Biblical Resolutions Distilled from a Battle With Cancer Continued

August 24, 2010 By revheff in Personal Reflection Tags: cancer, prayer, resolutions, suffering, trials Leave a comment

Recently I introduced a new series of articles based upon my five year anniversary this August from finishing cancer treatment and remaining cancer-free.

When I first returned to the pulpit in November of 2005, I preached a series of three sermons from Psalm 116 entitled Seven Biblical Resolutions Distilled from a Battle with Cancer. You can listen to part one here.

I articulated this theme from the text in light of the apparent deliverance enjoyed by the psalmist from some recent life-and-death threat:

Deliverance by God from desperate straits warrants renewed resolves in a relationship with God.

In the last post I addressed the first and arguably most important resolve toward God when He comes through big time in our lives – resolved to delight in God (1a). Now for the second.

Resolved – to pray to God (1b-4).

One major reason for the expanded intensity of the psalmist’s love for God comes from his experience of answered prayer. I love the Lord because he has heard my voice and pleas for mercy. Because he inclined his ear to me. The Hebrew word for inclined means to stretch out. There is something here of the condescension of our glorious God who bends down from heaven and cups a hand to His ear in order to hear even our faintest of prayers to Him.

Never is that more appropriate than in a time of crisis. Look at vv. 3-4 – the snares of death encompassed me; the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me; I suffered distress and anguish. THEN, I called on the name of the Lord (emphasis added). And he gives us the very words of his prayer – O Lord, I pray, deliver my soul! Not a particularly long prayer. Not a particularly eloquent prayer. Certainly not a difficult prayer. But prayer enough for the dire circumstances. Deliver me.

I can’t tell you how many times I lay my head down on the pillow at night during the final months of treatment and simply prayed, O Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. It’s all I could muster.

Why night after night should any of us pray? Because God has decreed and ordained that He will work in our lives through the means of answered prayer. As a result the writer makes his first overt resolve in v. 2 – Therefore I will call on him as long as I live.

Answers to prayer in the past and present should act as impetus for faithfulness in prayer in the future. God never changes. He is faithful to answer prayer. He hears and dispatches the angels of heaven to minister to our needs.

Just consider one verse from Phil. 1:19 to see Paul’s confidence in the efficacy of prayer to bring about deliverance: (writing from prison) For I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance – speaking of his imprisonment in Rome. We need both, the prayers of God’s people and the help of the Spirit.

I shudder to think where I would be today without the steadfast intercession of saints all over the world who lifted me up to heaven during my battle with cancer – especially on the foremost of requests that I not sin against God with my lips. This is the great risk in desperate straits. We turn our backs on God. We take issue with Him. We find Him less than good because He ordains as v. 6 puts it that we be brought low. God is just as good in a biopsy that tests positive as He is in one that tests negative.

Don’t ever underestimate the role of prayer in dealing with a crisis of any magnitude. Pray yourself and solicit the prayers of others at every turn.

"I Can't Find Anything Wrong with You"

August 20, 2010 By revheff in Personal Reflection Tags: cancer, death, healing, thanksgiving 7 Comments

Sweeter words a man has rarely heard.

They came from the lips of my ENT on Wednesday.

He spoke them after doing the upteenth exam on my mouth, tongue, and neck over the last five years, looking yet again for any evidences of cancer.

The verdict? I can’t find anything wrong with you. Good thing he wasn’t doing an exam on my sinful heart!

And so I graduate. I will miss the good doctor, but not the exams. He conveyed upon me the degree, Master of Life. Best one of the four I have ever gotten.

No need to see him or the radiation oncologist any more. Only my medical oncologist remains to sign off on the “cured” designation for my five year battle against head and neck cancer before the lot falls to my dentist alone to stand guard against another invasion of renegade cells.

Cool. Five years is a long time. I’ve dreamed of August 2010 many times. That God allowed me to make it and that we will celebrate that gift on the 29th at 6 PM at the SDA sanctuary AND that doc said he would come (please pray that he does) all have made for a very good month for me. I am grateful. Extremely grateful.

The poet, himself the beneficiary of his own miraculous deliverance from death, asked in Psalm 116:12, What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me?

The answer comes in vv. 13-14.

13 I will lift up the cup of salvation
and call on the name of the Lord,
14 I will pay my vows to the Lord
in the presence of all his people.

Oh, Lord God, make me faithful to do the same. Faithful to do the same.

Biblical Resolutions Distilled from a Battle With Cancer Continued

August 17, 2010 By revheff in Personal Reflection Tags: cancer, delight, deliverance, Joy, resolutions Leave a comment

A few posts back I introduced a new series of articles based upon my five year anniversary this August from finishing cancer treatment and remaining cancer-free.

I articulated this theme from the text in light of the apparent deliverance enjoyed by the psalmist from some recent life-and-death threat:

Deliverance by God from desperate straits warrants renewed resolves in a relationship with God.

In this post I want to address the first and arguably most important resolve toward God when He comes through big time in our lives.

First, resolved to delight in God (1a).

