A Test of Faith

“To be commanded to love God at all, let alone in the darkness, is like being commanded to be well when we are sick, to sing for joy when we are dying of thirst, to run when our legs are broken.” (Frederick Buechner)

A while back I made mention of my bout with cancer as it related to a particular God encounter. Now, having two friends who are undergoing aggressive cancer therapies, I write a fuller account of that experience in hopes that it will encourage others in similar situations.

THE DIAGNOSIS
To say that my life has been richly blessed would be an understatement. I have had a fulfilling career, wonderful family, and enriching opportunities with gifts and abilities that have given me a rewarding sense of purpose and accomplishment—all which led to a lofty measure of self-sufficiency, until the winter of 2001.

Angiosarcoma . . . Clinical trials . . . Quality of life . . . Quantity of life . . . were the sound bites steaming through my consciousness as I strained to focus on the oncologist’s words. After 10 days of diagnostic procedures, the biopsy results indicated that I had rare cancer. In the collective experience of the oncology group, there had been only three prior cases, with the longest survivor lasting less than one month. As I lay listless in the hospital bed, I silently gasped, “Why me, why now? Why?”

So began my test of faith.

THE LEAD-UP
Two months prior to my diagnosis, I had been praying the prayer of Jabez for God to “enlarge my territory.” My intention was to have a greater impact for the kingdom in my teaching ministry.

At the time I was leading a church class in a four-week study on facing spiritual conflict. Halfway through the series, the initial symptoms of my illness surfaced. Mere coincidence? Although we are tempted to chafe at the suggestion of divinely orchestrated affliction, Scripture is full of such examples. For instance, the Apostle John tells us,

"As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, 'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind. 'Neither this man nor his parents sinned,' said Jesus, 'but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” (John 9:1-3)

Did I think God caused my illness? I didn’t know. Although John’s account indicates that the blind man’s affliction was not a judgment, Paul tells us, “When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world” (1 Corinthians 11:32).

What I knew, intellectually, was that we inhabit a world in decay. From the beginning, our willful action against the Creator has caused us to be hurled ever deeper down the descending spiral of suffering, disease, death, and sorrow, where we and all creation groan for relief.

What I was about to learn, experientially, is that our weakest and most vulnerable condition is where we encounter God in fullest measure.

WISHFUL HOPES
In one of our first sessions I asked the class, “What are some things that lead to spiritual defeat in our lives?”

“Difficult people,” “finances,” “job situations,” “fatigue,” “health” were some of the responses.

After watching the heads nod, I confessed, “What has caused more problems in my spiritual walk than anything else is an attitude of self-sufficiency.” Within one month that attitude was shattered.

The rapid onslaught of the disease and the battery of diagnostic tests left me in a weakened and exhausted state. Each movement took extreme effort. Just opening my eyes was, at times, an Olympian task. I struggled to concentrate on what the doctor was saying. The blurred images of family and friends crowding around the hospital bed added surrealness to the scene.

“Maybe this is all a bad dream.” I swallowed hard. “If I could just wake up . . . ”

I bit my cheek several times. Dream dissolved into reality. Self-sufficiency faded into self-doubt. And disbelief turned into alarm as I was jolted out of wishful reverie.

“It’s true. I . . . I . . . I have this obscure disease!”

For the first time I could remember, I was engulfed by feelings of inadequacy and impotency.

A WHISPER
As fear sought its foothold in my stunned spirit, a voice stirred my consciousness. It wasn’t audible, but it was perceivable and persistent. It spoke a familiar message—the message spoken to Paul when he pled for relief. It whispered, “My grace is sufficient for you" (2 Corinthians 12:9).

It was reassuring, but how did it apply to me, now? I recounted the influence Paul had through his preaching and teaching ministry. He was a man who had accomplished much and suffered much for the kingdom, and even had the distinct privilege to be taken up to hear “inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell.” If anyone had a claim to swagger about all he had seen, done, and endured, surely it was Paul.

