Romans 12:1-2 Week 4
If you have your Bible, turn
with me to Romans 12.2
While you are turning, I
want to preface the message today with a comment:
I love the Old Testament
stories of the people God used. They were
flawed just like me. Abraham had difficulty trusting God, so he lied to protect
himself and then later felt the need to help God provide him the son God
promised him. King David, whom Paul described as “a man after God’s own heart”
committed adultery and then killed an innocent man to try to cover up his
transgression. I take comfort in the fact that God uses flawed, broken
individuals like me. My story is one of God’s faithfulness to Joan and me
during this difficult time in our lives. I am nothing special. If you put God
first in your life, you too can have a similar story to mine when you go
through life’s most difficult times.
Romans12:2
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing
of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his
good, pleasing and perfect will.
Today’s message is in three
parts: my journey, lessons learned and then answers to a few questions that
were turned in.
The
Journey
This journey through cancer
has been a continual mind-renewing experience.
According to my oncologist,
my cancer likely began forming in the esophagus around the summer of 2015. Two
significant events happened then, that I think God used specifically to prepare
me for cancer.
If you attended this church
in the summer of 2015, you might remember that I spoke for five Sundays on the
“I am” statements of Jesus as recoded in the Gospel of John. One Sunday I spoke on the resurrection of
Lazarus from John 11. The “I am” statement of Jesus to Mary and Martha is I am the resurrection and the life, whoever
lives by believing in me will never die.
Little did I realize that
this message was for me.
The major points from my
message that day were:
God
always knows what is going on.
Jesus was not surprised when
he was informed of Lazarus’ illness. We
are surprised when we lose our jobs or get a diagnosis of cancer, but God
is never surprised.
God
always has a plan.
Jesus had a plan for using
Lazarus’ death for good. Because He is not surprised, God has figured out how
to use these tragedies in our lives for His purposes.
God’s
plans always encompass reality.
Our plans never include
losing our jobs or getting cancer (which is reality). Our plans are based on everything always
going perfectly, which is not reality. God’s plans include the tragedies that happen
as part of living in this messed up world.
God’s
plans always encompasses eternity.
Our
plans seldom encompass eternity, but that is always God’s main objective. God always takes the long-term, eternal
view.
We
seldom comprehend God’s plan.
Because we only see what is
in front of us, we seldom comprehend what God is trying to accomplish with His
plan. Like people watching a long parade through a knot hole in a fence, we
fail to see and comprehend God’s big picture.
We
can take comfort in these words, “I am the resurrection and the life, whoever
lives by believing in me will never die”.
For those who are Christ
followers, He is there at the end of this life opening the door to a better,
eternal life. We don’t ever die.
Again, these words were for
me. I hope someone at that time was able to take comfort in them, but they were
definitely for me.
Shortly after that something
else happened I believe to prepare me for cancer. One day as I was driving
listening to the radio. I heard a song called Blessings. It was written and
sung by Laura Story. The chorus goes like this:
‘Cause what if your blessings come through
raindrops
What if
Your healing comes through tears
What if
a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You're near
What if
trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise?
As I was listening to this
song, God spoke to me. He asked if I believed these words. I hesitated and
responded with “I don’t like it”. I said, “I don’t like pain and I don’t like
suffering”. It was if God was sitting in the passenger seat staring at me
waiting for me to come to my senses. I knew the correct answer, but I was
stubbornly hoping He would go away. He wouldn’t go and so finally I said, “Not
my will but yours be done.” At that point the conversation was over.
Little did I know then what
was happening inside my body, but I know now that I was being prepared for the
journey of a lifetime. I believe if we are living close enough to God that he
does prepare us for difficulties.
As many of you know January
through most of April last year we spent in Florida in our motorhome. During
that time we were asking God to confirm what we believed He had laid on our
hearts. We felt that He was leading us to sell our house and live in the motorhome
fulltime. We planned to winter in Florida and spend the summer near Hartford
City, Indiana to be near our granddaughter and her parents (you grandparents
out there know what I mean right?).
After our time in Florida we
were convinced that this plan was of God and we came back to Fort Wayne and
started getting our house ready to sell. In June, I began having problems
swallowing my food. We were busy with the house and some vacation plans and did
not bother to get the swallowing issue checked out right away. It got worse.
We finally put our house on
the market at the end of June and anxiously waited. It seemed that it took much
longer to sell our house than other houses in the neighborhood. Finally, we got
an offer with a closing date of October 7.
