You are promised trouble in this world, but with God’s grace you can be confident that you will make it to the other side. Christ has overcome the world! He always seems bigger when you need him most, so call on him in your trouble today.
I’m Joni Eareckson Tada and my friend Sue is dying of cancer.
I first learned about Sue when a donor to Joni and Friends wrote to say that her friend was struggling with excruciating pain in the last stages of cancer. The donor asked me to please write Sue. And when I am asked to do things like that, I can never reply in a vacuum. I cannot respond without being emotionally involved. These dear ones who are struggling, especially with a painful cancer, I look at them as friends. It’s not like, “oh, Joni, write this personal letter;” I just can’t do it without caring. And so, these people like Sue quickly become my friends.
They also are people for whom I pray. In fact, I prayed for words, for wisdom as to what to say to Sue – her battle against cancer is winding down, and she’s struggling with severe pain – cancer pain always feels worse when there’s no treatment to be done. And so, I reminded Sue that Jesus was right when he said in John 16:33, “In this world you will have trouble.” But Jesus didn’t leave it at that. He gave extraordinary hope when he also said, "everyone who believes in me shall never die." Like I told my friend, cancer does not win if you do die; it only wins if you abandon Jesus in it. I didn’t come up with that phrase; John Piper did. And it’s true. “Cancer does not win if we die. It wins,” as he said, “if we fail to cherish Christ.” It only wins if you allow it to erode your convictions about the God of the Bible.
Yet, I also know that excruciating pain can dim the reality of even a powerful truth like that. And so, like I told Sue, I asked her that with every morphine drip, with every swallow of OxyContin, please hold fast to anchors of hope from God’s Word. Anchors like 2 Corinthians 4:8, “we are hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed.” Pain cannot crush us. Oh, it may press us in hard on all sides, but it cannot crush us. The Bible promises that it will not. And if we can be bolstered, we can have the assurance that there’s a glorious finish line, and when we run those last few steps in the race of life, when we finally break that tape, we’ll enter a world with no more pain, no more sorrow or tears, no night, or sighing, or regret.
As a lifelong quadriplegic, I think about this constantly. Like, when I wake up in the middle of the night hurting and I pray, Lord, I can’t go on... I don’t have the strength, I refuse to let those emotions go down the dark, grim path to despair. So instead, I’ll quickly pray, “Jesus, I don’t have the strength; but you do.” And the weaker I am, the harder I must lean on Jesus; and the harder I lean on Him, the stronger I discover Him to be. God always seems bigger to those who need Him most. And right now, Sue and me and maybe you, too, we need Jesus a lot. Pain may try to shrink our world, but Jesus said, "Take heart! I have overcome the world." And so, whether you’ve got cancer or if you live with severe pain, I’m asking you to take a deep breath and let God carry you across the finish line, as he promises in Isaiah, "I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear [you]; I will carry and [I] will save you." And so, like Sue, be confident that with God’s grace, you will make it to the other side. And I so look forward to meeting you on that glorious day described in Malachi 4 when we "will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall." We shall skip about like calves with not a care nor a pain. That’s a promise that’s helping Sue get to that finish line.
© Joni and Friends