Looking back through my notes on the verses about hope and my last post, I noticed some items that can only be described as stinkin' thinkin'. I had grown frustrated and was emotionally down. I had climbed up on my pity pot and gotten comfortable. Satan used this opportunity to pounce like the lion he is and plant ideas about God that are just not true.
The idea that I have had recently that has unsettled me the most is the thought that God has chosen not to heal my cancer or relieve any of the symptoms because there is a lesson He wants me to learn. WHAT!? The only thing I can think of to compare this line of thinking to is that of a father and son. The father has told his son not to do something but, as boys are inclined to do, he does it anyway. The result is that he breaks his arm. To teach his son a lesson on obedience, the father decides not to take his son to the doctor for two days. We all recognize immediately that this father is abusive. Yet we have no problem assigning those same attributes to God. How many times have we thought that God has allowed bad circumstances to come into our lives to teach us a lesson? I am not talking about suffering the consequences of our choices but about things we have no control over, well, like cancer. I am convinced that God desires the best for me and for me to be completely healed and whole again. In the Bible Jesus even says, "Who of you, if his son asked for a loaf of bread would give him a stone, or a fish would give him a snake?" I am going to have to bind Satan daily to keep this kind of stinkin' thinkin' in check.
Some of you may be thinking to yourselves that I am being a little tough on myself. I have been convicted that I simply can not allow this kind of thinking to enter my mind and comments. During my study of the verses about hope, there were several verses that spoke of people who had lost their hope in Jesus or wandered away from God. Jesus wants His relationship with these people restored. From the reading of these verses, I am burdened with the thought that they are watching me and probably reading what I write here. I have to be mindful of that and be sure that nothing I say, do or write validates their belief that God does not love them or care for them.
Another thing that I have learned the past few weeks is that cancer is not just a physical battle but also a mental and spiritual battle as well. I was reminded of this when I read 1 Thessalonians 5:8:
"But since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation."
I was struck by how the battle gear of Christ covers the two areas that cancer has attacked. I will daily have to put on this gear to fight the battle with cancer. God may use the doctors, nurses, medicines and procedures as tools that lead to healing but in the end, God will use faith, love and hope to provide complete healing.
God is not using cancer to teach me a lesson, but eventually He will use my healing to teach Satan a lesson.
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