On September 30 just one
week before closing on our house, a day that I thought was the worst day of my
life, I had an upper endoscopy to determine the cause of the swallowing
problem. It was esophageal cancer. While I was in the recovery room trying to
wake up, Joan was informed of the cancer diagnosis. When she got a few minutes
alone she started texting people she knew that were prayer warriors, asking
them to pray because I had cancer. Within an hour, Joan got a text from a
friend who said, “You don’t have a place to live. Consider staying at our house
while we are in Arizona for the winter.”
Now to fully grasp what God
was doing here you need to understand that during the next few days as we
contemplated this offer of staying in our friends’ house, we did not feel as though
it would be necessary. The GI doctor said that I would probably have a surgery
to remove the esophageal tumor, radiation and chemo. We envisioned getting the
surgery and radiation in Fort Wayne while staying at our daughter’s house and
then leaving for Florida and getting chemo down there.
Well that was not the case.
A week later we found out that we would need a place to stay in Fort Wayne for
the entire winter. God provided a house for us before we knew we needed one. We did not even have time to worry about
the lack of a place to live. God provided it in advance. And it is not just any
house. It’s nicer than the one we moved
out of. The first time our granddaughter came to visit us in this house she
walked from room to room with her mouth open calling it a palace.
God showed us early on that
he was with us in the journey.
The Monday after the initial
cancer diagnosis, I had a minor procedure to install a stent into my esophagus
to open it up so I could get more food into my stomach. As I was being wheeled
back to the OR for the procedure, I remember getting a bit depressed. I was on
a hospital bed being wheeled down one long hallway after another and then all
of a sudden, we made a turn and I could see outside. For a short stretch I
could look up into the partly cloudy sky. I cried out to God when I saw the sky
and said, “God please give me a sign”. He replied with this, “I will never
leave you or forsake you”. That was better than a sign. He has proven His faithfulness over and over
again on this journey.
Friday, October 7, actually
was the worst day of my life, so far. We were informed that the cancer was
Stage 4 - it had spread to the liver. Surgery was not indicated nor was radiation
because of the spread to the liver. We were offered chemo with the possibility
of getting into a clinical trial in which we had a 50-50 chance of actually
getting the experimental drug.
We were informed that
without chemo I had 2-3 months to live. I quickly figured that I would
hopefully make it to Christmas and that would be my last Christmas. With 6
months of chemo the doctor said my life expectancy on average would be 1 year.
I replied, “One year sounds pretty good.”
We were told that after 2
months of chemo, scans would be taken to determine if the treatment was
working, if it was, then chemo would continue for up to six months. If the
treatment was not working, there was no value in subjecting my body to chemo. I
knew better than to ask what that meant in terms of life expectancy.
I was also informed that
this cancer is “incurable”. No amount of chemo will cure me. Medical science is
not equipped to heal my body.
After answering all of our
questions, the doctor asked what else he could do to help us. I asked him if he
would let Joan and I discuss this in private. We both agreed that this felt
right. We informed the doctor that we wanted to proceed with him as our
oncologist and canceled the appointment we had for another doctor’s opinion. We
also informed the doctor that while we had confidence in him, our ultimate trust
was in God. He replied, “Faith is good”.
To say our faith was put to
the test is an understatement. During this time, I was studying Philippians. I
took comfort in Paul’s statement in Philippines 1:21
Philippians
1:21 For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.
This was without a doubt the
lowest point of our journey. On top of the very bad news, we were homeless. We
spent some time in a hotel when we needed to be near Parkview and some nights in
Hartford City with our daughter and her family. Our lives consisted of bad news
on top of bad news, which we were trying to process and deal with, constantly
moving, trying to keep up with our jobs and not feeling well. . The cancer was
beginning to make its presence felt.
One week after meeting with
the oncologist I began chemotherapy.
Our friends were close to
getting out of their house so we moved in so we could overlap with them for
several days to understand what they wanted us to do to take care of their
lovely home while they were gone. Knowing we would be at their house on Sunday,
they invited us to go to church with them.
I really did not want to go.
I really did not want to go to a different church. I wanted to be here with you
where I knew there were people who loved and supported us. But I also wanted to
honor these wonderful people who were so generous in offering us their house.
Feeling like going with them was the right thing to do, I agreed. We had not
actually moved all of our clothing into their house. We were waiting until they
moved out before we actually moved in. That Sunday I was dressed in the best
clothes I had – a golf shirt and dress pants. I had a major wardrobe
malfunction just as we getting ready to leave, and could not wear either the
shirt or the pants. All I had left were the clothes I have on today.
