Victory Playlist

When my wife was going through her cancer battle several years ago, we put together a playlist of songs to listen to every time we made the 30-minute trip to the cancer treatment center - it helped both of us get in the right frame of mind of faith and hopefulness on the way to whatever treatments she was going to have to endure that day. Now that I'm going down a similar road, we've come up with a playlist for me! Here it is on Spotify:

Hollow Grave

Let my soul arise
Let my heart awake
Let these empty lungs overflow with praise
I found all the life I need in a hollow grave 

It's only by the blood
Only by Your grace
All I see is love where nobody lays
I found all the life I need in a hollow grave

 

Isn't it amazing that through Christ's death we have been given life? I happened to be on worship team within a week or two of getting a cancer diagnosis, and singing this song was like rising up from the grave myself, filled with Jesus' life!

Prepare to Die

Prepare to die!
Cancer, prepare to die!
I've got a message from the God of whom you have defied!
You come against me with your weapons from hell,
And you come against me with your fearful evil spell,
But I come against you in the name of the God of the armies of Israel!
Prepare to die!
Prepare to die!

For the last time, you've come against me with your weapons from hell,
And you've come against me with your fearful evil spell,
But I come against you in the name of the God of the armies of Israel! 

Disease, hatred, jealousy
Enemies of the cross
Prepare to die

 

As I explained in my previous post, this song is absolutely not about a person dying... it is about the cancer dying! This song is really upbeat... it kind of gets me pumped!

Shackles (Praise You)

Been through the fire and the rain
Bound in every kind of way 

But God has broken every chain, so LET! ME! GO! 

Take the shackles off my feet so I can dance
I just wanna praise You, I just wanna praise You
You broke the chains, now I can lift my hands
And I'm gonna praise You, I'm gonna praise You 

 

This one is actually one of the holdovers from my wife's list. I've always liked the original Mary Mary version, but when Mandisa screams LET! ME! GO! it just knocks it out of the park for me!

Miracle Maker

In the midst of our despair
When our hope is running dry
We lift our voices to the heavens
To the One who hears our cry
With a heart full of faith
We know He's always near
Every moment, every heartbeat
He wipes away our fear

Oh, the power in His name
Bringing life to broken frames

Miracle Maker, You heal the blind
Turning water into wine
Miracle Maker, You calm the sea
Setting every captive free
Miracle Maker, we believe
In Your love, we receive

 

This may be the newest song on this playlist, released by the oldest band, Petra. This is from the album Hope which they released just last January. If you haven't heard the album, do yourself a favor and listen to the whole thing! (Physical copy store link, or find it on all of the streaming services!)

Destined to Win

This song’s for all the people with light in their hearts and love in their eyes
You don’t have to worry when the mountain seems of infinite size
There is one who goes before you to calm the sea
And there’s a king who leads his people to victory

We are destined to win!
We’re surrounded by his love, guarded by his power,
Destined to win!
Following the Lord until the battle’s over,
We are destined to win!

 

A classic by DeGarmo & Key, and maybe among the short list of perfectly crafted Christian Rock songs of all time. Which of us doesn't need to be reminded from time to time that no matter what's going on, we have a destiny in Christ Jesus?

I Still Believe

I've been in a cave for forty days
With only a spark to light my way
I want to give out, I want to give in
This is our crime
This is our sin 

But I still believe
I still believe
Through the pain, and through the grief
Through the lies, through the storms
Through the cries and through the wars 

I still believe

 

Written by Michael Been, who was a believer, and first recorded by his mainstream band The Call, this is an amazing song about standing firm through adversity. I love every version of this song (another famous version was included in the movie The Lost Boys) but I prefer Russ Taff's energy for my playlist.

Take You At Your Word

I'll take You at Your word
If You said it, I'll believe it
I've seen how good it works
If You start it You'll complete it
I'll take You at Your word

 

Faith is way simpler than we make it out to be. It doesn't take a lot of effort. It just takes one decision to believe what God says. It's not like climbing a tree - it's like letting go of a low-hanging branch and dropping safely to the ground!

