I am out of the hospital. Surgery went well. I am full of thanks. It is a rather amazing process - surgery and getting out of the hospital this fast. Friends came from Dallas and Texarkana to support and love us.
Now the recovery begins - first with the drive back to Dallas tomorrow.
Then time healing. It will take a while, and I look forward to the progress. It's different - I was so strong, and now life starts over with a certain helplessness and waiting - all towards regaining strength.
I will keep you posted. Thanks for praying.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Monday, June 21, 2010
Psalm 21.1
O LORD, in Your strength the king will be glad,
And in Your salvation how greatly he will rejoice!
(and you can read the rest of the psalm as well)
This is the day which the LORD has made;
Let us be glad and rejoice in it (Psalm 118.24).
This is surgery day - in just a few hours. What great verses, and what a great psalm for my Bible reading today.
Not that I (or any of us) would want interruptions, any kind of interruptions, but God appoints them for us. Interruptions need to be dealt with. They take time and energy away from our normal pursuits and responsibilities. It will take some time for me to recover again. Nevertheless this is what God has appointed for me. Our interruptions are His appointments in life.
Believe Him. Trust Him. Embrace Him in the midst of all of it!
Thanks for your prayers.
O LORD, in Your strength the king will be glad,
And in Your salvation how greatly he will rejoice!
(and you can read the rest of the psalm as well)
This is the day which the LORD has made;
Let us be glad and rejoice in it (Psalm 118.24).
This is surgery day - in just a few hours. What great verses, and what a great psalm for my Bible reading today.
Not that I (or any of us) would want interruptions, any kind of interruptions, but God appoints them for us. Interruptions need to be dealt with. They take time and energy away from our normal pursuits and responsibilities. It will take some time for me to recover again. Nevertheless this is what God has appointed for me. Our interruptions are His appointments in life.
Believe Him. Trust Him. Embrace Him in the midst of all of it!
Thanks for your prayers.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
The following has been encoruaging to me, so I share it with you. John Piper, who was diagnosed with prostate cancer some years ago authored the following ten convictions and thoughts on the eve of his cancer surgery. I've grown through them, and I pray you will grow through them, too.
Editor's Note: Our friend, David Powlison, of the Christian Counseling and Education Foundation, who also was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer, has added some helpful expansions to John Piper’s ten points. Indented paragraphs beginning with "DP:" are written by David Powlison.]
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.
DP: I (David Powlison) add these reflections on John Piper’s words the morning after receiving news that I have been diagnosed with prostate cancer (March 3, 2006). The ten main points and first paragraphs are his; the second paragraphs are mine.
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.
DP: Recognizing his designing hand does not make you stoic or dishonest or artificially buoyant. Instead, the reality of God’s design elicits and channels your honest outcry to your one true Savior. God’s design invites honest speech, rather than silencing us into resignation. Consider the honesty of the Psalms, of King Hezekiah (Isaiah 38), of Habakkuk 3. These people are bluntly, believingly honest because they know that God is God and set their hopes in him. Psalm 28 teaches you passionate, direct prayer to God. He must hear you. He will hear you. He will continue to work in you and your situation. This outcry comes from your sense of need for help (28:1-2). Then name your particular troubles to God (28:3-5). You are free to personalize with your own particulars. Often in life’s ‘various trials’ (James 1:2), what you face does not exactly map on to the particulars that David or Jesus faced - but the dynamic of faith is the same. Having cast your cares on him who cares for you, then voice your joy (28:6-7): the God-given peace that is beyond understanding. Finally, because faith always works out into love, your personal need and joy will branch out into loving concern for others (28:8-9). Illness can sharpen your awareness of how thoroughly God has already and always been at work in every detail of your life.
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).
DP: The blessing comes in what God does for us, with us, through us. He brings his great and merciful redemption onto the stage of the curse. Your cancer, in itself, is one of those 10,000 ‘shadows of death’ (Psalm 23:4) that come upon each of us: all the threats, losses, pains, incompletion, disappointment, evils. But in his beloved children, our Father works a most kind good through our most grievous losses: sometimes healing and restoring the body (temporarily, until the resurrection of the dead to eternal life), always sustaining and teaching us that we might know and love him more simply. In the testing ground of evils, your faith becomes deep and real, and your love becomes purposeful and wise: James 1:2-5, 1 Peter 1:3-9, Romans 5:1-5, Romans 8:18-39.
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.
