The Positive Side Of Cancer Helps Us Focus On Healing

 

The positive side of cancer

helps us focus on healing.

There comes a time in most people’s life when we find  ourselves

battling with an illness or sickness of one type or another.  For
some there are small bouts with minor ailments, but for others
very significant battles with chronic issues, like cancer.
It is seldom that a person is not touched by sickness over an entire
lifetime, and virtually impossible that we are not touched by the
illnesses of those within our sphere of care and influence.
God has a plan even when it is sickness or cancer.
James 5: 13-16

Charles Spurgeon once said, “Health is a gift from God, but sickness is a gift greater still.” Throughout his time in this world, Spurgeon suffered with various physical ailments that eventually took his life prematurely. He longed to be well but he recognized the supreme value of being sick and he thanked God for it because it was his pain that caused him to desperately draw near to God.

Let’s quote Spurgeon again he said

“I venture to say that the greatest earthly blessing that God can give to any of us is health, with the exception of sickness. Sickness has frequently been of more use to the saints of God than health has.”

What is he saying if not that we actually

learn more in the place of pain and suffering and disease than we
often do in the place of comfort and ease.
So when we hear a quote like that from Spurgeon we must not
Pass it off as rationalization and pie in the sky avoidance of the
reality of pain and loss here, but the recognition that we were
made for eternity, not time, we will live eternally, not only in time
in these mortal bodies, and that therefore the reality of our
eternal life and heavenly home IS far better than even the best
day we ever experienced here on earth.

 

It Took Cancer To Make Me Look At My Life, And Live.

It took cancer to make me look at my life and how
I should live it. (A positive side to cancer.)

 

"I love life and do everything I can to live each day better than the day before. I know I sound like a greeting card," Gary Bonacker says, "but it's a good way to live."

In the spring of 2003, Gary was diagnosed with a stage 2 brain tumor. But just 10 months after surgery that removed only half of the tumor, Gary rode alongside Lance Armstrong at the Ride for the Roses cycling event in Austin, Texas.

"It was something I'll remember for the rest of my life," Gary says. It inspired him to go home to Bend, Oregon, and start his own cycling event to raise money for cancer. The Tour des Chutes has grown from 750 riders in 2005 to over 1,100 riders for the 2010 ride. The money raised during the event helps fund the cancer survivorship program at St. Charles Cancer Center, which provides medical care for many of the cancer patients in Bend and other nearby communities.

The years since have not been easy. Gary was diagnosed with his brain tumor in 2003, and he still battles it every day. He requires ongoing treatment to slow the growth of the tumor and is on anti-seizure medicines. With fatigue and multiple health problems, he has had to limit his work a great deal.

"There's not a day that I don't go into a dark place, thinking about things I might miss," he says. "But my family, workplace, and friends, and my event help me through it. My other coping strategy is to read about research and learn everything that I can about my disease. I've surprised doctors with information they weren't even aware of.

"I have heard people with cancer say it is a gift," he jokes. "Well, I would take that gift back, if possible."

Gary continues to do his best and move on with his life. Besides planning his annual fundraiser, he says that spending time with his family, gardening, and fishing are his best coping strategies. And, of course, cycling.

"What's sad is that it took getting cancer to make me look at my life and how I should live it," Gary says. "We take a lot for granted. But I don't any longer." (From National Cancer Institute)

 

Cancer Introduces A Person To Hope.(Positive Side to Cancer)

    We are introduced to hope when we have cancer because from that point on we hope that we will get better or we hope we can have the grace to go through it victoriously.
A Definition of Hope
What is hope? Is it a wishy washy maybe or a kind of unsure optimism? The modern idea of hope is “to wish for, to expect, but without certainty of the fulfillment; to desire very much, but with no real assurance of getting your desire.”
“Hope” in Scripture means“a strong and confident expectation.”

In summary, hope is the confident expectation, the sure certainty that what God has promised in the Word is true, has occurred, and or will in accordance with God’s sure Word.

A Description of Hope. If we were to describe HOPE we could say that…..
It is Dynamic or Active.

June Hunt has an interesting note on the use the anchor to symbolize hope...

For centuries, anchors have been a symbol of hope. This emblem was especially significant to the early persecuted church. Many etchings of anchors were discovered in the catacombs of Rome, where Christians held their meetings in hiding. Threatened with death because of their faith, these committed Christians used the anchor as a disguised cross and as a marker to guide the way to their secret meetings. Located beneath the ancient city, 600 miles of these tomb-like burial chambers served as a place of refuge during perilous times of persecution. Thus, the anchor—found even on some tombstones today—has become the symbol of guaranteed hope for the eternal security of true Christians. (Biblical Counseling Keys on Hope: The Anchor of Your Soul)

It has been said that man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, and about eight minutes without air—but only one second without hope! (Anon)

The Italian poet, Dante, in Divine Comedy, penned this inscription over the world of the dead...

“Abandon all hope,
you who enter here!”

One might paraphrase Dante's dismal declaration...
Life without Christ is a hopeless end
but life in Christ is an endless hope


If our hope is biblical and based on God's promises, it will put us in gear.

It has Results
(1) It changes how we see ourselves. It changes us into pilgrim persons, people who see this life as temporary sojourn.
(2) It changes what we value. Hope, if biblical, makes us heavenly minded rather than earthly minded.
(3) It affects what we do with our lives—our talents, time, treasures.

   The Christian life, if it is grasped according to God's truth, is a magnificent obsession with an eternal hope, a hope that does not lead to an escapist attitude, but to the pursuit of life on a whole new dimension. It makes you bullish, as we might say today, on the potentials of this life as stewards of God. It gives us power to live courageously, to be all God has called us to be in Christ.