This Is Our God

Remember that fear that took our breath away?
Faith so weak that we could barely pray,
But He heard every word, every whisper.
Now those altars in the wilderness
Tell the story of His faithfulness - 
Never once did He fail, and He never will!

 

I also talked about this song in my previous post, so I won't repeat myself here.

I've Got Joy

I've got joy in the struggle
I've got peace in the storm
I've got strength in the battle
I don't fear anymore
I'm a child of heaven
And my hope is secure
I've got joy cause I've got Jesus

 

Another holdover from my wife's Victory Playlist, this one just reminds me of everything I have to be joyful about!

Great Are You Lord

You give life, You are love, You bring light to the darkness
You give hope, You restore every heart that is broken
Great are You, Lord

It's Your breath in our lungs
So we pour out our praise, we pour out our praise
It's Your breath in our lungs
So we pour out our praise to You only

 

My wife suggested that we include Michael W. Smith's recording of this in the playlist. I love that he starts with "It's Your breath in our lungs..." When Jesus died, he took our death and gave us His life. Every breath we take is His breath.

Always Be There

I can count on You to always be there
And know that You will always be there
Every day You'll always be there with me, with me

 

This one is probably a curve ball for almost anyone but me! This is from a CD of VBS songs written and recorded by Yancy, who grew up right here in Tulsa. Sometimes I find that songs written about Jesus and recorded for kids have a quality that really speaks to me. Maybe that's because I've been involved as a volunteer children's minister for many years, or maybe I'm just an overgrown kid myself! But this song reminds me of what we always need to remember: God will never leave us, and He will never forsake us.

Givin' Up Givin' Up

I gotta stop kickin' myself around
Swimmin' in a pool of pity
I'm gonna pick myself up off the ground
And get back to the nitty gritty 

Well, it's one step, two steps
And then I'm back on my way
Sittin' around has just been gettin' me down
And that's why I just have to say that

I'm givin' up givin' up
I'll never give up again
I'm givin' up givin' up
And hangin' on till the end

 

Bryan Duncan is a ridiculously talented musician, and this song is just a lot of fun while it reminds you that you can't give up! I haven't been tempted to give up on fighting this fight of faith, but when hard times come, sometimes it helps to have a lighthearted little reminder to leave your pity party in the past and get back to what really matters!

If God Is For Us (Who Can Be Against Us)

If you're weary, don't lose hope in fighting the good fight
Just remember, God is with you through your darkest night
In the heat of battle, keep your head up high
God is marching with us
He's always at our side

If God is for us, who can be against us?
No power on earth can take His love away
If God is for us, who can be against us
We can live in victory today

 

DeGarmo & Key made the list twice! This line from Romans 8:31 is something every believer in Jesus should hang their hat on. Just remember: that "if" isn't a question. Read the context in Romans: there's no "if" about it. God IS for you!

Don't Look Back

I finally see the dawn arrivin'
I see beyond the road I'm drivin'

It's a bright horizon, ooh, and I'm awaken
I see myself in a brand new way
The sun is shinin', ooh, the clouds are breakin'
'Cause I can't lose now, there's no game to play

 

Wait, a Boston song on the playlist? Yes! This song is absolutely, 100% about leaving behind something that was keeping the singer down, and it doesn't have anything specific to do with God at all. But when you're in the middle of a storm, it's good to keep your eyes on the prize and not look back at, say, the initial prognosis of how long people live with the condition you're in, or famous people who have died from it, or whatever. Keep your eyes forward and trust in Jesus! This song just has such great energy, it was just the right way to close out the playlist.

Second Week - This is Who Our God Is

It's been a minute since I posted - I don't want to get into a lot of detail about every little thing that happens ("I had to go pee twice during my infusion today!!" No thanks, TMI) but I do want to let people see my general trajectory because God is doing awesome things! So don't expect the level of detail from the first several posts, but do keep reading!

