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Monday, February
22, 2010
Hi Diane
How are you? Your
life has just changed forever.
Before it was soccer games, grocery shopping, and
women’s groups. Now
it is all about one thing.
I don’t know of one thing that strikes fear into the
hearts of more women than breast cancer.
The first thing that came into my mind after I heard about
this was how inadequately our churches prepare our people for
things that will affect so many of us.
I have only been at North Sub for three years now, but
I have been in churches all my adult life.
We are studying the Book of Acts in adult education on Sunday
mornings now. We
just finished the first six chapters where the power of God is
so evident, people are being healed everywhere, and thousands
of people are coming to Christ, yet there is no connection to
our lives today. We
read all these stories of what God did in the past, but we
don’t see how it is to affect our lives now.
1996 was the big year in my life. I was taken to the hospital in the middle of the night for a
pain in my chest. They
didn’t find anything that needed to be fixed at the time,
but they did discover enlarged lymph nodes, which I learned
several months later was stage 3 non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
They strongly recommended that I begin chemotherapy
immediately, but I told them I didn’t want to do that.
I had read all these stories in the Bible about healing
and faith, and I couldn’t believe that these were just nice
stories of things that God did in the past without any direct
bearing on what kinds of things I should expect Him to do
today.
Besides, my kids were young, and I had taught them that when
you have problems, you pray about them.
I knew that if I just had the chemo, they wouldn’t
know who did what, God or the doctors.
So I told the doctors I wanted to wait.
Test me again in a few months, and let’s see where we
are.
When they tested me again a few months later, my lymph nodes
had all shrunk to normal sizes.
They wouldn’t say that I was healed, but the one
doctor who gave us the news had never heard of this ever
happening apart from the chemo.
Since that time I have never had any treatment for cancer.
Do I think about it at times?
Every day. Like
I said, your life changes.
The reasons you get something in the first place are
the same reasons you can get something again.
For myself, that year was the lowest point of my life
emotionally and possibly the highest.
I started the year a step above downright depression,
and God started working with me on this month before I even
knew I had the cancer. And
the things He showed me were some of the same things I needed
to fight against it.
Life hasn’t been any easier since then, so I have been
challenged by all these negative emotions many times since.
But the Christian life is about growth, which means
that a person actually learns some things about God and life
and you don’t have to live under all this junk.
DeAnne, I will be praying for you. If I can be of help in any way, please let me know.
You may have noticed a website at the top of the
letter. I wrote a
book about healing, my experience and a Bible study on the
subject. I’m
not trying to sell you a book.
I will give you a copy if you want.
For most Christians, healing is like winning the lottery.
It either happens or it doesn’t.
Usually not. But
it has nothing to do with anything we do.
It is a choice that God makes for reasons we usually
will never know about.
I agree that sometimes, both in the Bible and in ‘real
life,’ people have been healed who hadn’t expected such a
thing, who did nothing out of the ordinary.
The only problem with that is that then there is
nothing we can do about our situation and no hope that we
would be the lucky ones.
I believe that there is a lot we can do.
Ideally I would want someone to begin thinking about
these kinds of things long before they really needed them.
Better to learn about healing with colds and sore
throats rather than with cancer and heart disease.
Healing is a controversial subject, so I usually avoid talking
about it. I
don’t know you well enough to know which approach to take.
But you should know about all the options. I am here for you in any way I can.
Your friend
Larry
Please
feel free to contact our New Editor!
lacraig1@sbcglobal.net
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