TheFlyingChristian wrote:Your member name is very familiar to me, indeed. I am lebanese, I do not know about you. But I still go to the maronite church on Sundays but my vision of the church has changed.
I thought so but didn't want to make any assumptions. I am a Lebanese Maronite as well (I bet you can guess where I'm from). It is wonderful to know your sights are still on God, no matter the denomination or the church affiliation. Organized religion is one thing, the catholic church of Christ is quite another. One of these days if you feel up to it I'd like to hear how your vision of the church has changed and why (you can send me a private message if you prefer).
TheFlyingChristian wrote:The pain I had to endure was nothing compared to other people that suffered, I didn't lose all my hair and I kept praying for such, I even passed some exams at school which allowed me to access next grade. During my disease I was always thanking God because my pain was not as big as people around me in the hospital. I'm actually glad God messages was a cancer and not a arm loss or some bigger problems.
Yes, I am young, still at school, I'm just 15 years old.
Wow! Just amazing. Again, I sensed that you were young but wasn't quite sure. I had no idea you were that young . Yes, God does work in mysterious ways. He uses all kinds of experiences to draw you to him, some are good, others are more painful, but ultimately they do draw you to him closer and closer; you just need to keep your heart and mind open. I'm very happy to hear that you're still active in the church and equally happy that you decided to share your testimony here with us. You are a brave young man and others will undoubtedly benefit from it.
God bless,
Byblos.
Let us proclaim the mystery of our faith: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.
Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.
Thank you very much for your kind responses. I think it's better like this, knowing Christ at a young age to make the right decisions for the future is the best thing. It's a gift from God or else I don't ever think I could have reached Him. I take the cancer as a message from him and the recidivism as a final hit because the first time didn't work. I was too young to understand when I got my first cancer.
Every thing that happens around us has a reason behind it, I stopped believing in coincidences and I've seen God's messages all around me. His message can be shared to us under many many forms, especially numbers.
For the church, I think it's a different thing, and it's a personal Christian choice I made not to follow the catholic church or not to follow any church.
To get people back to God is not the work of any church or any institution, they can be guides but the Spirit is my only temple.
We must in these days tell people about the truth and the work of God.
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:2
TheFlyingChristian wrote:Thank you very much for your kind responses. I think it's better like this, knowing Christ at a young age to make the right decisions for the future is the best thing. It's a gift from God or else I don't ever think I could have reached Him. I take the cancer as a message from him and the recidivism as a final hit because the first time didn't work. I was too young to understand when I got my first cancer.
Every thing that happens around us has a reason behind it, I stopped believing in coincidences and I've seen God's messages all around me. His message can be shared to us under many many forms, especially numbers.
For the church, I think it's a different thing, and it's a personal Christian choice I made not to follow the catholic church or not to follow any church.
To get people back to God is not the work of any church or any institution, they can be guides but the Spirit is my only temple.
We must in these days tell people about the truth and the work of God.
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:2
I'm glad you're here. I had cancer when I was 23 and have lived with it in remission for over 20 years with occassional follow-up needed. It may not be anywhere near what you've gone through or are going through but if I can assist in anyway, please let me know.
Blessings,
Bart
Dogmatism is the comfortable intellectual framework of self-righteousness. Self-righteousness is more decadent than the worst sexual sin. ~ Dan Allender
TheFlyingChristian wrote:Thank you very much for your kind responses. I think it's better like this, knowing Christ at a young age to make the right decisions for the future is the best thing. It's a gift from God or else I don't ever think I could have reached Him. I take the cancer as a message from him and the recidivism as a final hit because the first time didn't work. I was too young to understand when I got my first cancer.
Every thing that happens around us has a reason behind it, I stopped believing in coincidences and I've seen God's messages all around me. His message can be shared to us under many many forms, especially numbers.
For the church, I think it's a different thing, and it's a personal Christian choice I made not to follow the catholic church or not to follow any church.