The update on the physical side is that there are very good indications in my blood work and a few more scans the doctor ordered that the chemo treatments are going very well. I've seen a few side effects, but on the whole they are still quite mild compared to what could happen and what does happen to others. God's hand is working! If you want gory details and you know me in person, don't be shy to ask. If you don't know me in person but you want to talk (maybe you're going through something yourself), do feel free to contact me, through the comments if you can't find another way.

Okay, here's what I really wanted to talk about. I've been very blessed for a number of years to be able to serve on my church's worship team, and I was rehearsing last week to serve this past Sunday. When I'm practicing the songs on my own, learning the lyrics and the music, I'm actually meditating on what they say... some of my best personal times of worship and communion with God happen when I'm practicing a song and I get a little choked up by what it's saying and I have to stop for a minute and just thank God for what He has done for me!

To preface what I'm going to say about one of the songs I was practicing this week, I have two items of context. The first thing is that my wife won a battle with cancer several years ago - the surgery that removed the last traces of it from her body will have happened three years ago in September. Completely cancer-free for three years! God did great things for her!

The second thing is that I've been listening a lot to a 40-year-old Carman song named "Prepare to Die". Saying it out of context makes it seem like a pretty morbid thing to listen to during cancer treatments, but actually it's not ME that is preparing to die, it's the CANCER that is preparing to die! The first verse tells the story of Goliath walking out onto the battlefield, seeing David, and basically telling David that he is going to wipe him off the face of the Earth... but then in the chorus, David tells Goliath that he is actually fighting the "God of the armies of Israel", so Goliath had better "prepare to die!" Then in the second verse, a giant walks out into the battlefield of our life, and as we stand there, the giant tells us it's going to wipe us out, because its name isn't Goliath... it's "Depression" or "Leukemia" or... "Cancer". Then the chorus rolls around, and like David, we become bold and aggressive, and we tell that giant of an enemy, "prepare to die!" (Here's a YouTube video of the song with lyrics, if you want to check it out!)

It's kind of amazing how a song you rocked out to when you were 15 hits differently when you're 55 and actually facing one of the giants Carman named in the song.

That said, fast forward to me rehearsing this song for our worship set:

One of the Scripture verses I've been going over and over in my mind during this situation is in Psalm 103:1-3: "Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name! Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases..." Notice that spiritual salvation (forgiving all your iniquity) is placed on exactly the same level as physical healing (healing all your diseases). So I'm pretty sure Phil Wickham meant his song to be only about spiritual salvation, when I started singing this:

Remember those walls that we called sin and shame?
They were like prisons that we couldn't escape,
But He came, and He died, and He rose...
Those walls are rubble now.

I was hearing salvation of the soul. But when I sang the second part of the verse:

Remember those giants we called death and grave?
They were like mountains that stood in our way,
But He came, and He died, and He rose...
Those giants are dead now.

I couldn't help but think about the giants of disease from the Carman song, and how my wife would be dead and in a grave now from her cancer if not for the working of God in her life. We remember, and we need to remember! The last verse refers back to Exodus where God told His people to build altars and set up memorial stone to remind them of His goodness toward them:

Remember that fear that took our breath away?
Faith so weak that we could barely pray,
But He heard every word, every whisper.
Now those altars in the wilderness
Tell the story of His faithfulness - 
Never once did He fail, and He never will!

As I'm going through whatever I go through on the way to my full restoration, which I know with certainty in my heart is on its way, I can look back to the memorial altars... the big one is that day she got to ring the "I'm cured!" bell at the treatment center... but there are plenty more things that we can look back on from that wilderness time for us, and say, "THIS is what our God is like. He saved Cat's life, and not He's saving Michael's life!"

At the risk of sounding simplistic or saccharine, I want to tell you with all of the honesty in my heart. GOD CAN AND WILL DO THE SAME FOR YOU. You just have to choose to trust Him, and He won't let you down!

A Long Week

If you want to start at the beginning, here's Part 1.

This week was tough. Tough in a couple of ways. Not as tough as it is for some people, but still tough.