DP: God himself is your comfort. He gives himself. The hymn “Be Still My Soul” (by Katerina von Schlegel) reckons the odds the right way: we are 100% certain to suffer, and Christ is 100% certain to meet us, to come for us, comfort us, and restore love’s purest joys. The hymn “How Firm a Foundation” reckons the odds the same way: you are 100% certain to pass through grave distresses, and your Savior is 100% certain to “be with you, your troubles to bless, and sanctify to you your deepest distress.” With God, you aren’t playing percentages, but living within certainties.
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.
DP: Paul describes the Holy Spirit is the unseen, inner ‘downpayment’ on the certainty of life. By faith, the Lord gives a sweet taste of the face-to-face reality of eternal life in the presence of our God and Christ. We might also say that cancer is one ‘downpayment’ on inevitable death, giving one bad taste of the reality of of our mortality. Cancer is a signpost pointing to something far bigger: the last enemy that you must face. But Christ has defeated this last enemy: 1 Corinthians 15. Death is swallowed up in victory. Cancer is merely one of the enemy’s scouting parties, out on patrol. It has no final power if you are a child of the resurrection, so you can look it in the eye.
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).
DP: Cherishing Christ expresses the two core activities of faith: dire need and utter joy. Many psalms cry out in a ‘minor key’: we cherish our Savior by needing him to save us from real troubles, real sins, real sufferings, real anguish. Many psalms sing out in a ‘major key’: we cherish our Savior by delighting in him, loving him, thanking him for all his benefits to us, rejoicing that his salvation is the weightiest thing in the world and that he gets last say. And many psalms start out in one key and end up in the other. Cherishing Christ is not monochromatic; you live the whole spectrum of human experience with him. To ‘beat’ cancer is to live knowing how your Father has compassion on his beloved child, because he knows your frame, that you are but dust. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. To live is to know him, whom to know is to love.
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.
DP: What is so for your reading is also true for your conversations with others. Other people will often express their care and concern by inquiring about your health. That’s good, but the conversation easily gets stuck there. So tell them openly about your sickness, seeking their prayers and counsel, but then change the direction of the conversation by telling them what your God is doing to faithfully sustain you with 10,000 mercies. Robert Murray McCheyne wisely said, “For every one look at your sins, take ten looks at Christ.” He was countering our tendency to reverse that 10:1 ratio by brooding over our failings and forgetting the Lord of mercy. What McCheyne says about our sins we can also apply to our sufferings. For every one sentence you say to others about your cancer, say ten sentences about your God, and your hope, and what he is teaching you, and the small blessings of each day. For every hour you spend researching or discussing your cancer, spend 10 hours researching and discussing and serving your Lord. Relate all that you are learning about cancer back to him and his purposes, and you won’t become obsessed.
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.
DP: Our culture is terrified of facing death. It is obsessed with medicine. It idolizes youth, health and energy. It tries to hide any signs of weakness or imperfection. You will bring huge blessing to others by living openly, believingly and lovingly within your weaknesses. Paradoxically, moving out into relationships when you are hurting and weak will actually strengthen others. ‘One anothering’ is a two-way street of generous giving and grateful receiving. Your need gives others an opportunity to love. And since love is always God’s highest purpose in you, too, you will learn his finest and most joyous lessons as you find small ways to express concern for others even when you are most weak. A great, life-threatening weakness can prove amazingly freeing. Nothing is left for you to do except to be loved by God and others, and to love God and others.
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.
DP: Show the world this different way of grieving. Paul said that he would have had “grief upon grief” if his friend Epaphroditus had died. He had been grieving, feeling the painful weight of his friend’s illness. He would have doubly grieved if his friend had died. But this loving, honest, God-oriented grief coexisted with “rejoice always” and “the peace of God that passes understanding” and “showing a genuine concern for your welfare.” How on earth can heartache coexist with love, joy, peace, and an indestructible sense of life purpose? In the inner logic of faith, this makes perfect sense. In fact, because you have hope, you may feel the sufferings of this life more keenly: grief upon grief. In contrast, the grieving that has no hope often chooses denial or escape or busyness because it can’t face reality without becoming distraught. In Christ, you know what’s at stake, and so you keenly feel the wrong of this fallen world. You don’t take pain and death for granted. You love what is good, and hate what is evil. After all, you follow in the image of “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.” But this Jesus chose his cross willingly “for the joy set before him.” He lived and died in hopes that all come true. His pain was not muted by denial or medication, nor was it tainted with despair, fear, or thrashing about for any straw of hope that might change his circumstances. Jesus’ final promises overflow with the gladness of solid hope amid sorrows: “My joy will be in you, and your joy will be made full. Your grief will be turned to joy. No one will take your joy away from you. Ask, and you will receive, so that your joy will be made full. These things I speak in the world, so that they may have my joy made full in themselves” (selection from John 15-17).
