Mark 9:23-24New King James Version (NKJV)
23 Jesus said to him, “If[a] you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.”
24 Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”
So often we refer to people as having either “survived” or “ succumbed to” cancer. I am old enough to remember a time when a diagnosis of cancer was a death sentence. The accepted belief then was that if you had cancer then you would die soon and painfully. I saw that happen with my grandfather and a cousin in the late 60s then with Mum in the early 1990s. I am blessed that by the time I received the diagnosis of cancer I had a new understanding of and relationship with the Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
God, in His infinite love and mercy, called me to His side again and gave me the grace to grow to know and love Him more deeply. He taught me to keep my eyes on Him especially when the winds howled and the waves crashed. That’s really hard and I had many hard and painful “tutorials” where the struggles to hold on to the truths in the Word of God were like knife fights in a dark alley. I knew that if I allowed myself to let go of His Hand I would be swamped by unrelenting attacks undermining my faith. Just as Heaven and Hell are real, so too is our daily struggle against the spirit of unbelief.
He taught me the meaning of being a “worshipper in Spirit and in Truth”. It took me years and He gently and patiently led me, put me with people who worshipped in Spirit from whom I learnt so much and with others who showed me how to love His Word. I read recently a comment which I paraphrase here. It went something like “You don’t know Jesus Christ if you don’t long to seek Him more everyday “. Daily I ask for His mercy to help me love Him more. Daily, I am embarrassed to admit, I have to plead as did the father of the demon-possessed boy in Matt 9:23-24 “Lord I believe; help my unbelief”, acknowledging honestly that without God it is impossible for me to sustain my faith. He sustains my faith; He is my shield; He fights my battles.
By the grace of God I am not a just cancer survivor. I am a cancer conqueror because the battle does not belong to me but to the Lord (2 Chronicles 20:15)
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