Tuesday, as you'll already know if you've read my previous post, I went in for my first round of chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is well known for triggering a wide array of possible side effects, in a puzzlingly random fashion. A good oncologist will tell you that these are the possible side effects, we have no way to determine which ones will actually happen in your specific body with your specific cancer, but here's what to do if they do. From my previous post you know that I had zero side effects when I was in the chair for seven hours getting my infusion (praise God - that's an amazing blessing right there!) but when I got home I started to experience an uncomfortable side effect known as first bite syndrome, or FBS. To briefly recap what that is, picture in your mind the worst muscle cramp you've ever had. Now imagine that every time you take the first bite of pretty much anything, you get that cramp simultaneously in both hinges of your jaw, and it lasts maybe 10-15 seconds before it subsides and you can eat normally. It can be excruciating, and it's pretty frustrating to have to deal with it after all of my talk about faith for healing! Typically FBS subsides over time as the meds work their way out of your system, but basically I've dealt with it all week since then. I continue to speak out that the pain doesn't belong to me, Jesus took it and it has to leave my body! But it hung around anyway.

Then there was Tuesday night, when, probably due to the steroids they gave me, at about 2am I was suddenly wide awake for about three hours. Taking in all of that medication at once tends to wear a patient out a bit anyway, and being low on sleep certainly didn't help over the next few days. Keep in mind, Monday I had an 8:15am appointment with the nurse practitioner, then Tuesday my arrival time at the treatment center for infusion was 7am. So I was behind the eight ball a little bit on sleep even before my 3-hour unwanted wake-up; I tried to take it as easy as I could and go to bed as early as possible, but I struggled with fatigue all week.

Then there was the low-level queasiness that's been my companion most of the week. I have some anti-nausea medicine, but it seemed like overkill when I wasn't throwing up or anything - I did eventually try it out one day, and it seemed to do more damage than help, so I laid off for the rest of the week.

It also didn't help that I had some kind of medical appointment every day - four at the cancer treatment center and one at a hospital for a heart echo (everything looked good). By Friday I was absolutely sick and tired of driving up to the cancer center!

I'm saying all of this not to complain, and not to elicit sympathy, and certainly not to paint a picture that somehow I have flawless faith that took away every moment of discomfort. I think it's honest to share that some things, despite a ton of prayer of faith from dozens of people I do and don't know, still haven't gone how I would have mapped them out if I was writing the script. I did not feel full of faith every day when my tummy was complaining that it was hungry and upset, and my jaws were complaining that they didn't want to chew anyway, and my body was complaining that it just wanted to go back to bed please. But in those moments when I didn't feel like being super faith man, I held on to my belief that God wants me well and that's where I'm headed. And, on the positive side, ever since we started having people pray for me and then especially this week after one chemo treatment, my initial symptom of having difficulty swallowing seems to be getting a LOT better. I don't have medical documentation that there has been a significant change, but it seems like it to me!

The other day I told a friend of mine: "Sometimes you 'believe' in healing, and other times you darn well better REALLY believe in healing!" All faith is is making the decision that you are going to follow what the Word of God says, no matter what. Either it's true or it's not. Faith is when you quit riding the fence and jump off on the God side.

Today I was still able (with permission from the oncologist) to volunteer with my wife as a Sunday school teacher for preschoolers at church. We love those kids with all of our hearts, and I don't want to miss out on having the chance to spend time with them and share Jesus with them. It was an amazing victory to have the energy to do that! God is absolutely doing some incredible things in my body!

It's A Long Story.... Part 5

 If you want to start at the beginning, here's Part 1.

This will be the last blog post titled "It's A Long Story"... it seems like "It's A Long Story... Part 37" might get a little uninspiring! I'll keep periodically blogging when anything interesting happens, but with this post we're caught up to the current situation.

Tuesday I went into the cancer treatment center for my first round of chemotherapy (the oncologist tells us he plans to do at least four treatments, then re-evaluate, and then likely he will recommend four more). This was to be a 7 hour treatment, which is a LOT longer than my wife's treatments three years ago (hers were about 4 hours each). They had prepared us ahead of time by providing us with a HUGE list of every possible side effect known to man. We've been praying and believing God for healing already, and I felt like I wanted to kick it up a lot and apply some more faith to the situation. In the waiting room I posted on Facebook "First chemo infusion today! We are being bold and asking God for ZERO side effects!" I knew our believing friends would add their faith to ours! My wife and I also prayed together and asked God for NO side effects.