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).
DP: Suffering really is meant to wean you from sin and strengthen your faith. If you are God-less, then suffering magnifies sin. Will you become more bitter, despairing, addictive, fearful, frenzied, avoidant, sentimental, godless in how you go about life? Will you pretend it’s business as usual? Will you come to terms with death, on your terms? But if you are God’s, then suffering in Christ’s hands will change you, always slowly, sometimes quickly. You come to terms with life and death on his terms. He will gentle you, purify you, cleanse you of vanities. He will make you need him and love him. He rearranges your priorities, so first things come first more often. He will walk with you. Of course you’ll fail at times, perhaps seized by irritability or brooding, escapism or fears. But he will always pick you up when you stumble. Your inner enemy - a moral cancer 10,000 times more deadly than your physical cancer - will be dying as you continue seeking and finding your Savior: “For your name’s sake, O Lord, pardon my iniquity, for it is very great. Who is the man who fears the Lord? He will instruct him in the way he should choose” (Psalm 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.
DP: Jesus is your life. He is the man before whom every knee will bow. He has defeated death once for all. He will finish what he has begun. Let your light so shine as you live in him, by him, through him, for him. One of the church’s ancient hymns puts it this way:
Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger(from “I bind unto myself the name”).
In your cancer, you will need your brothers and sisters to witness to the truth and glory of Christ, to walk with you, to live out their faith beside you, to love you. And you can do same with them and with all others, becoming the heart that loves with the love of Christ, the mouth filled with hope to both friends and strangers.
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
© Desiring God
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Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: By John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org
Editor's Note: Our friend, David Powlison, of the Christian Counseling and Education Foundation, who also was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer, has added some helpful expansions to John Piper’s ten points. Indented paragraphs beginning with "DP:" are written by David Powlison.]
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.
DP: I (David Powlison) add these reflections on John Piper’s words the morning after receiving news that I have been diagnosed with prostate cancer (March 3, 2006). The ten main points and first paragraphs are his; the second paragraphs are mine.
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.
DP: Recognizing his designing hand does not make you stoic or dishonest or artificially buoyant. Instead, the reality of God’s design elicits and channels your honest outcry to your one true Savior. God’s design invites honest speech, rather than silencing us into resignation. Consider the honesty of the Psalms, of King Hezekiah (Isaiah 38), of Habakkuk 3. These people are bluntly, believingly honest because they know that God is God and set their hopes in him. Psalm 28 teaches you passionate, direct prayer to God. He must hear you. He will hear you. He will continue to work in you and your situation. This outcry comes from your sense of need for help (28:1-2). Then name your particular troubles to God (28:3-5). You are free to personalize with your own particulars. Often in life’s ‘various trials’ (James 1:2), what you face does not exactly map on to the particulars that David or Jesus faced - but the dynamic of faith is the same. Having cast your cares on him who cares for you, then voice your joy (28:6-7): the God-given peace that is beyond understanding. Finally, because faith always works out into love, your personal need and joy will branch out into loving concern for others (28:8-9). Illness can sharpen your awareness of how thoroughly God has already and always been at work in every detail of your life.
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).
DP: The blessing comes in what God does for us, with us, through us. He brings his great and merciful redemption onto the stage of the curse. Your cancer, in itself, is one of those 10,000 ‘shadows of death’ (Psalm 23:4) that come upon each of us: all the threats, losses, pains, incompletion, disappointment, evils. But in his beloved children, our Father works a most kind good through our most grievous losses: sometimes healing and restoring the body (temporarily, until the resurrection of the dead to eternal life), always sustaining and teaching us that we might know and love him more simply. In the testing ground of evils, your faith becomes deep and real, and your love becomes purposeful and wise: James 1:2-5, 1 Peter 1:3-9, Romans 5:1-5, Romans 8:18-39.
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.
DP: God himself is your comfort. He gives himself. The hymn “Be Still My Soul” (by Katerina von Schlegel) reckons the odds the right way: we are 100% certain to suffer, and Christ is 100% certain to meet us, to come for us, comfort us, and restore love’s purest joys. The hymn “How Firm a Foundation” reckons the odds the same way: you are 100% certain to pass through grave distresses, and your Savior is 100% certain to “be with you, your troubles to bless, and sanctify to you your deepest distress.” With God, you aren’t playing percentages, but living within certainties.
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.
