Cancer doesn’t win if you die; cancer only wins if you fail to cherish Jesus Christ. Ask God to help you approach cancer and anything else you’re going through in this life with a more trusting attitude.
Diagnosed With Breast Cancer booklet, free offer link below:
I’m Joni Eareckson Tada and everyone has a certain rhythm to their day.
But when you are diagnosed with something like cancer, those rhythms stop don’t they? All your routines change. You were used to daily habits: running errands, picking up the kids from soccer, dropping things off at the cleaners, sipping coffee with friends, and weekly shopping at the market. But now, it’s all held hostage by medical appointments, blood draws at diagnostic centers, scans, X-rays, and the fatigue that comes with treatment. This battle is not like a big parenthesis in your life; no, your life has been hijacked and you wonder if things will ever get back to normal. There are even days when you wonder, “Is this the way it’s going to be? If cancer is going to make me this sick and this tired, is life worth living?”
But let me answer that question. 2 Peter 3:8 says, “Don’t overlook this one fact: With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.” Okay now, we all know the old adage that God looks at the last 2,000 years as a couple of days gone by, but what about the other half of that verse? The part about seeing each day as 1,000 years? It’s like divine algebra. And it doesn’t take rocket science to figure out God’s mathematics here. For if we see each day as comparable to 1,000 years in eternity, then every day is chock-full of opportunities to invest in a whole millennia worth of eternity. Each day God gives us the precious gift of hours to invest in others’ lives – investments that will have eternal repercussions for us and for them. Yes, of course, when you have cancer, each day seems precious – but it’s precious for a purpose, and that purpose is for you to invest in your own eternity, as well as the eternal estate of others.
I know that when I wrestled with cancer – and it was a hard battle – I saw that cancer as a unique chance to stretch my soul’s capacity for God. My patience, my endurance, I knew, would resound to more glory to the Lord Jesus than if I weren’t in a struggle. My cancer battle gave me a platform to enlarge my eternal estate, like it says in Romans 8:18, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not comparing with the glory that is going to be revealed to us.” So when it comes to battling cancer, no matter how overwhelmed you feel by it and all its attending problems, your life counts. It counts for eternity. The smile you give to others in the waiting room, the notes of encouragement you jot to your fellow patients in the chemo clinic, the doughnuts you bring in for the staff, the phone call of appreciation to your doctor’s assistant, the cookies you bake for the women’s group who is praying for you – all these things count! And because it’s cancer, these things count in a big way – to you, to others, and to God.
The Son of God, Jesus Christ, suffered and died so that you would be more than a conqueror in your battle with cancer. And cancer doesn’t win if you die; cancer only wins if you fail to cherish Jesus Christ, as John Piper once said, [and he also had cancer] “There’s no better opportunity to glorify the Lord than when you approach cancer with a trusting attitude.” Now I share all this and more in my booklet, “Diagnosed with Breast Cancer.” And I’d love to send you a free copy to give to a friend that you know is in treatment. Ask for my cancer booklet today at joniradio.org. Again, that’s joniradio.org. And remember, with Christ you are more than a conqueror.
© Joni and Friends