I got hooked up to the chemo, and guess how many side effects I experienced? None at all! All day we were paying attention to make sure our nurse knew if anything started to go sideways, but the worst thing that happened all day was being bored sitting around with no drama at all!

Since I got home I've experienced one side effect that we were told about. The nurse called it "first bite syndrome" and that's literally what it is... when I took the first bite of a meal or snack, I started to get a pain at the hinges of my jaw like an electric shock. Since we knew that it's not anything unusual or even serious, I just put up with if the first couple of times I ate, but then I realized, you know what? I don't have to put up with this! Jesus took this pain for me! So now whenever it happens I'm speaking out: "I am NOT putting up with this! This is not my pain! Jesus paid the price for this!"

One of the first words that came to me when we first got the cancer diagnosis was that Jesus took my sickness to Hell when He died on the cross, and He DID NOT bring it back. When I experience sickness or pain, that is a direct frontal attack on the truth of God's Word. It's easy when you know something isn't medically serious to just ignore it and move on with your day, but I don't intend to get complacent. The story is that FBS will subside anyway over the days after treatment, but I'm not waiting. I'm going to fight it with the Word of God! It needs to go away immediately!

Here's my Cancer Destruction In Progress shirt, if you want to buy one!

More to come...

It's a Long Story... Part 4

If you want to start at the beginning, here's Part 1.

The next two weeks felt like a constant stream of appointments and tests. We met with the oncologist to find out what he wanted to do next. We went to "chemo class" where the basically tell you all of the unpleasant side effects that can happen as a result of chemotherapy and what to do if they did happen (useful information, but also unsettling information!)  I got a PET scan, which as it turns out confirmed that all of the areas that the CT scan indicated as possible areas of concern were, in fact, areas of concern. We talked to a nurse at the hospital about a biopsy of my adrenals that the oncologist had ordered. And, least anticipated of all by me, Port Install.

A port is a small device that is implanted just underneath your skin, with a short length of hose that connects directly to a vein. The port is then used for blood draws, and also to add the medicine into your bloodstream, without having to stick you in the arm every time. It saves you from damaging your veins from getting pokes many times a week. Getting one put in these days is an outpatient surgery - you're in for a few hours, then you go home with instructions not to lift anything heavy for two days. It was easy peasy, and less than a week later at the cancer center they were able to use it for a blood draw... and I got to see how much easier it is to use a port for that then the arm stick. I keep telling myself that I am now a cool cyborg - I haven't convinced myself quite yet, but I'm getting there!

I also got an MRI scan. The three different scans I've gotten serve different purposes and use different technology. For a CT scan there is the metal donut I talked about here. A CT scan is basically a 3-D x-ray. For PET scans and MRIs you are inside of a metal tube for a period of time (I figured out really quick that I should just keep my eyes closed and then I didn't risk claustrophobia!), but a PET scan is sort of a reverse x-ray, where they put some radioactive stuff inside of you and the scan detects it (think of the CT as shining a light on something, and the PET scan as the thing itself glowing). An MRI uses magnets (and loud noises?) to create a picture of your insides. I'm not going to try to explain what the three do differently - you can Google that and get a better idea than I could explain, because I don't understand it myself - but suffice it to say, for a while it felt like we were constantly either on the way to somewhere, coming back from somewhere, talking to a nurse about a test, or actually getting the test!

During this time, something came to me that hadn't occurred to me before, and I believe it was the Holy Spirit. I started to think, and now I believe for sure, that God is giving me the opportunity to be present at the cancer treatment center for a while specifically to bring His joy and hope to people who need it. There are people there who feel very sick and very exhausted. Maybe their cancer is further advanced than mine. Maybe their body doesn't do well with chemo - for some people every infusion puts them on their back for days. Bot God has given me hope in my heart, and I believer he wants me to share it! I've had people tell me that they are amazed, encouraged, and inspored by my attitude and faith. I wanted to bring that with me to the cancer treatment center!