I came close to playing the
sick man card and just saying I didn’t feel well, but again I felt that we
should go, despite the way I looked (which I found out was about average for
that church we were going to).
Now, I’m reading what Joan
wrote in her journal regarding that weekend:
On Saturday, the day we
moved into the Miller’s home, we stopped to go for a walk. It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day and I
remember thinking “It really shouldn’t be this pretty out. How dare the sun rise!” As we walked along, I
began crying, explaining that I felt as if I was in a long dark tunnel, and
despite my best efforts, I was completely unable to see the light…any light at
all. If I could just know that the
ending we face with Bill’s cancer would be a happy one, I would really be
better able to handle all the bad stuff inevitably coming our way. Bill just burst out laughing at me! Here I am, crying almost uncontrollably and
he starts laughing. He reached for my
hand and said, “Joan, where’s the faith in that? All of us would trust God if we always knew
the outcome! It’s when we don’t know how
things are going to turn out…and we still choose to trust Him…that’s a walk of
faith.” He then stopped walking, turned
to me and said, “You want to know if everything is going to be okay at the end
of this battle, right? Well, I can tell
you for certain, yes…it will be.
Everything will be okay. It might
not be the outcome you want, but it will still be okay. In fact, it will be better than okay – it
will be great! Because it’s what God
wants to happen. He is in control.”
I’m still reading from
Joan’s journal: We moved into the Miller’s house that day and went to church
with them the following day. Imagine our surprise, when the first words out of
the pastor’s mouth were “How many of you have ever felt as if you were in a
long, dark tunnel and you were just unable to see any light at the end of that
tunnel?” I had just said the same thing
to Bill 24 hours earlier! The sermon was
amazing and it became very clear to both of us that we were not there at that
church, with those friends, listening to that sermon, all by accident. It was just the sweetest reminder from the
Lord that He understood our worries and concerns and was letting us know that
He cares.
During this journey, many
people have been praying for us. One of the important things I learned about
praying for someone is that it is way more effective when you regularly let
that person know you are praying for them. Many times at just the right time I
would get a text message or email from someone with just the words, “I’m still
praying for you”. Cards are nice but they only come when the mail comes. Text
messages and emails seem to come at just the right time.
On December 13 we got word
that the scans showed the treatments and God were making a difference in my
battle with cancer.
And then as I shared last
week, more recent scans showed one of the two liver tumors is gone. The other
tumor in the liver is 1/3 gone and the numerous smaller cancer lesions
throughout the liver are all gone. The esophageal cancer is about 96% gone. I
still have two more rounds of full chemo followed by maintenance chemo which is
everything I am currently receiving except one of the drugs is removed. Unless
God heals me, I am scheduled for bi-weekly chemo for the rest of my life.
Lessons
learned.
#1
Trust in God. In the good times we talk about our faith
but in the difficult times we get to walk in faith. Our trust in God is without
a doubt what has sustained us. Because our trust is in God and not doctors,
chemotherapy, alternative treatments, or anything other than God we only needed
to go where we were led. We were led to Parkview for the GI scope. We felt
confident in the first oncologist we talked to and then we were done searching
for doctors. We did not feel the need to go to Mayo Clinic or Cancer Centers of
America. We did not feel that we had to chase after a cure. Our trust is in
God, not in man.
It is our belief that our
job is to do all that we can and leave the rest to God.
#2
Peace.
Along with trust comes the
peace of God which Paul describes in
Philippians
4:7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your
hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
In the Western world, we are
taught to seek security. We are taught to minimize risks. We insure our cars
and homes against loss. We are taught to get good-paying jobs to earn more
money so we have a better, more secure life. We are taught to set aside money
for life’s unexpected emergencies and then we need to set aside even more money
for retirement. What we really want is security. We desire an absence of
problems and issues. We want a carefree, stress-free life.
But we can’t insure against
everything. I have health insurance. It’s really good insurance, but it only reimburses
medical bills. It did not protect me from getting sick. I have life insurance
but it will not prevent me from dying. We really can’t protect against the most
important risks in our lives – loss of health and life.
We desire an absence of
difficulties in this life. We somehow believe that if we eat right and avoid
the mistakes others have made then somehow it must be possible to avoid life’s
major difficulties. While it is true that some of life’s difficulties can be
avoided or delayed based on making good choices, no one escapes this life without
some major storms.
