You will waste your cancer if you treat sin as casually as before.
Are your besetting sins as attractive as they were before you had cancer? If so you are wasting your cancer. Cancer is designed to destroy the appetite for sin. Pride, greed, lust, hatred, unforgiveness, impatience, laziness, procrastination—all these are the adversaries that cancer is meant to attack. Don’t just think of battling against cancer. Also think of battling with cancer. All these things are worse enemies than cancer. Don’t waste the power of cancer to crush these foes. Let the presence of eternity make the sins of time look as futile as they really are. “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?” (Luke 9:25).
DP: Suffering really is meant to wean you from sin and strengthen your faith. If you are God-less, then suffering magnifies sin. Will you become more bitter, despairing, addictive, fearful, frenzied, avoidant, sentimental, godless in how you go about life? Will you pretend it’s business as usual? Will you come to terms with death, on your terms? But if you are God’s, then suffering in Christ’s hands will change you, always slowly, sometimes quickly. You come to terms with life and death on his terms. He will gentle you, purify you, cleanse you of vanities. He will make you need him and love him. He rearranges your priorities, so first things come first more often. He will walk with you. Of course you’ll fail at times, perhaps seized by irritability or brooding, escapism or fears. But he will always pick you up when you stumble. Your inner enemy – a moral cancer 10,000 times more deadly than your physical cancer – will be dying as you continue seeking and finding your Savior: “For your name’s sake, O Lord, pardon my iniquity, for it is very great. Who is the man who fears the Lord? He will instruct him in the way he should choose” (Psalm 25).
JG: Are my besetting sins less attractive? I’m not sure but I am sure that I’m seeing a lot of sin—-pride, stubbornness, unwillingness to believe God’s truth, procrastination to name a few. I’m thankful that there is mercy for each one because of Jesus’ work on the cross and his resurrection.
I’m taken by the language that David Powlison (DP) uses. Do you see the “He will” throughout that paragraph? Oh, I want that certainty that Jesus and the Father will do all these things—gentle me, cleanse me of vanities, walk with me, rearrange my priorities. “For your name’s sake, O Lord;” this is my certainty. God does all things for the glory of his name; so he will do what he has promised for the sake of his name. Wean me from my sin for the sake of Your name.
On the Greisen Side of Life 
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