degree from the diseases that afflict the human race.  Some of the kindest, most selfless persons I know have had more than their share of bad health.  The fact that they belonged to Christ did not insulate them from disease.  Therefore, I will not follow Christ for promised healing.

I will not deny or dispute evidence of restoration of health.  I will rejoice at every recovery from what seems to be hopeless, threatened death.  I will not hesitate to pray for recovered health for my loved ones and acquaintances.  I will set no limits on what God may do.  But I will not follow Christ for promised healing.

I see no sign that Christians escape disaster and accident more than others.  I have helped dear friends empty muddy water out of dresser drawers and new appliances after a disastrous flood.  I remember as a child taking clothes to a widow with five children whose house had burned to the ground.  A bullet makes no detour around the body of a believer.  Therefore, I will not follow Christ for any promised protection from disaster.

I will not scoff at amazing survivals, nor deny providence has and continues to work for the good of God’s own.  I will continue to pray for protection from wicked men and tragedy, but I will not follow Christ for promised protection from accident or catastrophe.

I do not observe that Christians are especially favored with prosperity.  Like James, we have all seen the rich oppressing the poor, and justice is rarely perfect in this world.  The psalmist has said that he had not seen the righteous forsaken or his seed begging for bread, and in the deepest needs of this life that is certainly true; but all of us have known people of integrity who have not prospered.  Therefore, I will not follow Christ for promised freedom from physical want or the hope of affluence.

I am not certain that Christians have stronger personalities or fewer neuroses than nonbelievers.  I do know that there is no bitterness like religious bitterness and no arrogance more insufferable.  I have watched Christians suffer emotional and mental disabilities.  And although it may seem heretical, I am not sure that I would really enjoy living in the same house with either the apostle Paul or Peter.

God wills that the mind of Christ be formed in us, and there is no doubt in my mind that the Christian’s attitudes and actions will be improved by his Christianity.  But I will not follow Christ for any promise of personality enhancement or perfection.

Why then follow Christ? Why be a disciple of Jesus when life becomes more complicated, as He so often warned?

For one reason alone.  In Jesus we behold the face of God.  He is the truth, the everlasting truth, God in the flesh.  I know that in His life, death and resurrection I am reconciled to God, the Giver of life.  I believe that nothing can separate me from the love of God.  He has all power and goodness.  I trust Him in His promises.

To Him I offer my life, damaged or whole, brief or full of years.  It matters not.  He is the one certain thing in an uncertain world.  He is to be worshipped, not so something will happen to me or the world (something already has happened to me and the world) but because He is God, who through Christ has reconciled the world to Himself.  He saves me; He is my justification; He is the center that holds.

To worship the God of our salvation, to offer sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving, that alone is our vocation.  We offer our lives to God, not so as to be healthy, wealthy or wise; not even so as to gain strength to do great things for Him.  We offer our lives to Him because He alone has claim on us.  God is not a means.

(If the music video below doesn’t automatically load, please copy, paste and click on this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fZ-tBR7LJ0 )

Jul 12

A Prayer for Healing

 

 

 

 

A Cancer Patient’s Prayer for Healing
 (Ed. note–substitute any disease/trial for “cancer.”)

          Father God, I choose to believe that you are the same yesterday, today, and forever.  I believe that you healed people in the Bible, that you have healed people in history since then, and that you are still healing people today.  You are all-powerful.  For you, cancer is very easy to heal, if you so choose.  And your love and compassion for your people is very great.

God, I confess to you that I have fallen far short of your demands for my life.  I have sinned in thought, word, and deed.  I have not given you the thanks and praise you deserve, nor have I treated my family and neighbors with the love they deserve.  Show me, God, if I have an unforgiving heart.  Give me the grace to forgive those who have wounded me.  Show me if there is any other bad attitude or habit in me that you have wanted me to deal with.

Thank you, Lord, that you are a God of forgiveness and compassion.  Thank you, too, for being a God who loves to bless the unworthy.  I ask you to send your supernatural power to destroy my cancer.  I believe that you work through doctors and medicine, and I pray that you will fill the doctors and nurses and technicians who work on my case with wisdom and love.  But I also ask you to do what doctors and medicine cannot do.  In your mercy, immobilize and paralyze the cancerous cells in my body that medicine cannot reach.  Dry up whatever is feeding those cells with life.  Put a stop to the spread of cancer in my body.

