Humilitive

September 2024

When your loved one is diagnosed with cancer, you begin to consider all of what you have heard around you about the disease. It can be aggressive, it can be put to rest and then return, there are forms of it for which there is currently no cure. Our minds immediately go to this negative place. For many years, I would listen to or watch a multitude of pastors that would often start their sentences with “God said to me…” It was incredibly difficult for me to believe that somehow God was speaking to them because I, for one, had never heard him. At some point a few years ago, I mentioned this to a colleague of mine who was also incredibly spiritual and who would often discuss questions of faith with me. I said that no matter how often I had prayed, I never really felt like I would hear a response or even really have a definitive sign that He was listening. She said something to me that day that stuck with me and I continue to think about it every time I pray. She said it is important that after you have prayed, you also stop and listen. When I have prayed for something and I feel my prayer has not been answered, I stop praying and I release it all putting it in God’s hands to do what He plans. The words “thy will be done” are words I repeat often in the Lord’s Prayer as many of us do, but how often do we stop and consider that in those conversations with God, the path we are on is not up to us because it is not our will, it is His.

After my wife had had some of the tumor from her colon removed, it was sent to the lab. We waited for so many days to hear the result. I prayed every night and then in the quiet and the darkness, I heard the words of my colleague again. You need to stop and listen. So, I did. The call from the doctor’s office came when we were driving back to our place of work together. I quickly pulled alongside the road next to a home with many tall, beautiful trees. I looked into the yard of trees and also through them, my mind swirling. At some point, he said he had only been able to remove parts of the outer portion of the tumor to send it, but he said none of those parts showed any sign of cancer. He cautioned that the inside of the tumor could still contain some, but as it was, he said the labs showed no cancer.

At this point in my journey, I had made the mistake of going online and inputting the information about the tumor that I knew and, of course, none of the news was positive. The majority of it was negative. So, my mind was immediately filled with questions about how he could have found no cancer when everything else pointed to the possibility that it was. In that moment, I looked over at my wife. What I can only describe as a “voice” overcame me completely. It was something that I was able to hear, feel, and perceive in every way. It was loud and it shook me to my core. The words I felt were “Imagine what I can do”. My wife had continued the conversation and discussed next steps. For a moment, I looked around wondering if someone was there and had said something. I struggled to find an explanation that made sense. I was filled with an incredible amount of joy, sadness, and even fear–a mixture of emotions I have never in my life felt before. It was palpable and just as quickly as it overtook me, it was gone.

My wife hung up the phone and we continued down the road contemplating how good the news was. I did not share what I had experienced with her at that time as I was truly unsure of what had transpired and I found it so fantastical myself that I did not want to worry her and have her think I was somehow losing my sanity. I doubted it for a moment myself.

As our journey continued, I realized that this voice was meant to comfort me and was there to provide something that would be difficult for me to keep believing in–that the impossible could be possible.

Ephisians 3:20-21 tells us that we give God all the glory for his ability to do what we cannot even consider, think about, or even imagine. It is no accident that I heard these words for God was not done testing me yet. Though I feel that sometimes I began to question my faith, He never questioned my ability to continue to keep my eyes open, to be willing to trust, and to consider that what I have set in my own mind, my imagination, may be impossible, I should instead imagine it being completely possible.

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”