In the storms of life, we
want the rain to stop. We want the wind and the lightning to cease. We want the
pain to stop. We want everything to return to the way it was. We cry out to God
to fix it and fix it now.
We cry out to God to stop
the storm and sometimes He does. Sometimes, God quickly intervenes and the pain
and the discomfort stop. However, sometimes He does not make the storm stop.
Sometimes God says, I love you too much to allow you to avoid this lesson or
this time of communion that we are going to share together.
I have learned that peace
does not ignore the fact that it is raining, the wind is still blowing, and the
lightning is still striking all around us. Peace is knowing that despite the reality of
the storm, there is a greater reality and confidence in the One who can calm
the storm. Peace is the tranquility to stand in the storm and know without
question, that everything will be alright.
Charles Stanley says that
“peace is the calm assurance that what God is doing is best.”
Peace is not found in the
calm. Peace is knowing that Jesus is in the storm with me and being content
that He is in control. Real peace is attainable only in Christ. There is no
security outside of Him. None.
#3
Control
Closely related to this
concept of risk aversion is the desire to be in control. We want to be in
control of our lives. We want to know what we are going to be doing tomorrow
and the next day and the week after that. We love our calendars with which we
think we are controlling our lives, but control is just an illusion.
We have little control of
our lives. In one short conversation with the oncologist nearly every aspect of
my life was out of my control. People at Parkview began scheduling appointments
for me and no one ever asked when I was available or what time would work best
for me. My calendar cleared to make room for whatever they scheduled me for.
I quickly realized that one
of the major problems I had with the whole cancer diagnosis was my loss of control.
I could not make concrete plans. I hated not being able to think beyond a two
week chemotherapy schedule.
The more I thought about it
though the more I realized that I was never in control. I thought I was, but
the fragile nature of this life and the lives of those we love really makes
control impossible. The quicker we accept that only God is in control, the
easier it will be to work through life’s difficult times.
#4
Storms and Quiet Times.
Back in December, I met with
my colleagues at Indiana Wesleyan University. We had a team-building exercise
in which we were asked to, “Share a time when you experienced God in a very
special way”. In my group of about 10 faculty, without fail and without
prompting, they shared stories (many with a great deal of emotion) of times
when they went through very difficult situations. In each case, it was in the
lowest part of a valley experience or a major storm that God was most special
to them.
In our storm experience,
Joan and I have found that quiet time alone with God has become an essential
part of our day. We still have many of the same demands on our time as we had prior
to the cancer diagnosis. The difference is priorities. Quiet time, alone with
God, has become our top priority. In the past I used to fit quiet time around
the rest of my life. Now, it begins the day.
When I talk about quiet
time, I’m not talking about the shopping list of all the things we want God to
do for us. I’m talking about being quiet in His presence, praising Him for who
He is, worshiping Him and loving Him.
#5
My last major lesson learned is about preparation.
Several times in Paul’s
writings, he compared the life of service to God as a race. A serious runner
would never just show up on race day without preparing. Every serious runner
has a training program. Have you looked at clothing for runners? It’s extremely
lightweight. The serious race is meant to be run stripped of all the unnecessary
weight.
In the difficult times of
life, we get stripped down to the bare essentials. The difficult times in life
are not the times to try and figure out our relationship with God. It’s not the
time to develop our personal theology. It’s not the time to try to understand
why bad things happen to Christians.
The mountain top experiences,
when things are calm, are the times of preparation. The mountaintop is the time
to prepare for the next difficult time in our lives. My experience with cancer
has been so much easier to handle because of the time I spent in preparation,
not knowing what the difficulty would be. My relationship with God was good
prior to the diagnosis. My body was in good shape to handle the treatments. The
good times should be preparation times, but many times they are not.
When we are on top of the
mountain we tend to rely on ourselves and not God as much as we do in the
valley. Often times, when we are on the mountain top, we accumulate junk in our
lives that ultimately distracts us. In the valley, we strip down to the bare
essentials allowing ourselves more time for sweet communion with God that we so
badly need.
It’s like the story Jesus
told in Matthew 7 of the man who built his house on the rock. We need to build
on a rock of good Bible teaching so that we can weather the storms of life.
During the storm, it’s a bit too late to be trying to build a relationship with
God.
