Testimony for Vision Ministries Canada seminar

This selected edition has been shortened for privacy. Identifiable references to other people and granular medical details have been omitted.

As many of you know, this past summer I was diagnosed with cancer. This came as a tremendous shock to me and my family. My prognosis was not good.

So I went from being a healthy, active 49 year old, to finding myself in a battle for life itself. I felt like you feel when you are writing a 12 page exam and you’re only on page 3, when the proctor announces that there are just 5 minutes left.

Two things came to my mind when I received this devastating news…

1. That God was in this. This thing had crashed into my life so suddenly, so seemingly “out of the blue”, that it just had to be God’s doing. I did not feel—and I still do not feel—that this was something evil that had invaded my life, and that had to be rebuked or resisted on the level of spiritual warfare.

   In Isaiah 45:6-7, the Lord says, “I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.” And that’s the way I feel about my situation. God brought it about, and He was asking me to trust Him as I walked into it. He not only numbers the hairs on my head, he knows every cell in my body, including the cancer cells, and He is in control.

   I’m glad God gave me this perspective because it has given me a real sense of peace. And it made me eager to see how He was going to bring glory to Himself through it. I made up my mind that, no matter how this thing turned out—whether I lived or I died—my goal was for God to get the glory.

2. The second thing I wondered about was the timing. Erindale Bible Chapel has been growing, and I was enjoying the ministry as I never had before. I was excited about the many good things that were happening at Erindale. Someone asked me if I would ever consider going back to the States. And I just said “No, I’d like to spend the rest of my life at Erindale.” And then, all of a sudden, it looked as though God was going to take me up on that – and sooner rather than later! The timing was just so strange.

   Yet, when the congregation learned the news about me, there was an outpouring of love and support and prayer such I had never seen before. People began to fast. The church set up a 24 hour prayer chain.

   People in our church began to pray as never before—and not just about me—but about everyone and every thing that needed prayer. Our prayer meeting has doubled. And people were loving each other, and hugging each other, and worshiping the Lord as never before. There is such a sense of the presence of God in our midst when we come together. And I looked at all that, and marveled at the way God was using my illness to give people a sense of passion and urgency about their faith.

   As the news spread, there was a further outpouring of prayer and support, as people began calling on God to do a miracle. I began to hear from people literally around the world, all of them praying for a miracle. I can’t even begin to tell you how humbling this was. And yet, God was using it to bring glory to Himself.

I have been able to keep preaching and leading at Erindale – for which I am so thankful. And I have found myself just reveling in the privilege of studying and preparing to communicate the Word of God. And there is just such an air of expectancy and receptivity amongst the people at Erindale.

So, I have to say that the past four months since August have been by far the scariest days of my life, but in another way, they have been the best days of my life. I have never felt more alive and in tune with God’s purpose.

And I can say with Paul “Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” And I can say with David in Psalm 119… “It was good for me to be afflicted.”

So that’s where I’m at just now. To God be the glory! Thanks for listening and God bless you.