God, I trust that you will do whatever is best for me.  If it is your will, you will heal me.  Give me the strength and ability to keep trusting in that truth.  And if I am not healed, please give me the power to trust you then, too.  But most important of all, bring me closer to you.  Open my eyes and heart so that I may come to a deeper experience of your love for me.  Help me to do whatever is necessary to draw closer to you and to know you as my heavenly Father.  AMEN

Reprinted by permission from A Medical and Spiritual Guide to Living with Cancer by William A. Fintel, M.D. and Gerald R. McDermott, Ph.D.  Published 1993 by Word Publishing.

(If the music video below doesn’t automatically load, please copy, paste and click on this link to enjoy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yzejd6r9DwE )

Jul 05

An Amazing Story of the First Survivor I Ever Knew

 

 

 

 

“There is something you must always remember.

You are braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”

Christopher Robin to Winnie‑the‑Pooh in Pooh’s Most Grand Adventure

I love these words of encouragement from one best friend to another. They were the sentiment of a life-changing pep talk given to me in high school by my dear friend Cecil, who is the first person I knew who survived cancer.

We met in a speech class in the fall of 1968. I was a junior and he was a sophomore at Victor Valley High, where he was without a doubt the best orator. When he chose me to be his debate partner, I was thrilled. I didn’t know that the year before he had been diagnosed with fibrosarcoma (a rare cancer of the soft tissue), only that he always had a large Band-Aid on his forehead and that its self-described “flesh” color did not match his black skin.

I’m not sure if either one of us ever used the “C” word. In the sixties, cancer was something adults whispered about and doctors tried to keep from patients’ knowledge.

“Why do you always wear a Band-Aid?” I naively asked him one day.

“Because I’m very embarrassed about my scars” was his quiet reply.

The scars were the result of multiple surgeries—beginning when he was fifteen—to try to cut away the cancer and extend his life.

“The fibrosarcoma was eating through my skull,” Cecil explained as we chatted on the phone about this chapter.

Back then chemotherapy was in its infancy, and radiation therapy couldn’t possibly be safely aimed at a patient’s head, so his doctors simply sliced away, waited for the cancer to grow back, and then cut it out again.

By the fall of 1968, doctors were so pessimistic about Cecil’s future, they recommended he drop out of high school. “Once it hits the optic nerve, it will go right to the brain. Go home and don’t even worry about school anymore,” they advised.

But Cecil had other plans.

“Not only am I going to go back to school, I’m going to graduate,” he told them. “And not only am I going to graduate, I’m going to go to college. And not only am I going to go to college, I’m going to go to the best college!” he defiantly added.

His equally strong-willed mother approved, saying, “If you want to go back to school, it’s fine with me. I don’t want you to just lie down and die.”

So Cecil went to school, ran track, and played basketball and football, wearing a customized helmet to protect his forehead as he darted downfield with the ball. (Bet that wouldn’t be allowed these days!) Just about every Saturday for the next two years, we were together at a speech meet or a debate competition, eventually becoming the first students from our school to make it to the speech state championships.

But in the summer of 1970, right after I graduated, Cecil’s cancer came back, and more surgery ensued. The hole in Cecil’s forehead was getting rather large, so doctors stitched his left forearm to his forehead for six weeks in an attempt to graft skin there. However, in the fall of 1970, the relentless cancer returned.

Surgeons wanted to operate again and now sew his right arm to his head, but his mother refused. She moved him to another hospital, ignoring the doctor’s warning that if she did he’d be “dead in two weeks.”

Physicians at the new hospital did the same kind of surgery, without stitching his arm to his head. At Cecil’s first recheck, they were pleasantly surprised the cancer had not returned. Three months later, they were shocked to find no sign of it. Three more cancer-free months later, they were speechless.

“We can’t take any credit for this, because we didn’t do anything different from the other doctors,” they told the then-eighteen-year-old Cecil. “The fibrosarcoma was like a runaway freight train on a dry, straight track, and it just stopped. In medicine we call it a spontaneous remission.”

Cecil finished high school, serving as student body president, and went on to graduate with honors from Harvard University, where he played football, ran track, and coached the debate team. As I write, he is a sixty-three-year-old longtime university law professor with many accolades and former students across the country who say his teaching expertise and friendship changed their lives.

