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A Matter of Faith

Your suffering is not in vain

People are born, people live, people get sick, and people die. We are quite reconciled to dying of old age, yet not quite at ease dying from illness. This is a universal problem for the Christian and non-Christian alike.

This old misused, misquoted, much-neglected book, the Bible, has much to say about how we live our life when stricken with the unexpected announcement: “It seems it is (the name of your illness in the blank space).”

The death sentence has been pronounced!

“How long do I have?” We are not quite prepared, and so there is grieving and mourning and getting ready as best we can to face the unknown.
Yet our Creator, God, has not left us uninformed. Let me help with a few points this week and the next.

You will devalue your illness if you do not believe that God designed it for your good and His glory.

God’s purpose is not to silence us into despair, resignation or permanent bitterness. Consider the honesty of the Psalms. You can be blunt and strikingly honest with Him because you know that God is God and you set your hopes in Him.

Be passionate in prayer to God. He must hear you. He will hear you. He will continue to work in you and your situation. He cares about you.
You will devalue your illness if you seek comfort from your “chances” rather than from God. Some count their odds for survival and some count the side effects of treatment, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.

God Himself is with us in our deepest pit of despair. We are 100 per cent certain to suffer and Christ is 100 per cent certain to meet us, to come for us, to comfort us.

In his presence, there is fullness of joy!
You will devalue your life if you refuse to think about death. We will all die.

Cancer, ALS, and HIV/AIDS are giving us a bitter taste of the reality of our mortality. But Christ has defeated the last enemy: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”

Cancer and AIDS have no final power if you belong to Jesus. If you belong to Jesus, you can look them in the eye. You are a child of the resurrection!
What consequences are there whether you survive your illness or not and still neglect or despise Jesus? One day you will die and give an account to the one who created you (and who, by the way, also created fine doctors, surgeons, pharmacologists and oncologists).
Jesus died on the cross to destroy death, to redeem us and give us eternal life. So what should I do to live, to be saved, you ask?
“Believe on the Lord Jesus! If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Until next time, may the Lord comfort you in your suffering. With Christ’s love.

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