To get people back to God is not the work of any church or any institution, they can be guides but the Spirit is my only temple.
We must in these days tell people about the truth and the work of God.
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:2
I'm glad you're here. I had cancer when I was 23 and have lived with it in remission for over 20 years with occassional follow-up needed. It may not be anywhere near what you've gone through or are going through but if I can assist in anyway, please let me know.
Blessings,
Bart
Thank you Bart, yes I think I need help. My situation is somewhat paradoxical, because sometimes my mother and my father asks me if everything is okay I answer yes, but I feel pression from perhaps the ganglions that are within me. But I am lying because I want God to save me, not get again with the hospital and get high doses of chemotherapy. The cure for the disease is more painful than the disease this is why I do not want to go to the hospital. I have no symptoms and blood test showed nothing. But even if it's not a cancer there is a high rate that I administrated chemo, which is what I do not want.
I always pray and ask God that he cures me or at least appeases the symptoms. I do not want the end of the testimony to finish with another disease as I said it's his message to get me back to Him but hopefully everything will finish alright.
Jesus said take your cross and follow me, is my cross still waiting for me ?
It's hard to answer this question, but it deserves an answer and I'll do my best.
I don't understand completely why cancer exists and even less why it strikes young people. As I shared, I've had cancer and still have to be checked and may need more treatment in the future. I've lived with it for over 20 years. As much as I'm tempted at times to feel sorry for myself, I only have to remember my times going into treatment and meeting others worse off than me and I get over than feeling pretty quick.
I wrestle with how a Christian should respond and whether it is better to trust God than trust medicine. My father had cancer as well, later in his life. He didn't trust doctors. He rarely went to see them. When his cancer was diagnosed at age 65, he hadn't been to see a doctor in years. He was diagnosed with stage 4 kindney cancer and given 6 mos to 2 years to live. There wasn't much the doctors could do for him. he chose to try and deal with it by diet and positive thinking. He lived 5 years before he died. I respect his choice but there are times I get a little angry thinking of the time he could have had with his family if he had used the resources available to him and caught it earlier and received treatment.
Doctors are not God. They make mistakes. Sometimes they try to do everything they can beyond what is reasonable for a person. I respect them in general however, and am grateful that medicine is making the great strides that it is. If my cancer was not discovered and treated, I would likely be dead by now. God does intervene on occassions. Often he expects us, I believe to use the resources he has given as well through medicine.
God's plans for some of us, His children at times include suffering and even dying young. It saddens me. I don't understand why it is. Yet because we live in a fallen world there are diseases and accidents and unexplainable tragedies happen for reasons that only God can know, and He rarely choosed to share them with us. I don't completely understand why I got cancer. Part of the reason has been, I think, so that God can use me to minister to others. That's part of the reason why i went into ministry for a season of my life. I became a chaplain for the American Cancer Society and ministered to people who were going through similar and much worse things than me.
Don't despise medicine. Put your faith in God but realize that He oftn chooses to use doctors and medicine. I'd encourage you to be honest with your parents. I'm sure they love you and want the best for you. Chemo is tough. I've never done it but I've been with many who have. It's getting better though and helping more as more is learned.
Here's a poem I wrote several years back that talks some about this and how it feels. Maybe it will help you some.
Cell Mates
Freedom's cry is dim indeed
when one can roam the world at will
and never have the path impede
the goal, and be imprisoned still.
A gaze into my mirrored eye
and I can see what others fear;
a victim of biology
with cells that walk the prisoner.
While others have a radiant smile,
I have a radiation burn
that pulls from me a forlorn frown
and tufts of hair, each in their turn.
My rebel organs rising up
within my chemo mixing sphere
I fight to draw a line of death
for cells that walk the prisoner.
Within my quiet battlefield
I fall upon my own grenade
and hold to hope, however mild
that bad is killed, while good is saved.
And so in quiet desperation
I stalk myself, and self inter
my rebel suicidal faction;
those cells that walk this prisoner.
