John Piper - Dont Waste Your Cancer

Dont Waste Your Cancer

Copyright 2011 by Desiring God Foundation

Published by Crossway
1300 Crescent Street
Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

Adapted from Dont Waste Your Cancer, appendix in Suffering and the Sovereignty of God (Crossway), copyright 2006 by Desiring God, 20717.

Cover design: Studio Gearbox

Cover photo: Masterfile and Getty Images

First printing 2011

Printed in the United States of America

Scripture quotations are from the ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version), copyright 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-2322-9
PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-2331-1
Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-2332-8
ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-2333-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Piper, John 1946

Dont waste your cancer / John Piper.

p.cm.

ISBN 978-1-4335-2322-9 (saddle stitch)

1. CancerPatientsReligious life. 2. CancerReligious aspectsChristianity. I. Title.

BV4910.33.P57 2010

248.8'6196994dc22

2010036245

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

BP 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

I originally wrote this on the eve of prostate-cancer surgery. I believed then, and I believe now, in Gods power to healby miracle and by medicine. I believe it is right and good to pray for both kinds of healing. Cancer is not wasted when it is healed by God. He gets the glory, and that is why cancer exists. So not to pray for healing may waste our cancer.

But healing is not Gods plan for everyone in this life. And there are many other ways to waste our cancer. As I prayed for myself, and continue to do so, I also pray for you that we will not waste this pain.

At this time (five years after my surgery) the evidence is that they got it. But I have learned that one day we think we are well, and the next day we find out we are not. So now when people ask me, Hows your health? I say, I feel fine. And the doctors are pleased. Which, being translated, means: I dont know how I am; only God knows.

That God knows, and cares, and rules, is enough. The passage of Scripture that came to my mind while I waited for the biopsy was 1 Thessalonians 5:910: God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our L ORD Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. That is enough. I am not destined for wrath, but to live with Christ.

Until we see him, may God help us not waste our health or our cancer.

All suffering is owing to the fall of Adam and Eve into sin. God subjected the world to futility because of that disobedience (Romans 8:20). So, in one sense, all suffering is judgment. But since Christ bore our judgment, thats not what suffering is for us who believe. For us, the groanings of disease have become the labor pains of a new creation. We know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.... We ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies (Romans 8:2223).

When God subjected the world to futility, he did it in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God (Romans 8:21). So the groaning of our cancer has a double meaning. It means that sin is horrible, and it means that glorious freedom is coming. We will waste our cancer if we dont hear in our own groanings the labor pains of the new creation.

Labor pains mean that something wonderful is coming. Thats what our cancer means. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison (2 Corinthians 4:17). Dont misinterpret your own groanings. Dont waste the witness of your own cancer.

It will not do to say that God only uses our cancer but does not design it. What God permits, he permits for a reason. And that reason is his design. If God foresees molecular developments becoming cancer, he can stop it, or not. If he does not, he has a purpose. Since he is infinitely wise, it is right to call this purpose a design.

Satan is real and causes many pleasures and pains. But he is not ultimate. So when he strikes Job with boils (Job 2:7), Job attributes it ultimately to God (Job 2:10), and the inspired writer agrees: They... comforted him for all the evil that the L ORD had brought upon him (Job 42:11). If we dont believe our cancer is designed for us by God, we will waste it.

A father who had just lost his child asked me, Can a Christian family be cursed? So many things had piled up. My answer is no, but it certainly can feel like it. Satan tries to destroy some of us by increasing our health and wealth, which can strangle our faith (Matthew 13:22). And he tries to destroy others by multiplying their pain (Luke 13:16).

But the reason I say Gods people cannot be cursed is that God said to them, There is no enchantment against Jacob, no divination against Israel (Numbers 23:23). And more importantly, those who trust Christ are united to him, and in him there is no condemnation (Romans 8:1). No curse. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us (Galatians 3:13). Christ has taken the curse of our condemnation and the curse of our diseases.

That means the diseases we still bear are not a curse. They have been transformed from a punitive pathway to hell into a purifying pathway to heaven. We are not cursed. As hard as it is to feel this, we believe God is not withholding good. He is doing good.

The L ORD God is a sun and shield;
the L ORD bestows favor and honor.
No good thing does he withhold
from those who walk uprightly. (Psalm 84:11)

The design of God in our cancer is not to train us in the rationalistic, human calculation of odds. The world gets comfort from their odds. Not Christians. Some count their chariots (percentages of survival) and some count their horses (side effects of treatment), but we trust in the name of the L ORD our God (Psalm 20:7). Gods design is clear from 2 Corinthians 1:9: We felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. The aim of God in our cancer (among a thousand other good things) is to knock props out from under our hearts so that we rely utterly on him.

We will all die if Jesus postpones his return. Not to think about what it will be like to leave this life and meet God is folly. Ecclesiastes 7:2 says, It is better to go to the house of mourning [a funeral] than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart. How can we lay it to heart if we dont ever think about it? Psalm 90:12 says, Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. Numbering our days means thinking about how few there are and that they will end. How will we get a heart of wisdom if we refuse to think about this? What a waste, if we do not think about death.