DP: Paul describes the Holy Spirit is the unseen, inner ‘downpayment’ on the certainty of life. By faith, the Lord gives a sweet taste of the face-to-face reality of eternal life in the presence of our God and Christ. We might also say that cancer is one ‘downpayment’ on inevitable death, giving one bad taste of the reality of of our mortality. Cancer is a signpost pointing to something far bigger: the last enemy that you must face. But Christ has defeated this last enemy: 1 Corinthians 15. Death is swallowed up in victory. Cancer is merely one of the enemy’s scouting parties, out on patrol. It has no final power if you are a child of the resurrection, so you can look it in the eye.
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).
DP: Cherishing Christ expresses the two core activities of faith: dire need and utter joy. Many psalms cry out in a ‘minor key’: we cherish our Savior by needing him to save us from real troubles, real sins, real sufferings, real anguish. Many psalms sing out in a ‘major key’: we cherish our Savior by delighting in him, loving him, thanking him for all his benefits to us, rejoicing that his salvation is the weightiest thing in the world and that he gets last say. And many psalms start out in one key and end up in the other. Cherishing Christ is not monochromatic; you live the whole spectrum of human experience with him. To ‘beat’ cancer is to live knowing how your Father has compassion on his beloved child, because he knows your frame, that you are but dust. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. To live is to know him, whom to know is to love.
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.
DP: What is so for your reading is also true for your conversations with others. Other people will often express their care and concern by inquiring about your health. That’s good, but the conversation easily gets stuck there. So tell them openly about your sickness, seeking their prayers and counsel, but then change the direction of the conversation by telling them what your God is doing to faithfully sustain you with 10,000 mercies. Robert Murray McCheyne wisely said, “For every one look at your sins, take ten looks at Christ.” He was countering our tendency to reverse that 10:1 ratio by brooding over our failings and forgetting the Lord of mercy. What McCheyne says about our sins we can also apply to our sufferings. For every one sentence you say to others about your cancer, say ten sentences about your God, and your hope, and what he is teaching you, and the small blessings of each day. For every hour you spend researching or discussing your cancer, spend 10 hours researching and discussing and serving your Lord. Relate all that you are learning about cancer back to him and his purposes, and you won’t become obsessed.
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.
DP: Our culture is terrified of facing death. It is obsessed with medicine. It idolizes youth, health and energy. It tries to hide any signs of weakness or imperfection. You will bring huge blessing to others by living openly, believingly and lovingly within your weaknesses. Paradoxically, moving out into relationships when you are hurting and weak will actually strengthen others. ‘One anothering’ is a two-way street of generous giving and grateful receiving. Your need gives others an opportunity to love. And since love is always God’s highest purpose in you, too, you will learn his finest and most joyous lessons as you find small ways to express concern for others even when you are most weak. A great, life-threatening weakness can prove amazingly freeing. Nothing is left for you to do except to be loved by God and others, and to love God and others.
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.
DP: Show the world this different way of grieving. Paul said that he would have had “grief upon grief” if his friend Epaphroditus had died. He had been grieving, feeling the painful weight of his friend’s illness. He would have doubly grieved if his friend had died. But this loving, honest, God-oriented grief coexisted with “rejoice always” and “the peace of God that passes understanding” and “showing a genuine concern for your welfare.” How on earth can heartache coexist with love, joy, peace, and an indestructible sense of life purpose? In the inner logic of faith, this makes perfect sense. In fact, because you have hope, you may feel the sufferings of this life more keenly: grief upon grief. In contrast, the grieving that has no hope often chooses denial or escape or busyness because it can’t face reality without becoming distraught. In Christ, you know what’s at stake, and so you keenly feel the wrong of this fallen world. You don’t take pain and death for granted. You love what is good, and hate what is evil. After all, you follow in the image of “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.” But this Jesus chose his cross willingly “for the joy set before him.” He lived and died in hopes that all come true. His pain was not muted by denial or medication, nor was it tainted with despair, fear, or thrashing about for any straw of hope that might change his circumstances. Jesus’ final promises overflow with the gladness of solid hope amid sorrows: “My joy will be in you, and your joy will be made full. Your grief will be turned to joy. No one will take your joy away from you. Ask, and you will receive, so that your joy will be made full. These things I speak in the world, so that they may have my joy made full in themselves” (selection from John 15-17).
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).