Dogmatism is the comfortable intellectual framework of self-righteousness. Self-righteousness is more decadent than the worst sexual sin. ~ Dan Allender
Bart I do not know how to thank you for your answer, .
People here are very helpful, God bless this community.
The hospital has to call, I told my mom not to call them because I want to resist and get cured by the Lord, I know his medicine is not everytime a miraculous one, but I believe in a certain margin where these ganglions are not a cancer, matter of fact I have no symptoms at all, except the physical pain, which I deal with pretty easily. I think of it as a message from God, that got me back to Him. He is the way and I do not see a need for God to give me this "x" disease since I believe I have reached my goal. Suffering again through another disease is useless to me. It's time and the clock before Christ's coming is always ticking. I help people around me, by talking about Jesus. I get helped and help others. No matter what, I'll always pray to God because it's his decision. I can wish and pray for the best and I firmly believe that my prayers are going to be heard.
It is extremely difficuly and important to learn descernment. It is best to question everything. The more I question the validity of God and Christ, the more He is revealed to be true. If anyone is willing to approach the question of God and Christ with an open mind, He will reveal Himself. Honest skeptics are welcomed!
“Christianity provides a unified answer for the whole of life.” -- Francis Schaeffer
I was raised Christian and baptized at age 9. I always asked a lot of questions, and it got me tagged as a bit of a troublemaker, both within my youth group (which I left in anger not long after being told "don't think, just believe") and within my family - my father did not understand why fideism was not good enough for me, and still doesn't. But my faith has always meant a lot to me. Then..
Working on Saturday nights in fall 06, my sophomore year in college, made it difficult for me to make it to church, so I simply didn't go. My faith suffered as a result, and by the end of the semester, I was starting to experience doubts about my faith. I was logging onto websites hoping to find something that would prove to me that Christianity is, indeed, true. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a knockout punch that would settle it once and for all. In fact, what I saw brought out only more questions. The questions that bothered me the most related to the origins of the Earth and of Genesis.
By winter break, I was starting to doubt that I had enough faith to be saved. I honestly did not know if Christianity was true or not. I spent all day, every day, reading on apologetics websites looking for something convincing. Then, my family went to Florida. I was pretty depressed by this point, worried that I was going to hell. At one point, I stood in Disney World in pure fear, anguish, and torture, convinced that I had a strong chance of going to hell. There I was standing, at the happiest place in earth, completely tormented. I admitted my problem to my mom and asked for her prayer. She tried to help me, but couldn't.
I got back home, and my faith weakened to the point where I felt nothing was there. I told my mom and a couple of people in whom I confide that I was an agnostic. I wanted nothing more than to believe vibrantly in God and Jesus but I did not feel that I could do it. To make matters worse, I was aware of Hebrews 6:4-6, which implies that if you fall away, you can't come back. Did this mean I couldn't come back? I figured I had to at least try. I talked to my pastor, who prayed for me and told me that I could come back, but I felt like he was fudging those verses, and in fact, that his interpretation of them wasn't necessarily good for me. I also talked with somebody on AIM I know who knows a lot about the faith, who brought me into contact with a friend of his. They assured me that I had not fallen away or committed any “unforgivable sin”, because I still cared about it. Fair enough, I figured, now I feel like I can make it, if only I can believe.
I read a lot of articles about the beginning of the Earth and learned a lot I had never known before. I clarified my position as Old Earth Creationist rather than Young based on what I read (I had always wondered about it, but never studied it too closely). Still, these studies showed that Christianity was possible, but not that it was totally true. I asked my mom to pray with me, like, a million times a day. Also, I spent literally all day reading apologetics stuff online, every single day. I had little appetite and little desire to do anything at all, because I was so depressed. I ordered several books online, ranging from The Case for Christ to an obscure, poorly bound book (that's actually found online, harvardhouse.com) that talked about biblical prophecy in the Old Testament in the New and how it verifies the Bible. This, finally, was proof to me, 2-3 weeks in to my episode. I felt like this nailed it; I believed again.
