As I reflect on and thank God for 12 years cancer-free now, I think of and pray for those still mourning the loss of a loved one due to this insidious disease. I pray that you move closer to God, because that is where your ultimate healing is found. The emptiness and sorrow you are experiencing will be healed by the One that is true love. I pray as well for those currently fighting this fight. May God bless you as you struggle to live each day knowing there is an enemy within you. And for all of those with questions of why, why me, why my mom, dad, child or sibling, I pray that you place those questions at the feet of Christ. I pray as well that you hear when He tells you, “This is not from me. This is in no way, ‘My Plan’. My plan for you is to have life to the full. My plan is for you to be blessed, to be prosperous, to have hope and a future. My plan is not now and never will be to harm you. You are my child and I love you.”

When you are struggling with cancer or loving someone who is, remember who is on your side. Whether you see healing in this life or the next, remember this evil is not from Him. You may see the blessing of healing or be a witness for those who watch your battle and how you fought the fight and grew your faith as your physical body was taken by this disease. Understand this, this is not from God. It was never His plan for you to get cancer. It is never His plan for you to suffer. Does He work good out of your trials, yes, that is His promise to us in Romans 8:28. He works all things for the good of those that love Him and are called according to His purpose. He works all things, even cancer. But He did not send cancer to you.  

I love this quote from D.R. Silva from his book, “It’s All About Jesus,”:

“Can He use cancer to bring somebody back on track? Yes. Does He? I’m certain of it. But it’s important for us to remember that cancer is neither designed nor endorsed by Him. Jesus healed sickness, He never prescribed it. He saw it as a problem that needed a solution, not as the solution to a problem.”

I will continue to thank God for healing my cancer, I will continue to pray for those currently fighting this beast, and I will try to continue to show people how much God loves them, despite the constant fight we wage every day against the forces of evil in this world. God bless each one of you.

Faith in What?

As I tell my 6^th graders that are struggling, life has its ups, and life has its downs. Enjoy and share the up times, and when you are experiencing the down times, understand that they are temporary, and DON’T LIVE THERE! Do what ever you can to get out of the valley. If it’s a lesson to be learned, learn it. If it’s humility that is the lesson, accept the shot to your pride and get back to living. Sometimes when we are struggling, it’s not even our fault at all. We q are faced with the question of why. Why did that person do that to me? Why did this circumstance occur? Where do we look for help? How do we find comfort and reassurance that life will indeed get better? How do we escape the feeling we sometimes get that things will never change? Sometimes we are left with the dreadful thought of, “This is it, why even go on?”

When we get to this level of the valley, what are we to do? Where in fact do we turn? We may think to pray, but to what end? Where is that getting us? Don’t people pray al the time for answers and hear nothing? It’s not like God is going to all of a sudden miraculously heal me, or hand me a winning lottery ticket, and cause the offender to finally wake up and realize what they did to me and work to make it all better. So why am I praying? Does it ever do any good? It might calm me down in the moment, but then what?

Do we have faith that God will answer our prayers, or if we want to admit sometimes, do we really think he hears us? Do we sometimes feel as though He doesn’t even care? I mean really, He could fix this if He wanted to! Do we have faith enough to believe that God does indeed love us and cares about us and our hurt? I’ll quote from my book when I say, “If your faith isn’t there when you need it, was it ever really there?” We can all have faith on the mountaintop; that isn’t very difficult. When we are in the depths of the valley, we get a real good look at how strong our faith is - or isn’t.

The Bible tells us in Matthew 17:20 about faith in relation to the mustard seed. I have always found it incredibly difficult to relate to this verse. When it is preached as in the NIV, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move.” That always left me feeling faithless and without any basis to pray to God and ask for anything. The size of a mustard seed? Surely, I have more faith than that! I have always thought that was the only translation of that verse. Yet as I questioned more and looked for better answers and explanation of that verse, I find there are many translations that read differently. As we can see from the New King James version, “if you have faith as a mustard seed”; from the International Standard Version, “if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed”; from the American Standard Version, “ if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed”; there are what I believe, better ways to look at this verse. If the mustard seed, can have the faith it needs to grow into a large and productive tree, it has strong faith. Likewise, we have to have strong faith for our own beliefs in good outcomes.

How can we have that faith? We get that faith right from God and His promises to us. Romans 8:28 tells us plain as day that God works all things for good for those that love Him and are called to His purpose. Jeremiah 29:11 tells of God’s plans for us as being those that will prosper us and not harm us, to give us a hope and a future. The Bible is full of God’s promises. If we can’t believe God’s promises, do we really believe God? If we don’t believe God, why are we even praying in the first place?

It’s easy to despair when we don’t see life working according to our plans. It’s easy to feel alone and abandoned by God. Even Christ felt like that in the garden the night before He died. But when we are in the depths of doubt is when we need to stand on His promises and trust that He’s got our back. We need to know how much He loves us. Sometimes things play out hard. Sometimes we see no solution in sight. We hurt. We struggle with God. God sees that. God sees you. And God hurts for you more than you know. We need to trust that God is busy at work taking care of our needs; but we also need to realize He works on HIS timetable, not ours. And His timing is always perfect.

Many times, I have prayed God to help me choose a way out of a situation, either A or B. I didn’t want to pick the wrong one, so I prayed for guidance. A or B God, these are the only two choices I have. Please help me decide which is best. It’s at times like this, when He answers my prayer with something I would never had considered, Choice C, or D or….

And you know what? Those choices turn out to be infinitely better than anything I had even thought of.

Trust Him!! Trust and believe the promises He makes to you. This way when we are struggling through the valleys to come, and they will, we can turn to God in faith and say, “Yes, I have faith as the mustard seed had faith. I stand on and believe you love me and are working things for my good. I’ll do my best while I am here in the valley, and I will give you the glory for getting me out.”

And as Philip Yancey writes in his book on prayer, “Why pray? Because Jesus did.”