DP: Suffering really is meant to wean you from sin and strengthen your faith. If you are God-less, then suffering magnifies sin. Will you become more bitter, despairing, addictive, fearful, frenzied, avoidant, sentimental, godless in how you go about life? Will you pretend it’s business as usual? Will you come to terms with death, on your terms? But if you are God’s, then suffering in Christ’s hands will change you, always slowly, sometimes quickly. You come to terms with life and death on his terms. He will gentle you, purify you, cleanse you of vanities. He will make you need him and love him. He rearranges your priorities, so first things come first more often. He will walk with you. Of course you’ll fail at times, perhaps seized by irritability or brooding, escapism or fears. But he will always pick you up when you stumble. Your inner enemy - a moral cancer 10,000 times more deadly than your physical cancer - will be dying as you continue seeking and finding your Savior: “For your name’s sake, O Lord, pardon my iniquity, for it is very great. Who is the man who fears the Lord? He will instruct him in the way he should choose” (Psalm 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.
DP: Jesus is your life. He is the man before whom every knee will bow. He has defeated death once for all. He will finish what he has begun. Let your light so shine as you live in him, by him, through him, for him. One of the church’s ancient hymns puts it this way:
Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger(from “I bind unto myself the name”).
In your cancer, you will need your brothers and sisters to witness to the truth and glory of Christ, to walk with you, to live out their faith beside you, to love you. And you can do same with them and with all others, becoming the heart that loves with the love of Christ, the mouth filled with hope to both friends and strangers.
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
© Desiring God
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Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: By John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org
What follows is the outline of a sermon I preached last Sunday (June 13, 2010). I invite you meditate your way through it. Pray through it. Or you can listen to it on line at our web site - dallasbible.org. Even though I preached it in view of my prostate cancer, I think it fits for any trouble we may ever face in life. I hope it helps.
“Trouble – What Did I Do to Deserve This?”
(A Short Biblical Theology of Suffering)
Pastor Hal
June 13, 2010
I am preaching this sermon in view of being operated on for prostate cancer in just a few days. I was diagnosed on April 12, and my surgery is scheduled for June 21. So this is a personal sermon as to how I feel about life and hardship. In addition to prostate surgery, I have a total knee replacement surgery scheduled for August 11. We all have many hardships in life, so let’s encourage each other (Hebrews 10.24,25).
The trouble all started in Genesis 3 (3.16-19), and all creation has been groaning ever since – awaiting its redemption (Romans 8.22 and 19).
v.22 – “For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now”
v.19 – “For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God”
All of us have trouble – trouble of all sorts. Our enemy, the serpent of Genesis 3, is after us everyday in thousands of ways, to deceive us into trusting ourselves as opposed to trusting and obeying our God and loving Father.
So the question of “What did I do to deserve this trouble?” is not the right question. As Ecclesiastes teaches that we were born for trouble/hardship (as we are all born in sin), so the real question is “What did I do to deserve all my blessings, the gift of life, of family, the gift of friends – all the blessings of life which flood over us day by day?” I didn’t do anything to deserve them. They are the gift of God. Lavish blessings which He pours out on my life every day!
All of life awaits redemption – a time will come when there will be no hardship and no trouble, but until that time, this life will have trouble and hardship.
This trouble is broad and profound – covering all of life, and it is a part of God’s sovereign plan for redemption (Ecclesiastes 3.1-14).
“He has made everything appropriate in its time” (3.11)
“for God has so worked that men should fear Him” (3.14)
From day one of our birth (an incredible gift), life I both a gift and yet is hard. We were born with limits – “a time to be born and a time to die.” A child stumbles and crashed trying to learn to walk – joys and tears – they are amazingly interwoven.
Perhaps there is no part of life without hardship. Work is challenging. Relationships are challenging. The body is challenging. And yet at the same time, for every hardship there are dozens, hundreds, and even thousands of corresponding joys and ecstacies.
That is the mystery of life – life which is the gift of God. I am stunned again and again at the mystery of life. It is so amazing. As I often say; “I love it!”
The trouble itself cannot hide beauty, and the trouble itself is woven into the web of the beauty of redemption (Romans 8.28; Hebrews 5.8).
In all of life one hears of the value of hardship and the lessons learned. People may even speak of the blessings of trouble and hardship. Even glad for the hardship.
And if that can happen in the natural world, imagine how much greater those truths in the spiritual world where God rules.
“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8.28).
The good that God works through trouble is utterly amazing. Even in my cancer (or whatever hardships I have) God is working for good (my good, His good, others’ good). Everything He does is for good – everything!
“Although He was a Son, He learned obedience through the things He suffered”
(Heb 5.8).
Everything about our Lord Jesus Christ is beautiful. His birth was beautiful. His life was beautiful. The way He moved with people was beautiful. But perhaps there is nothing as beautiful as the love which he showed the world when He died for our sins on the cross. The utter beauty of His love for the world and His Father is indescribable to me. The hardships of His life and death were things that without them would have never allowed us to see His greatest beauty and love.