“Despite all the dark predictions, I’m alive and doing just fine,” he says. “I believe to this day that God healed me despite all the gloom and doom. And it has never come back because He had other plans for me.”

 

I’m so grateful that meeting Cecil was part of God’s plan for my life. Before we participated in our first debate meet, I was scared and not at all confident in my speaking and writing abilities. I felt insecure because I was the youngest in my class (I graduated at sixteen) and because my father’s job had forced me to twice move midyear to new high schools. But Cecil shared words very similar to Christopher Robin’s with me, and I took them to heart. And as they say, the rest is history.

 

When we face the trials of life. including cancer, we discover the incredible strength of the human spirit as we do things we never thought we could. But I hope you also are discovering that the greatness of God is the reason you are braver, stronger, and smarter than you realized.

 

Find a mirror, look straight into it, and tell yourself: “I am braver than I believe. I am stronger than I seem. I am smarter than I think. God is much greater than I can imagine.”

And then share those words today with someone else who needs to hear them. You never know how God may use them to change a life.

(If the music video below doesn’t automatically load, please copy, paste and click on this link to enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0ynr-qAhUY )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0ynr-qAhUY

Jun 07

Yes, there IS life after cancer!

 

 

 

 

This past Sunday was National Cancer Survivor’s Day— a holiday to celebrate survivors and remind them and their caregivers that there really is life after a cancer diagnosis.

So when do you know that you or your loved one is a cancer survivor? When the scan comes back clear? When the tumor marker is normal? When the treatment is finished? When there’s no evidence of any cancer?

I was diagnosed June 26, 1990, with Stage 3 colon cancer. I still am cancer-free and count myself as a very blessed survivor. But even if the cancer had returned, I would still count myself as a survivor because I agree with the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship when it labels cancer patients as survivors “from the moment of diagnosis and for the balance of life.”

I didn’t always think that way.

I used to think that you if you lived five years cancer-free after a diagnosis you were a cured cancer survivor.

I remember going in for my five-year oncology checkup in the summer of 1995 (before I started working in Marc’s office) and gleefully announcing to Marc that I wouldn’t be seeing him professionally anymore. (I’m not quite sure how I got that notion, but I hear many others say the same kind of thing. We’ve probably made that association because statisticians often give data on five-year survival rates for different types of cancer.)

“Where did you get that idea?” Marc responded.

It’s five years; I’m cured!” I told him; surprised that he didn’t realize it was such a momentous day.

“Well, the chance the cancer will return has diminished greatly, but you still need to be checked for the rest of your life,” Marc soberly explained.

Talk about bursting someone’s bubble!

I waited five years to be proclaimed a survivor and there was going to be no such official announcement.

Thankfully, a short time after that day I read the above-mentioned survivorship definition from the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship and proclaimed myself a survivor.

So I hope you’re not waiting for some mythical five-year mark to earn the label of cancer survivor. Anyone who has survived even one minute since diagnosis already is a survivor! Believe it!

Before I retired in 2015, I loved watching and listening to those survivors in my support group who had medically incurable cancer, but still found much happiness. Because of their circumstances others might say these folks have the right to be fairly fearful. But these “incurable” survivors have come to realize—as have those of us who are cured—that we don’t need the right circumstances to be happy, but we do need to believe the right things about our circumstances to be happy.

It’s important what you believe about yourself and your loved ones. When I finished treatment for my cancer, the odds the cancer would come back were greater than the odds it wouldn’t. That doesn’t sound like a situation that would make a person very happy. But what I believed about my circumstances did give me joy.

I believed the truth that I was already a cancer survivor.

For as he thinks within himself, so he is. Proverbs 23:17

And I believed the truth that nothing, including cancer and its treatment, can diminish God’s great love for me.

And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today or our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. Romans 8:38

I also believed the truth that God didn’t need good odds to heal me, that there are people everywhere surviving despite their odds.

For nothing is impossible with God. Luke 1:37

You and your loved ones have survived a cancer diagnosis. God obviously has plans for your life or you wouldn’t still be here. Ask Him to shine His light on your path and then don’t be afraid to follow where He leads.

Will you pray from Psalm 119 with me? Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light for my path. I’ve promised it once, and I’ll promise it again: I will obey your wonderful laws. I have suffered much, o LORD, restore my life again as you promised. Amen.

If the music video below doesn’t automatically load, please copy, paste and click on this link to enjoy  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewD9aRxnzec )