First a brief update on where I am at in my treatment. Last week I had a CT scan of my upper chest and an MRI of my liver to look for other tumors. Praise be to God, there were no other tumors. This morning I had a "port" placed under my skin in front of my right shoulder. This will be the site where the chemotherapy will be placed into me and other IV meds. Blood can also be drawn from here as the doctors moniter my blood counts. Tomorrow morning I begin chemo-therapy. Four hours in the hospital hooked up to an IV pump and then I have a small, portable pump attached to the port which will pump meds into me continously for the next 46 hours. Then I go back in two weeks to repeat the process. I will do this 12 times.
There is a question which many people have when they begin to realize that God ordains all the trouble that comes to his children for their good and for his glory. As Hebrews 12 says, all trouble in the lives of believers is discipline from the hands of our loving Father to enable us to share his holiness. The question that arises is this: If God has sent trouble for my good then should I seek to escape the trouble; should I ask the Lord to deliver me from the trouble? Let me be specific. As I've written previously, it is God's will that I have cancer. It is his loving and good discipline in my life for the purpose of enabling me to share his holiness. Thus, should I be pursuing healing by medical means for my cancer? Should I and scores of friends and family be asking God to heal me? The answer to both of these questions is yes, I should seek to be healed and we should ask the Lord to heal me. How do I know that this is the right thing to do?
There are three examples in the NT that illustrate how we are to respond to bad things that we know are God's will. First, we have the example of Jesus the night before he was betrayed. He knew it was God the Father's will that he be betrayed, beaten and crucified on that cross (Luke 18:31-34). He knew that his death was paying the ransom for his people (Mark 10:45). He knew it was God's will that he suffer the horror of hell on our behalf. Yet, the night before he was killed he asked his Father three times if he would deliver him from the horror of that cross. Each time he added, "yet not my will but yours be done." Thus the perfect Son of God who came into the world to do his Father's will and who knew that will included all the horror of the cross yet asked his Father to be delivered from it, but only if it was his will.
Second, Jesus told the apostle Paul on the day he was converted that it was his will that he suffer much for his name. Numerous times in Paul's travels he avoided certain persecution by fleeing from cities. He fled from Damascus, he fled from Thessalonica, he informed the centurion who was about to beat him that he was a Roman citizen and thus avoided being flogged. In Acts 20:22-23 Paul tells the elders of thre church in Ephesus: "And now, behold, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me." Here we have a specific example of God the Holy Spirit informing Paul that he is going to suffer in Jerusalem. Yet, in his letter to the Romans, written just before he began this journey to Jerusalem and after he knew that this was God's will for him says this to the church in Rome: "I appeal to you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf, that I may be delivered from the unbelievers in Judea, and that my service for Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints, so that by God's will I may come to you with joy and be refreshed in your company." Paul knows that God has ordained suffering for him and yet he asks that these believers join him in asking the Lord to deliver him from the unbelievers in Jerusalem. If you were to read the story of his coming to Jerusalem (Acts 21) you would also discover that he took action to avoid being persecuted as well.
Finally, in 2 Corinthians 12 Paul describes the "thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan" that was given to him to keep him from boasting. to keep him from boasting (v.7). While Satan was God’s instrument in giving the “thorn” to Paul, ultimately it was God who sent it as Satan would never desire Paul to be humble, which is one of the purposes for the “thorn”. In spite of the fact that Paul knew that God had sent the thorn to him for his good (promote humility in him), yet he asked the Lord three times to take it away. The Lord told him no all three times because he had something better for Paul than not having this "thorn". His good purpose was to show off his power in and through Paul's weakness. (This passage is particularly important to me in that the “thorn” is most certainly a chronic, physical ailment. The word translated “weakness” is used 24 times in the NT and 20 of those times it clearly means physical illness or ailment of some sort.)
There are scores of other examples in the Bible of this same fact: while God sends trouble to us for our good and his glory it is right for us to seek appropriate remedies to the trouble and to ask the Lord to deliver us from the trouble always recognizing that our God is better and wiser and more loving than we are and thus we will submit to his will no matter what it is.
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