"When you get cancer, denying the diagnosis does no good."

A thought by Mark Batterson from his book, Win the Day (p. 42). The Crown Publishers Group. Kindle Edition.  (Click on the book title to go to Amazon to buy the book.)

Such a good thought!

Mark says, "If you don’t own it, it will own you. Kissing the wave is confessing what’s wrong—in this case, cancer. But it’s also professing what’s right—God’s healing power. Remember my miraculous healing from asthma? It began with a brave prayer. For Lora, (his wife with breast cancer) the healing process began with a brave question she stumbled across while reading a poem about illness:

"What have you come to teach me?"

He goes on, "When we find ourselves in difficult situations, we get so focused on getting out of them that we fail to get anything out of them. Then we wonder why we find ourselves in the same situation all over again. There is nothing wrong with asking God to change your circumstances, but His primary objective is changing you. The circumstances you’re asking God to change may be the very circumstances He is using to change you.

"In the words of John Piper, 'Don’t waste your cancer.'1 You can fill in the blank with whatever challenge you face. Don’t waste it! Maybe it has come to teach you a lesson that could not be learned any other way! Kissing the wave starts with a brave question: What have you come to teach me?"

He continues, "You don’t need to sabotage yourself—that’s for sure. Suffering will find you soon enough. When it does, you must recognize that it has the power to enrich your life in a way that nothing else can. If you find yourself in a season of suffering, that is a difficult sentence to read. I acknowledge that, and I don’t stand in judgment over others, because I don’t stand in their shoes. I don’t pretend to know the trauma you’ve endured. I do know this: everyone is fighting a battle we know nothing about."

He then says, "Lora and I have experienced our fair share of grief and pain and disappointment. I’m not sure where we rank on the bell curve, especially compared with those who have experienced injustice or aren’t sure where their next meals are coming from. Like our memories, suffering is subjective. We have some long-lasting regrets, like every parent I know. We have deep wells of sadness, like every person I know. We have walked through the valley of the shadow of death more than once, and we have the emotional scars to prove it. We’ve also seen God turn some of our toughest tests into our most treasured testimonies. We wouldn’t want to live those seasons all over again, but we wouldn’t trade them for anything in the world. Every testimony starts with test. Pass the test, and you get a testimony, and testimony is the way you overcome the next obstacle!"

So, will you let God use your testimony as a living example? Will you?

Yes, yes!

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