Over the past decade or so, I've developed a little bit of a reputation for wearing silly T-shirts. I think of it as a minor superpower of mine. I decided that I might not be able to speak to everyone at the cancer center, but I sure could use my T-shirt powers to bring people joy! So I bought a flaming red shirt that says LEAN MEAN CANCER FIGHTING MACHINE in huge letters that are pretty impossible not to want to read, and wore it the next time I went to the cancer center.

Before we even got inside, a man shouted out "I LOVE THAT!" A little while later, I passed a lady in the hallway, and she said "I need that shirt!" My wife and I watched a bunch more people read it and smile, and a few more commented on it. My plan is to continue to pick up new shirts over time - it turns out there is a whole genre of funny "cancer sucks" T-shirt designs to choose from. Those are just to get the conversation going, though. I have bigger plans, and you may think I'm crazy, but because of this I'm kind of looking forward to my first chemo day.

I went with my wife to every chemo infusion she had to go through those 4-5 years ago, and as usual at a medical appointment, you wind up sitting around in a room full of people. That waiting room is full of people who are about to get unpleasant chemicals pumped into their body, and they all know it. My plan is to walk around the waiting room while I'm waiting (in my funny T-shirt!), find out who is getting a treatment that day, and to tell them "You're strong! You can handle this!" and whatever else the Spirit might have me say. My goal is to inject joy and hope into the situation rather than to try to notch my "converts" belt. My goal is to give to people, not to attack them.. I'll let you know tomorrow how it went!

Here's my Lean Mean Cancer Fighting Machine shirt, if you want to buy one! (It doesn't have to be red!)

 

Continued in Part 5...

Should I Take Medicine?

In yesterday's post I promised I would explain this statement: "We don't believe in ignoring a health problem just because you prayed about it." There are people out there that believe that accepting medical assistance when you have prayed for healing indicates a lack of faith in God. We don't feel that way, and I'll tell you exactly why.

Not every healing happens via an instantaneous miracle. In Mark 16:18 Jesus said that whoever believes in Him "...will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover." Recovery from sickness is not always instant. (See yesterday's post for more on this.)

But I also don't think that every "they will recover" has to happen without medical help. I think every healing comes from God, whether you take medicine or not, because of the simple fact that doctors cannot heal people. Medicine does not heal you, and any honest doctor will tell you the same.

Let's step back for a second and think about something very simple: a paper cut. When you get a paper cut, you probably don't even wash it and put a bandage on it unless it's a pretty serious paper cut that is bleeding (does that even happen?) You don't take any medicine, and yet it heals anyway. That's because God made our bodies so that they can repair themselves given the right circumstances. That healing is very much part of the natural world, but it absolutely comes from God because He placed that mechanism in your body.

Let's say you get a deeper cut. It's bleeding, but it doesn't require going to the hospital. You wash it, put some ointment on it, and put a bandage on top of that. In a few days it is healed up completely, and probably you can't even tell that a cut ever happened. Did the ointment heal the cut? No, it did not. It mostly kept it from getting infected, but it didn't instantly knit the cells back together. Your body contains platelets, white blood cells, and other mechanisms that work together to close up the skin. The medicine didn't heal you; your body healed itself, and that healing comes from God.

When the nurse practitioner was explaining to me the various medicines that are going into my chemotherapy cocktail, she told us that one of them simply reveals the cancer cells to other cells. The way I understand it, some cancer cells can disguise themselves in such a way that the white blood cells that would normally attack and destroy those mutated cells don't see them as abnormal. This particular chemo medicine flags those cells as abnormal so the white blood cells that are already there will attack and destroy them. Once again, the healing mechanism is already present in my body; the medicine will just assist the healing process that God already created in defending my body against the invasion.