But Paul knew well the destructive power of pride and his penchant for it. After admitting as much, Paul disclosed that “there was given me a thorn in my flesh.” What is interesting is that despite his repeated pleas, there is no hint that Paul’s thorn was ever removed. Rather, he is told, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."

It was a pivotal revelation, as evidenced by Paul’s reply: "Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.”

Then and there Paul realized a profound truth: The greatest display of God’s love is not in shielding us from painful circumstances, but in strengthening us to persevere through any and every circumstance. Neither is His power most evident in removing our thorns, but in strengthening us when we are weak, filling us with joy when our spirit is broken, giving us hope when our world is falling apart, imparting us with the power of the imperishable life.

What that meant for me, 2,000 years later, was that however my condition turned out, whether for life or death, it would be for my ultimate good and God’s greatest glory. I paused on that truth, and a wave of unexpected joy broke through my anxious spirit.

CARRYING A SPLINTER
In the weeks and months that followed, my family and I were blessed with daily ministrations of grace. The prayers, sacrifices, and love of family, friends, and untold strangers gave us a growing sense of God’s presence and working. Even friends who didn’t believe in the power of prayer felt strangely motivated to intercede on our behalf three times a day—later forming a prayer group that witnessed miracle after miracle of God’s merciful intercession. My wife, who was fraught with pessimism when her mother had breast cancer, was confidently at peace during this challenge.

Each time the burden seemed unbearable, it was lifted from our shoulders. In these ways and more, we were ministered by Him who, the psalmist says, “daily bears our burdens.” (Psalm 68:19) I felt a strong sense of partnership with that “burden-bearer,” taking inspiration from the words of Clarence Enzler,

In carrying my cross,
I carry yours with you.
And though I bear a sliver only
of your cross.
You carry all of mine, except a sliver
in return.

In that holy partnership I became increasingly aware of the sacredness of everything. God’s manifest presence in the inconsequential corner of my life taught me that nothing is inconsequential. Everything matters to Him who is shaping a world destined for restoration. Trusting that “our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18), I was able to shift from the myopia of the present to the hope of the future.

Through the Scriptures, we have a glimpse of a world where our yearning for a better environment, a better community, a better justice, and a better kindness will be fulfilled in the renewal of all things. Meanwhile, as the creation cries out in the throes of labor, God prepares for the cosmic re-birth by touching lives and shaping culture through His earthly agents. Whether I would have a role in that sovereign plan was up to Him, and that was all right.

LOOKING BACK AND AHEAD
Months of chemotherapy, countless prayers, and an eight-hour surgery worked together, in some inscrutable way, to cure my incurable condition. Weeks later, after declaring me in clinical remission, my oncologist introduced me to a colleague as “Lazarus.” Soli Deo Gloria!

When I prayed for the “increase of my territory,” my agenda was to be a better teacher and disciple. Little did I imagine it would entail a surgical procedure to cut away the cancer of self. Painful? Yes. Is the “operation” complete? No. But as I reflect on that humbling experience, I wonder how God could have answered my prayer any more effectively. What’s more, I consider that thorn to be one of my richest blessings. For through it, I experienced the presence of God with an intimacy that would not have been possible otherwise.

It was a hard lesson. I was not the autonomous, self-made individual I had come to think, I was an interdependent member of an incarnational community—a community that sustained me physically and spiritually through a situation far beyond my power to manage.

Along the way, I learned that life’s crazy situations—even those warped by disease and suffering—are not meaningless. Neither are they are evidences of an absent, indifferent or incapable God. Rather they are interim conditions of a world destined for a divine makeover.

In the in-between time, the heirs of the kingdom--braced by power of the imperishable life—press forward in the heady adventure of kingdom building.

Regis Nicoll is a freelance writer and a BreakPoint Centurion. His "All Things Examined" column appears on BreakPoint every other Friday. Serving as a men’s ministry leader and worldview teacher in his community, Regis publishes a free weekly commentary to stimulate thought on current issues from a Christian perspective. To be placed on this free e-mail distribution list, e-mail him at: centurion51@aol.com.