For the Christian, trouble always gives us the opportunity to identify deeper with the sufferings of Christ in whose image we are and destined to become more and more (2 Corinthian 1.5; Romans 8.29; Colossians 1.24).
“For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance” (1 Corinthians 1.5).
“God’s plan for His people is that they become like His Son – not that they should muddle along in modest respectability.” Leon Morris
“in filling up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ” (Col 1.24).
So every day in our difficulties, trials, and hardships, we have the privilege of filling up what is left to be completed of the sufferings of Christ. That is value of suffering, hardship, and trouble. God is using every bit of these difficulties to make us like His Son
That’s why we should embrace suffering and trouble (James 1.2-5; Acts 5.41). They keep us dependent and growing.
Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials” (James 1.2).
So James says that we should understand the process. For all the above reasons we should never complain. Why? Because hardships call us to keep growing – to keep trusting God in everything that happens.
Trouble and hardships remind me that I am not in control. Life is not about me. Life is all about trusting a sovereign God who has designed life according to His purposes and He is working out every one of those purposes in my life.
So that’s that I think about prostate cancer surgery. About a knee replacement surgery. That’s what I think about all the hardships I have faced in life and will face in life. I have no hesitations about what God will do in my life through them.
Trouble and suffering bind us together as a community (2 Corinthians 1.4-7).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-MRoIDXeuY&feature=related
This is the story of Derek Redmond in his bid for an Olympic medal. His trouble on the back stretch brought him and his father together in a way that they never would have experienced otherwise.
In a similar way I believe all of our trials are meant to help build a web of relationships. Our trials are meant to help us identify with others. How I experience a hardship will bless someone else. How they experience a hardship will bless me and others. We all profit from each others’ experiences and perhaps nothing encourages us as much as being strengthened by others as they go through hardships.
Who hasn’t been blessed by the biblical story of Joseph or the contemporary story of Joni Erickson Tada?
“But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer” (2 Corinthians 1.6).
So what?
Dig deeper…now. Grow your understanding of God…He is good and gracious all the time.
When hardships come, an initial tendency may be to ask, “Why me?” But why question God as if He does not love me. He does love me. He loved me in eternity past, He loved me while I was still in my sin, He bought me to Himself for all of His purpose in Christ for me, and He loves me every moment of my existence. So I call myself and I call you to keep growing deeper and deeper into the great love of God.
Grow…take ownership of your suffering. Accept it. Embrace it.
God has a plan for you and me in the midst of our trials and hardship. Hardships and suffering have a place in the life of Christ, and they have the same place in our lives as well.
Get in the pit with someone. “Weep with those who weep” (Romans 12.15).
A mentor of mine, Dr. Vernon Grounds, was heading to chapel one day. As he was walking towards the chapel, he saw a seminary student sitting against the wall in the hallway and weeping. Dr. Grounds, stopped by him, slowly slid down the wall until he was sitting next to the student and said; “I don’t think I’ll go to chapel today; I’d like to just sit here and weep with you.” He then put his arm around the student, wept with him, prayed with him, and encouraged him.
I thank God for all of those in this body and my family who have already gotten into the pit with me. Thank you for your love. My prayer is that we will always do this for each other. I believe God’s love is best demonstrated this way.
Let’s not criticize or judge as to how they have gotten into the pit or their own responses of being in the pit. Just get into the pit with them and love them.
Live with confidence and strength.
There is no question that life can be hard, but the life of Christ in us can give us confidence, strength, and even joy.
Romans 15.13 and 2 Corinthians 4.16-18 are verses for me and you.
“Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
“Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.
For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison,
while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”
May God help me and all of us to live for Him with every day and every breath that He gives.
I close with my favorite benediction from Hebrews 13;
“Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus our Lord,
equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever” (Hebrews 13.20-21).
And all of God’s people said “Amen” and “Amen.”
“Trouble – What Did I Do to Deserve This?”
(A Short Biblical Theology of Suffering)
Pastor Hal
June 13, 2010
I am preaching this sermon in view of being operated on for prostate cancer in just a few days. I was diagnosed on April 12, and my surgery is scheduled for June 21. So this is a personal sermon as to how I feel about life and hardship. In addition to prostate surgery, I have a total knee replacement surgery scheduled for August 11. We all have many hardships in life, so let’s encourage each other (Hebrews 10.24,25).