Every medicine is there for one or both of two reasons: to assist your body in healing itself, or to make you more comfortable so your body can heal itself (painkillers, anesthesia, etc.) Even the very best medicines that science has discovered cannot actually heal you. Healing always comes from God. And that's why I don't have any problem believing God for recovery while simultaneously taking advantage of the medicines that God placed in the world and allowed super smart people to discover that can also help us. They won't heal me: God will heal me.

Please, if you become very sick, pray and believe God for your healing. I hope these blog posts help you with that. But if the Holy Spirit does not specifically speak to your heart that you should not take any medicine, please prayerfully consider what modern medicine has to offer. You're not going to Hell for taking an aspirin, or getting a flu shot, or taking chemo, and you don't somehow invalidate your faith and forfeit your healing by doing those things. In fact, when this blog post goes live a few days after I wrote it, I expect to already be sitting in a chair taking my first chemo infusion, and I'll be thanking God the whole time for the skilled and caring medical staff that is treating me.

Tomorrow I'll get back to the Long Story!

It's a Long Story... Part 3.

If you want to start at the beginning, here's Part 1.

The next day was Sunday. My wife and I volunteer every other week teaching a preschooler class, and I wanted to let our children's pastor and her assistant know what was going on. We got prayed for by the whole team of children's volunteers, and as a bonus, the assistant gave me what turned out to be really great advice. "Christ the Healer by F. F. Bosworth is on YouTube for free, the whole thing," she told us. "Google it up and listen to it!" I did Google it up, but here it is so you don't have to:

I grew up in churches that believe that God still heals people today, and much of what is in this 100+ year old book was familiar territory... in fact, there was a copy of it in my house when I was a teenager! But if I ever read it, I didn't read it with my mind open to what it was actually saying, rather than what I expected it to say. There were no Scriptures in the book that I hadn't heard, but there were some concepts that I don't remember ever being part of messages about healing when I was a kid (or an adult). For example:

• The Bible never says that every ailment will be healed instantly by a miracle. It says that you should lay hands on the sick, and they will recover. Have you ever been in "recovery" after a hospital procedure? I have... it doesn't happen instantaneously. Usually it takes days to fully recover. There are miracles that are instant, definitely, but there is also a slow steady recovery. Bosworth tells this funny story about promising a child you will buy her some new clothes: "Suppose again, that after you promise her the new dress, she runs to the mirror to see if she looks any more 'dressed up.' She then says: 'I cannot see any difference; I do not look a bit better'; and then gives up the idea of having a new dress." Just because you might not see the answer in an immediate miracle doesn't mean it doesn't belong to you!
  
  
• Healing for your body is exactly as much a promise from God as salvation of your soul. Romans 8:11 says "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you." In Psalm 103:2-3 it says "Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases..." Forgiveness of iniquity is placed on the same footing here with healing of diseases. It's one of the benefits of putting your faith in God! (I've blogged about this before... check it out here.)
  
  
• Symptoms and diagnoses exist. They are not imaginary, and it's not faith to pretend they are not there. When a doctor, who is a scientist, tells you what he observes in your body, there is no reason to think he is being dishonest with you. However, those real things that exist are the actual liars! The symptoms that exist in your body are liars, because they are trying to convince you that God's healing isn't available to you. I think this is a key idea that a lot of  "faith people" have missed. If you have a cold, and you say "I do not have a cold," then you become a liar. But if you have a cold and you say "Lord, I thank you because Your healing of this cold belongs to me, and I am ready to see it happen in my body!" then that is faith! Don't let your symptoms lie to you!

The next week we visited with the oncologist again, and found out what my chemotherapy treatment schedule will probably be like. We don't believe in ignoring a health problem just because you prayed about it... I'll talk more about that in the next post. We also asked him whether it was okay for me to continue to teach the class and also volunteer on church worship team, and he said as long as I am physically up to it (chemo can make you very tired) and as long as I am careful to keep clean around the kids (for my safety and theirs), it's okay to continue to do those things. I've been told by several nurses at the treatment center that it's important to continue to do the things that give you joy if you can, and nothing gives me more joy than sharing Jesus with others!

Continued in Part 4...