Mom, I Have Cancer

Sometimes you can start a routine day not aware that the events of that day may change your life forever. A day like that happened for me on a Thursday morning in February. I had just finished my staff meeting at the Florida Home Care agency where I worked as a psychiatric nurse when I got a call from my 28-year-old daughter who lived in the Washington DC area.

She was always a strong person, but I heard the quiet quiver in her voice as she told me, “Mom, the doctors say I have cancer. Lymphoma.”

I replied calmer than I felt. “Okay honey. I’ll tell Dad and the reinforcements are on the way.”

I hung up the phone and began to weep. Turning to another nurse, I said in unbelief, “My daughter has cancer.” She grabbed me gently by the shoulders and spoke firmly to me. “You are a person of faith, Barbara.” I smiled and nodded.

Now I turned to the task of calling my husband. This time it was my voice that quivered. He noticed it and admonished me, “We can’t afford to allow ourselves a moment of fear or unbelief.” He decided to immediately get in the car and drive the 12-hour trip to be with our daughter. I stayed home until I could make arrangements for my elderly mom to get back to her home in Connecticut.

Bill spent three days with Gabrielle and her roommate expounding on what the Bible has to say about healing and faith. Then I flew in to stay with her and for the next week we continued searching the scriptures for every Word of God on the subject of healing and faith.

The first problem that confronted us was the years of misconceptions and false realities that surround the Christian world and choke faith. Statements like, “You never know what God will do” and “Some people He chooses to heal and some he doesn’t”. What if my daughter was someone he didn’t choose to heal?

Some people say that God ordains certain people to travel hard paths for his own greater purposes. Equally frightening were the thoughts in my mind, “What if we didn’t have enough faith to receive a healing?” Did I believe enough? Would Gabrielle? Funny how worrying about my faith levels only made me feel trapped in doubt and unbelief.

It seems that teaching about what Jesus, The Word, says about healing brings some people under condemnation, or so they tell me. I’ve been told that “I prayed and prayed and I didn’t get healed. Are you saying there is something wrong with me because I wasn’t healed?” Or maybe people just think you are being self-righteous and condescending. I can’t answer for other people or their situations. That is a personal place between them and God. I can only determine to press in my walk with Him.

How did all these conflicting teachings start? How did we go from the vibrant, powerful New Testament church to the confused, divided body we are now? The early church was filled with the Spirit and followed Jesus’ straightforward command in Matthew 10:7-8.

And as you go, preach, saying the Kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils, freely ye have received, freely give.

And in the great commission of Mark 16:15-18,

And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believes and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believes not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe; in my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hand on the sick and they shall recover.

The early church knew what they were sent to do and they did it. But as the years went by most of the apostles and evangelists and lay people who knew their God were gone. Jesus even warned the great church of Ephesus to return to their first love or He would remove their candlestick out of its place. (Rev. 2:1-7).

They were doing many commendable things. They were laboring for him. He didn’t say they weren’t saved and going to heaven. They had lost that first love of just wanting to be with Jesus, to talk with him, to think and share about him every moment of their life.

He was telling them that without that type of walk with Jesus, the church would not remain the strongest church of the first century and be the living presence of Jesus to the pagan world. They would not be doing the works of Jesus as they were commanded to do. Gradually the fire of the early church dimmed. The Ephesus church is no more.

The historian Eusebius reported that about the year 312 Constantine, the current Caesar, believed he saw Christ in the sky. Instead of persecuting the Christians as they had for 300 years, he eventually decreed that everyone had to be a Christian. Now during the first 300 years, Christians would rather burn or be fed to lions than to denounce their faith and follow another god. Persecution kept them on their knees and relying on the one true God. But pagans had no such reservations about changing “religions” if it meant saving their lives or giving them favor with people. So, pagans joined an organization without ever having given their heart and lives to a living Christ and Messiah. With them came many of the pagan ceremonies and traditions that now are part of the church.

In American history, the Puritans did the same thing to the church. They came to the new world with such high principles and goals. As the years went by, they demanded that no one could hold public office or have a prominent position unless they were part of the church. So people signed on the dotted line without ever having had a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. Eventually all you had to do to qualify was be born into a family that professed Christ. So, leaders began heading the church who were themselves unsaved. They knew little or nothing about healing.