The trouble all started in Genesis 3 (3.16-19), and all creation has been groaning ever since – awaiting its redemption (Romans 8.22 and 19).
v.22 – “For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now”
v.19 – “For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God”
All of us have trouble – trouble of all sorts. Our enemy, the serpent of Genesis 3, is after us everyday in thousands of ways, to deceive us into trusting ourselves as opposed to trusting and obeying our God and loving Father.
So the question of “What did I do to deserve this trouble?” is not the right question. As Ecclesiastes teaches that we were born for trouble/hardship (as we are all born in sin), so the real question is “What did I do to deserve all my blessings, the gift of life, of family, the gift of friends – all the blessings of life which flood over us day by day?” I didn’t do anything to deserve them. They are the gift of God. Lavish blessings which He pours out on my life every day!
All of life awaits redemption – a time will come when there will be no hardship and no trouble, but until that time, this life will have trouble and hardship.
This trouble is broad and profound – covering all of life, and it is a part of God’s sovereign plan for redemption (Ecclesiastes 3.1-14).
“He has made everything appropriate in its time” (3.11)
“for God has so worked that men should fear Him” (3.14)
From day one of our birth (an incredible gift), life I both a gift and yet is hard. We were born with limits – “a time to be born and a time to die.” A child stumbles and crashed trying to learn to walk – joys and tears – they are amazingly interwoven.
Perhaps there is no part of life without hardship. Work is challenging. Relationships are challenging. The body is challenging. And yet at the same time, for every hardship there are dozens, hundreds, and even thousands of corresponding joys and ecstacies.
That is the mystery of life – life which is the gift of God. I am stunned again and again at the mystery of life. It is so amazing. As I often say; “I love it!”
The trouble itself cannot hide beauty, and the trouble itself is woven into the web of the beauty of redemption (Romans 8.28; Hebrews 5.8).
In all of life one hears of the value of hardship and the lessons learned. People may even speak of the blessings of trouble and hardship. Even glad for the hardship.
And if that can happen in the natural world, imagine how much greater those truths in the spiritual world where God rules.
“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8.28).
The good that God works through trouble is utterly amazing. Even in my cancer (or whatever hardships I have) God is working for good (my good, His good, others’ good). Everything He does is for good – everything!
“Although He was a Son, He learned obedience through the things He suffered”
(Heb 5.8).
Everything about our Lord Jesus Christ is beautiful. His birth was beautiful. His life was beautiful. The way He moved with people was beautiful. But perhaps there is nothing as beautiful as the love which he showed the world when He died for our sins on the cross. The utter beauty of His love for the world and His Father is indescribable to me. The hardships of His life and death were things that without them would have never allowed us to see His greatest beauty and love.
For the Christian, trouble always gives us the opportunity to identify deeper with the sufferings of Christ in whose image we are and destined to become more and more (2 Corinthian 1.5; Romans 8.29; Colossians 1.24).
“For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance” (1 Corinthians 1.5).
“God’s plan for His people is that they become like His Son – not that they should muddle along in modest respectability.” Leon Morris
“in filling up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ” (Col 1.24).
So every day in our difficulties, trials, and hardships, we have the privilege of filling up what is left to be completed of the sufferings of Christ. That is value of suffering, hardship, and trouble. God is using every bit of these difficulties to make us like His Son
That’s why we should embrace suffering and trouble (James 1.2-5; Acts 5.41). They keep us dependent and growing.
Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials” (James 1.2).
So James says that we should understand the process. For all the above reasons we should never complain. Why? Because hardships call us to keep growing – to keep trusting God in everything that happens.
Trouble and hardships remind me that I am not in control. Life is not about me. Life is all about trusting a sovereign God who has designed life according to His purposes and He is working out every one of those purposes in my life.
So that’s that I think about prostate cancer surgery. About a knee replacement surgery. That’s what I think about all the hardships I have faced in life and will face in life. I have no hesitations about what God will do in my life through them.
Trouble and suffering bind us together as a community (2 Corinthians 1.4-7).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-MRoIDXeuY&feature=related
This is the story of Derek Redmond in his bid for an Olympic medal. His trouble on the back stretch brought him and his father together in a way that they never would have experienced otherwise.
In a similar way I believe all of our trials are meant to help build a web of relationships. Our trials are meant to help us identify with others. How I experience a hardship will bless someone else. How they experience a hardship will bless me and others. We all profit from each others’ experiences and perhaps nothing encourages us as much as being strengthened by others as they go through hardships.
Who hasn’t been blessed by the biblical story of Joseph or the contemporary story of Joni Erickson Tada?
“But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer” (2 Corinthians 1.6).
So what?
Dig deeper…now. Grow your understanding of God…He is good and gracious all the time.