I realized that science stuff didn't have to matter as long as you can show that the Resurrection happened. Christianity lives and dies on that, not some obscure passage in Genesis. After all, you can even believe in evolution and be a Christian; there are interpretations that way. (And since then, I have adopted theistic evolution, after seeing a transitional fossil for myself in a museum.)
However, I had some creeping doubts about the Hebrews 6 thing. After all, doesn't it seem clear that you only have one shot? Plus, doesn't Matthew 10:33 say that if you deny Jesus, he'll deny you? However, I knew that Peter denied Jesus, too, but that he was still saved. Also, I knew in the back of my mind that verses like James 5:19-20 imply you can come back, and that the Bible clearly offers salvation to all who believe. After a long period of struggling over this, I found a website that gives a long list of Bible verses that would have to be contradicted if I had committed an unforgivable sin. Also, I found a possibly interpretation of the Hebrews verses that fit in with all that.
Does this mean that I'm completely out of the woods? No way. I struggle still with doubt and worrying that just maybe I'm not saved, and a lot of the paradoxes of faith, but I know that through it, I've grown. There are still things that gnaw and me and rip at my soul, but those don't go away, not in this life, anyway. Still, I'm learning more about what it means to walk with Christ every day, and I wonder if I truly meant that before my ordeal.
I understand fully what you are going through, Daniel. I have a lot of unresolved questions and anger in my mind also. For the first time in my life I have started to question if God is truly real, and if He is, why does He allow so much pain and suffering in this life? I have even gone as far as to join an atheist website, just to get "the other side's" point of view. I don't really know how to express my feelings at this time, other than to say I do know without a doubt God exists, although from personal experiences lately, I'm not too sure He is really all that good. I'm on a "tired, sad, and hurting" rant right now, so please everyone, forgive me for posting this here. I'm really missing my kids right now, and Daniel's post struck a nerve in me.
some things are better left unsaid, which i generally realize after i have said them
jenna wrote:I understand fully what you are going through, Daniel. I have a lot of unresolved questions and anger in my mind also. For the first time in my life I have started to question if God is truly real, and if He is, why does He allow so much pain and suffering in this life? I have even gone as far as to join an atheist website, just to get "the other side's" point of view. I don't really know how to express my feelings at this time, other than to say I do know without a doubt God exists, although from personal experiences lately, I'm not too sure He is really all that good. I'm on a "tired, sad, and hurting" rant right now, so please everyone, forgive me for posting this here. I'm really missing my kids right now, and Daniel's post struck a nerve in me.
I recommend reading "The Shack" by William Paul Young. It deals with a lot of these issues in a way than many people who wrestle with these types of questions find meaningful.
Dogmatism is the comfortable intellectual framework of self-righteousness. Self-righteousness is more decadent than the worst sexual sin. ~ Dan Allender
Daniel wrote:The dentist analogy Lewis uses is a good one - it kind of made everything "click" in my head.
Jenna, I apologize if what I posted brought some of those feelings back up. I will certainly keep you in my prayers.
Daniel, thank you for the prayers. But you have absolutely no reason to apologize to me for staing your thoughts and feelings. I have been having these feelings alot lately, and it has nothing to do with what you posted. You will be in my prayers also.
some things are better left unsaid, which i generally realize after i have said them
Jenna, I went through a similar situation several years ago and although I don't know what you are going through my heart goes out to you and your loved ones.
I hope it's o.k. that I pray for you and all involved.
. Yes, God does work in mysterious ways. He uses all kinds of experiences to draw you to him, some are good, others are more painful, but ultimately they do draw you to him closer and closer; you just need to keep your heart and mind open. I'm very happy to hear that you're still active in the church and equally happy that you decided to share your testimony here with us. You are a brave young man and others will undoubtedly benefit from it. 
. 
