Don’t Waste Your Cancer #3

You will waste your cancer if you seek comfort from your odds rather than from God.

The design of God in your cancer is not to train you in the rationalistic, human calculation of odds. The world gets comfort from their odds. Not Christians. Some count their chariots (percentages of survival) and some count their horses (side effects of treatment), but we trust in the name of the Lord our God (Psalm 20:7). God’s design is clear from 2 Corinthians 1:9, “We felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.” The aim of God in your cancer (among a thousand other good things) is to knock props out from under our hearts so that we rely utterly on him.

DP: God himself is your comfort. He gives himself. The hymn “Be Still My Soul” (by Katerina von Schlegel) reckons the odds the right way: we are 100% certain to suffer, and Christ is 100% certain to meet us, to come for us, comfort us, and restore love’s purest joys. The hymn “How Firm a Foundation” reckons the odds the same way: you are 100% certain to pass through grave distresses, and your Savior is 100% certain to “be with you, your troubles to bless, and sanctify to you your deepest distress.” With God, you aren’t playing percentages, but living within certainties.

JG: It is very hard not to trust in odds. Each time I go to the doctor with a list of questions. Many times the answer is well we think this percentage of time it is true. There’s this percentage of chance for thus and such. Almost everything is based on a study that has resulted in odds. As I slowly read through Pastor Piper’s comments the Holy Spirit illuminated that little parenthetical statement “percentages of survival”. I have been wanting to know my percentage of survival. I have been wanting to know my prognosis. I have wanted to hear it from my doctor; what does he think my chances are? Trusting in a number rather than Almighty God. What has been my experience with numbers so far? When I was in consultation for a biopsy the nurse said, don’t worry, you have no history and 70% of these biopsies comes back negative. Two odds in my favor. Two failed.

Here are the words to How Firm a Foundation. This is an incredible hymn. Why would I ever choose numbers over the Almighty God? Confession, forgiveness, repentance. Father God, by the power of the Spirit turn my face from trusting in numbers to you, the Almighty God who is with me and who knows my days already.

1. How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
   Is laid for your faith in His excellent word!
   What more can He say than to you He hath said—
   To you who for refuge to Jesus have fled?
2. “Fear not, I am with thee, oh, be not dismayed,
   For I am thy God, and will still give thee aid;
   I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,
   Upheld by My gracious, omnipotent hand.
3. “When through the deep waters I call thee to go,
   The rivers of sorrow shall not overflow;
   For I will be with thee thy trouble to bless,
   And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.
4. “When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie,
   My grace, all-sufficient, shall be thy supply;
   The flame shall not harm thee; I only design
   Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.
5. “The soul that on Jesus doth lean for repose,
   I will not, I will not, desert to his foes;
   That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
   I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.”

Material is from Don’t Waste Your Cancer by John Piper, copyright 2010. © Desiring God

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