We needn’t look beyond the first few words of the psalm to sense the tenor of things in the sweet singer’s heart. I love the Lord. Actually the Hebrew text has no object. It begins with one word, the verb love. I love. We supply the object, Yahweh, from the clause that follows – because he has heard my voice. I love the Lord. Here is a man who is more in love with God than ever. The Law of God commands love for Him (Deut. 6:5). Passionate love. With all you heart and all your soul and all your might.

Emotions are no insignificant part of the spiritual life. The Bible has much to say about what you know AND what you feel. It mattered enough to Jesus to ask Peter three times on the shores of Galilee, Simon, do you love me more than these (John 21:15-17). Psalm 37:4 commands, Delight yourself in the Lord. You simply cannot read the psalms, a book of poetry and songs, without acknowledging the depth of emotions experienced by the believer in God.

It shocks me how indiscriminate I am with the word love. I say things like, I love food. I couldn’t say that for much of 2005. Nothing tasted as it should. Radiation had traumatized my taste buds. I forced myself to eat. I resorted to watching Emeril Live on the Food Network, imagining what it would be like to eat like that again. What astonished me about this was the level of grief I experienced over the loss of food – its taste, its fellowship, its uniqueness at a fine restaurant, its pairing with a glass of wine. The Lord took all that from me then. And the question that came to me with overwhelming force from the Spirit was, Curt, will you find your soul’s satisfaction in me even if eating is never quite the same passion for you? Do you love me more than steak, than pasta, than your wife’s to-die-for Black Magic cake?

To help me answer this, or at least put me on the road to the right answer, God gave me John Piper’s new book God is the Gospel to read at that time. He laments in the introduction:

We have turned the love of God and the gospel of Christ into a divine endorsement of our delight in many lesser things, especially the delight in our being made much of. The acid test of biblical God-centeredness – and faithfulness to the gospel – is this: Do you feel more loved because God makes much of you, or because, at the cost of his Son, he enables you to enjoy making much of him forever? Does your happiness hang on seeing the cross of Christ as a witness to your worth, or as a way to enjoy God’s worth forever? Is God’s glory in Christ the foundation of your gladness (pp. 11-12, emphasis added).

This is a God-centered psalm. Though the writer clearly appreciates God for His gifts, it is clear that he sees them as rays from the radiant beam of God’s goodness and follows them back to the source and proclaims his unadulterated love for Him first and last. No less than fifteen times he uses the personal name for God, Yahweh. He is enamored with God. God is his all-consuming obsession. He could easily sing with Asaph in Psalm 73:25-26 – Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

What song do you tend to sing these days? If God has rescued you recently in any way, shape or form, may I suggest to you that you should respond with a greater resolve than ever to delight yourself in Him?

Biblical Resolutions Distilled from a Battle with Cancer

August 12, 2010 By revheff in Personal Reflection Tags: cancer, death, deliverance, resolutions 2 Comments

As August marks the five year anniversary of my finishing treatment for head and neck cancer, I find myself thinking a lot about that season in my life. I had no idea going in what a monumental deliverance God would work on my behalf through the process. It amounted, in my estimation, to nothing less than a rescue from the jaws of death.

For that reason I had little trouble deciding what text to preach from when I finally returned to the pulpit. God drew me to Psalm 116. You can listen to the first of these sermons here.

There the anonymous psalmist clearly celebrates a miraculous deliverance from some desperate straits. He uses terms that suggest he nearly lost his life. He thought he was a goner. For example, in v. 3 he writes, the snares of death encompassed me. And in v. 8 – you have delivered my soul from death.

He wrote the psalm post-deliverance to celebrate the miraculous intervention of God into his precarious circumstances. Laced throughout the text we find repeated resolves. This thing, whatever it was, made an astonishing impact on the writer. He recorded the specifics for the church in all ages.

From his example I drew this thesis for a series of three messages:

Deliverance by God from desperate straits warrants renewed resolves in a relationship with God.

When God intervenes in your plight and brings you through to the other side and you know that no one else but He could have engineered your deliverance, then it makes all the sense in the world to assess your relationship with Him and make serious resolves to strengthen it. There are seven in the text and, Lord willing, I will blog about them one-by-one throughout the rest of this month.

I continue to be grateful for length of days and look forward to our special celebration of thanksgiving for this miraculous deliverance on August 29!

Another Servant of God in a Fight with Cancer

December 18, 2009 By revheff in Others, Uncategorized Tags: cancer, faith, illness, suffering 2 Comments

I learned recently that Pastor Matt Chandler of the The Village Church was diagnosed with a tumor in his right frontal lobe. He collapsed with a seizure on Thanksgiving. Since then he underwent an operation to remove the tumor. Things have spread. Further treatment options are under consideration.

Pray for Pastor Matt and his family, OGC. You understand better than most. Take a moment and watch the little over four minute video by Matt here. So much of what he says was exactly where God had me in ’05 in my battle with head and neck cancer.

I wish him, his family, and his church well. If God is pleased to bring him back, he will come back with greater force.

Matt, my heart goes out to you. I’m in your corner. Fight the good fight. Dying is gain but for the sake of others it may be best to remain.