When hardships come, an initial tendency may be to ask, “Why me?” But why question God as if He does not love me. He does love me. He loved me in eternity past, He loved me while I was still in my sin, He bought me to Himself for all of His purpose in Christ for me, and He loves me every moment of my existence. So I call myself and I call you to keep growing deeper and deeper into the great love of God.
Grow…take ownership of your suffering. Accept it. Embrace it.
God has a plan for you and me in the midst of our trials and hardship. Hardships and suffering have a place in the life of Christ, and they have the same place in our lives as well.
Get in the pit with someone. “Weep with those who weep” (Romans 12.15).
A mentor of mine, Dr. Vernon Grounds, was heading to chapel one day. As he was walking towards the chapel, he saw a seminary student sitting against the wall in the hallway and weeping. Dr. Grounds, stopped by him, slowly slid down the wall until he was sitting next to the student and said; “I don’t think I’ll go to chapel today; I’d like to just sit here and weep with you.” He then put his arm around the student, wept with him, prayed with him, and encouraged him.
I thank God for all of those in this body and my family who have already gotten into the pit with me. Thank you for your love. My prayer is that we will always do this for each other. I believe God’s love is best demonstrated this way.
Let’s not criticize or judge as to how they have gotten into the pit or their own responses of being in the pit. Just get into the pit with them and love them.
Live with confidence and strength.
There is no question that life can be hard, but the life of Christ in us can give us confidence, strength, and even joy.
Romans 15.13 and 2 Corinthians 4.16-18 are verses for me and you.
“Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
“Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.
For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison,
while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”
May God help me and all of us to live for Him with every day and every breath that He gives.
I close with my favorite benediction from Hebrews 13;
“Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus our Lord,
equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever” (Hebrews 13.20-21).
And all of God’s people said “Amen” and “Amen.”
June 20, 2010
My daughter, Jennifer, planted the idea in me to do this (a blog) and actually set it up (several months ago), but God is the one who moved me to start it with the following news. On April 12 I was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and I am having robotic sugery tomorrow in San Antonio. So my journey begins, and thanks to Jennifer, I will keep you updated.
First and foremost, I am grateful that I can trust God for everything in life. I think of the words of Job; "Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity" (Job 2.10). God has blessed me sooo much in life. Yes, I've had my share of life hardships along with some physical challenges, but overwhelmingly I think of my life as being richly blessed by a loving God. So as I anticipate surgery and a good outcome tomorrow, I thank God for the privilege of trusting Him once again. I trust a loving God who cares infinitely more than I could ever imagine.
I anticipate surgery knowing the love of my family. My wife, Vicki, Jennifer and Mark (along with Jake and Pearce), Bethany and Luke, and Jonathan are amazing with their love and prayers. I am blessed. You can read more at http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/halhabecker
I anticipate surgery tomorrow knowing the love of friends. I have had the blessing of at least four different organized prayer events at our church. (What can I say about the outpouring of love through Dallas Bible Church!) I have had notes, calls, emails, and texts from hundreds of friends. I've had dozens of phone calls from family and friends where people have prayed for me over the phone.
So I am at rest and at peace with all God is doing and will do through this journey. I hope my journey will encourage you, and I look forward to all that He will continue to do through my life.
My daughter, Jennifer, planted the idea in me to do this (a blog) and actually set it up (several months ago), but God is the one who moved me to start it with the following news. On April 12 I was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and I am having robotic sugery tomorrow in San Antonio. So my journey begins, and thanks to Jennifer, I will keep you updated.
First and foremost, I am grateful that I can trust God for everything in life. I think of the words of Job; "Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity" (Job 2.10). God has blessed me sooo much in life. Yes, I've had my share of life hardships along with some physical challenges, but overwhelmingly I think of my life as being richly blessed by a loving God. So as I anticipate surgery and a good outcome tomorrow, I thank God for the privilege of trusting Him once again. I trust a loving God who cares infinitely more than I could ever imagine.
I anticipate surgery knowing the love of my family. My wife, Vicki, Jennifer and Mark (along with Jake and Pearce), Bethany and Luke, and Jonathan are amazing with their love and prayers. I am blessed. You can read more at http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/halhabecker
I anticipate surgery tomorrow knowing the love of friends. I have had the blessing of at least four different organized prayer events at our church. (What can I say about the outpouring of love through Dallas Bible Church!) I have had notes, calls, emails, and texts from hundreds of friends. I've had dozens of phone calls from family and friends where people have prayed for me over the phone.
So I am at rest and at peace with all God is doing and will do through this journey. I hope my journey will encourage you, and I look forward to all that He will continue to do through my life.
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