Pastor’s Message

John Piper:

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.

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

John Piper:

It will not do to say that God only uses our cancer but does not design it.  Not that his first design for creation was a Garden of Eden with cancer.  But the fall did not take God off guard.  He was planning redemption before creation (2 Tim. 1:9).  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 the 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 (Job2:10) and the inspired writer agrees: “they…comforted him for all the veil that the Lord had brought upon him” (42:11)

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

David Powlison:

The blessing comes in what God does for us, with us, and through us.  He brings his great and merciful redemption onto the stage of your curse.  Your cancer, in itself, is one of those ten thousand “shadows of death” (Ps. 23:4) that come upon each of us:  all the threats, losses, pain, 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 grounds of evils, your faith becomes deep and real, and your love becomes purposeful and wise (James 1:2-5; I Peter 1:3-9; Rom. 5:1-5; 8:18-39).

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

John Piper:

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.  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.

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

John Piper:

Satan’s and God’s designs for your cancer are not the same.  Satan designs to destroy your love for Christ.  God designs to deepen your love for Christ.  God designs 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” (Phil. 3:8; 1:21).

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

John Piper:

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” (Hos. 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.”  “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” (Ps. 1:2-3).

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

John Piper:

Paul uses this phrase from I Thes. 4:13 in relation to those whose loved ones had died.  There is grief at death.  Even for the believer who dies, there is temporary loss.  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 Cor. 5:8).

David Powlison:

Show the world this different way of grieving.

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

David Powlison:

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.  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 the same with them and with others, becoming the heart that loves with the love of Christ, the mouth filled with hope to both friends and strangers.

These are not all of their points, but enough to give you the desire to go deeper.  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” (Phil. 4:19).

“In HIS Grip”, 

Pastor David