[BBC List] don't waste your cancer

Thu Feb 16 10:31:10 EASST 2006

Don’t Waste Your Cancer

February 15, 2006

John Piper

I write this on the eve of prostate surgery. I believe in God’s power to
heal—by miracle and by medicine. I believe it is right and good to pray for
both kinds of healing. Cancer is not wasted when it is healed by God. He
gets the glory and that is why cancer exists. So not to pray for healing may
waste your cancer. But healing is not God’s plan for everyone. And there are
many other ways to waste your cancer. I am praying for myself and for you
that we will not waste this pain.

1. You will waste your cancer if you do not believe it is designed for you
by God.

It will not do to say that God only uses our cancer but does not design it.
What God permits, he permits for a reason. And that reason is his design. If
God foresees molecular developments becoming cancer, he can stop it or not.
If he does not, he has a purpose. Since he is infinitely wise, it is right
to call this purpose a design. Satan is real and causes many pleasures and
pains. But he is not ultimate. So when he strikes Job with boils (Job 2:7),
Job attributes it ultimately to God (2:10) and the inspired writer agrees:
“They . . . comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon
him” (Job 42:11). If you don’t believe your cancer is designed for you by
God, you will waste it.

2. You will waste your cancer if you believe it is a curse and not a gift.

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”
(Romans 8:1). “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a
curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). “There is no enchantment against Jacob, no
divination against Israel” (Numbers 23:23). “The Lord God is a sun and
shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold
from those who walk uprightly” (Psalm 84:11).

3. You will waste your cancer if you seek comfort from your odds rather than
from God.

The design of God in your cancer is not to train you in the rationalistic,
human calculation of odds. The world gets comfort from their odds. Not
Christians. Some count their chariots (percentages of survival) and some
count their horses (side effects of treatment), but we trust in the name of
the Lord our God (Psalm 20:7). God’s design is clear from 2 Corinthians 1:9,
“We felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us
rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.” The aim of God in
your cancer (among a thousand other good things) is to knock props out from
under our hearts so that we rely utterly on him.

4. You will waste your cancer if you refuse to think about death.

We will all die, if Jesus postpones his return. Not to think about what it
will be like to leave this life and meet God is folly. Ecclesiastes 7:2
says, “It is better to go to the house of mourning [a funeral] than to go to
the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living
will lay it to heart.” How can you lay it to heart if you won’t think about
it? Psalm 90:12 says, “Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart
of wisdom.” Numbering your days means thinking about how few there are and
that they will end. How will you get a heart of wisdom if you refuse to
think about this? What a waste, if we do not think about death.

5. You will waste your cancer if you think that “beating” cancer means
staying alive rather than cherishing Christ.

Satan’s and God’s designs in your cancer are not the same. Satan designs to
destroy your love for Christ. God designs to deepen your love for Christ.
Cancer does not win if you die. It wins if you fail to cherish Christ. God’s
design is to wean you off the breast of the world and feast you on the
sufficiency of Christ. It is meant to help you say and feel, “I count
everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus
my Lord.” And to know that therefore, “To live is Christ, and to die is
gain” (Philippians 3:8; 1:21).

6. You will waste your cancer if you spend too much time reading about
cancer and not enough time reading about God.

It is not wrong to know about cancer. Ignorance is not a virtue. But the
lure to know more and more and the lack of zeal to know God more and more is
symptomatic of unbelief. Cancer is meant to waken us to the reality of God.
It is meant to put feeling and force behind the command, “Let us know; let
us press on to know the Lord” (Hosea 6:3). It is meant to waken us to the
truth of Daniel 11:32, “The people who know their God shall stand firm and
take action.” It is meant to make unshakable, indestructible oak trees out
of us: “His delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates
day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its
fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he
prospers” (Psalm 1:2). What a waste of cancer if we read day and night about
cancer and not about God.

7. You will waste your cancer if you let it drive you into solitude instead
of deepen your relationships with manifest affection.

When Epaphroditus brought the gifts to Paul sent by the Philippian church he
became ill and almost died. Paul tells the Philippians, “He has been longing
for you all and has been distressed because you heard that he was ill”
(Philippians 2:26-27). What an amazing response! It does not say they were
distressed that he was ill, but that he was distressed because they heard he
was ill. That is the kind of heart God is aiming to create with cancer: a
deeply affectionate, caring heart for people. Don’t waste your cancer by
retreating into yourself.

8. You will waste your cancer if you grieve as those who have no hope.

Paul used this phrase in relation to those whose loved ones had died: “We do
not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that
you may not grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13).
There is a grief at death. Even for the believer who dies, there is
temporary loss—loss of body, and loss of loved ones here, and loss of
earthly ministry. But the grief is different—it is permeated with hope. “We
would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians
5:8). Don’t waste your cancer grieving as those who don’t have this hope.

9. You will waste your cancer if you treat sin as casually as before.

Are your besetting sins as attractive as they were before you had cancer? If
so you are wasting your cancer. Cancer is designed to destroy the appetite
for sin. Pride, greed, lust, hatred, unforgiveness, impatience, laziness,
procrastination—all these are the adversaries that cancer is meant to
attack. Don’t just think of battling against cancer. Also think of battling
with cancer. All these things are worse enemies than cancer. Don’t waste the
power of cancer to crush these foes. Let the presence of eternity make the
sins of time look as futile as they really are. “What does it profit a man
if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?” (Luke 9:25).

10. You will waste your cancer if you fail to use it as a means of witness
to the truth and glory of Christ.

Christians are never anywhere by divine accident. There are reasons for why
we wind up where we do. Consider what Jesus said about painful, unplanned
circumstances: “They will lay their hands on you and persecute you,
delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought
before kings and governors for my name’s sake. This will be your opportunity
to bear witness” (Luke 21:12 -13). So it is with cancer. This will be an
opportunity to bear witness. Christ is infinitely worthy. Here is a golden
opportunity to show that he is worth more than life. Don’t waste it.

Remember you are not left alone. You will have the help you need. “My God
will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ
Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).

Pastor John

Charis, 

Mike Abendroth 

"Make us choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to
be contented with half truth when whole truth can be won.  Endow us with
courage that is born of loyalty to all that is noble and worthy, that scorns
to compromise with vice and injustice and knows no fear when right and truth
are in jeopardy."

 - West Point Military Academy Cadet Prayer 

HYPERLINK "http://www.bbcchurch.org"www.bbcchurch.org 

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