While my story of battling
cancer is not over, Joan and I believe that one day I will be cured. We believe
that one day the chemo will end because there is no more cancer to kill and no
indication of new cancers forming. That’s what we believe. We’ll see. If God
has another plan we are prepared to accept that. He has been faithful every
step of the way through this journey.
From major things like providing us a house to live in for the winter to
some minor issues like getting drugs paid for in some rather unconventional and
significantly cheaper ways, God has always provided.
God has promised us in His
word and to me specifically that He would never leave us or forsake us. This is
the promise that has sustained us through this difficult time. It’s not just a
promise, it’s been a reality. He has been there and I know as sure as I’m sitting
here today that He will continue to sustain us each and every step of the way.
Several questions were
turned in on connections cards. I’ll read and address them.
Question 1: "Have you
ever asked God why?
No, I did not ask God, Why?
That’s not because I am some super Christian. It’s because I had this settled
prior to my diagnosis. As I mentioned earlier, during the good times in our
lives we need to nail down what we believe. The message that I gave in July
2015 did a lot to aid me in developing my personal theology regarding
suffering. Now because I did not question God, does not mean that were not a
lot of sleepless nights and depressing thoughts. My solution to these was to
focus on God and not my problems. In time, I got victory over my thoughts.
Question 2: What would you
say to someone questioning faith due to their circumstances?
I believe that my next
sermon series will be on suffering. Joan says no one will come. I assure you it
will not be doom and gloom. The answer to this question is long and complex and
is a sermon in itself. As one who has been through almost 5 months of suffering
with no end in sight, short of God completely healing me, I want to avoid
sounding trite. Trite answers don’t work for those of us who are suffering. I
would encourage anyone who wants the long full blown answer to this question to
have coffee with me sometime. I would love to share my complete answer to this
question.
The answer to the question
Why?, is that we live in this imperfect world. Imagine two workers up on a
scaffolding- one is a Christian and one is not. The scaffolding gives way.
Gravity takes over and both workers will fall to the ground and be seriously
injured. Gravity is no respecter of persons any more than cancer, ALS, or many
other of life’s difficulties.
The question really is WHY
ME? Why did God allow this to happen to me, a believer?
We search for a reason. If
there is a reason, we think, we could handle this difficulty better. The truth
is we may never know that there is a reason. If God believes it is important He can reveal a reason to us
through the Holy Spirit.
In the essence of time, I’ll
cut this short. I think ultimately as we follow the trail of Why me, we ultimately end up asking
ourselves. “Why should I serve God if he is going to allow horrible things to
happen to me just like everyone else in the world?
If that ultimately is your
question, then I have to ask you why you are following Christ. If it was to escape hell or because you
thought you would have a better life here in earth, you picked the wrong
reason. You picked a reason that only
serves yourself, not God. If you were following Christ in response to His
mercy, grace and love, then I have to ask, what changed? Jesus never promised
us an easy life. In fact he promised his followers that they would be
persecuted.
Our faith in God must
include the belief that God is good and we are loved by Him. He is good based
on His definition of good, not ours. We try sometimes to judge God based on a
very incomplete view of the world and eternity. We judge God primarily on our
self-centeredness not on what God considers important. We try to make sense of
this world based on our incomplete view and comprehension, as I said before like
someone staring at a parade through a knot hole in a fence.
Faith is built on a
relationship with God. We learn to trust him only after we have spent
significant time with Him.
This walk of ours is a faith
walk.
Hebrews
11:6: And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who
comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who
earnestly seek him.
Last question: What has God taught you during this experience?
In addition to what I have
covered:
1. There is a saying in the
cancer community, No one makes it through cancer alone. God desires us to be dependent
on each other. There are tremendous blessings available by giving up some independence
in order to allow others to minister to us. We get blessed and others who are
allowed to minister to us get blessed.
2. We are all equal when it
comes to cancer and the other difficulties in life. I see old and young, well–to-do
and poor, and people of all colors in the infusion clinic. It’s a snapshot of
our broken world. We are all equally broken and in need. If the rich man’s
money would save him, Steve Jobs would still be alive.
3. Cancer reminds me of
sin. I want it out of my body. I don’t
want to be mostly cancer free. I
want to be totally free of cancer. Sin consumes all it possess like an
untreated cancer. Don’t allow a little bit of sin in your life any more than
you would be happy with a little bit of cancer growing inside of you.
In closing I want to leave
you with these words. God is good. God loves His children. He is faithful. Get
as close to Him as you can in the good times and hold on tight in the bad times.
