Dr Paul Allen

One woman with cancer told me years ago, “I’m not a believer anymore—that doesn’t work for me. I can’t believe in a personal God who would do something like this to me.” Cancer killed her God. What would happen to me? I felt like a surgeon who was suddenly on the operating table. Would I be able to take my own advice? Facing such a serious diagnosis, Keller was forced to reexamine not only his “professed beliefs” but his “actual understanding of God.” He writes, Had [my ideas about God] been shaped by my culture? Had I been slipping unconsciously into the supposition that God lived for me rather than I for him, that life  should  go well for me, that I knew better than God does how things should go? The answer was yes—to some degree. I found that to embrace God’s greatness, to say “Thy will be done,” was painful at first and then, perhaps counterintuitively, profoundly liberating. To assume that God is as small and finite as we are may  feel  freeing—but it offers no...

Tim Shorely I have stage four, poor-prognosis cancer, and I believe in healing, either bestowed directly by the Lord or through the intercession of others. I’m convinced there are moments when God transcends and circumvents the normal to heal instantaneously and supernaturally (1 Cor. 12:7–9). I sincerely believe he can and often does this without any means other than his love-released power—to make the body whole, the spirit glad, and the tongue exult. My faith doesn’t embrace fraudulent faith healers, name-it-and-claim-it charlatans, prosperity peddlers, or positive-thinking gurus. I believe God can and often does grant actual, supernatural healings of the body, spirit, and mind, by which the truly sick are made truly whole through the authority of Christ’s name, often catalyzed by the believing prayers of God’s people. But I still have cancer. Despite thousands of prayers, many of which have been bathed in ample faith and anointing oil, I still have cancer, and my clock’s ticking. T...

Despite the Paul McCartney jingle echoing through our department stores this season, many of us will not be “simply having a wonderful Christmastime.” Much of our Christmas joy will be met, and made to sing, shoulder to shoulder with dissonant sorrows. I’ve had cancer since 2018. I received my Stage 4 diagnosis in December 2020—just in time for Christmas to be included in that year's crookedness. This blow came just a month before our third child, Jane Ridley Wright, was born. We soon learned our “baby Jane” had been born with a regressive and rare gene mutation. I bear witness that the hope and joy of Christmas are not easily held in hand with the harshness of life under the sun. It’s a weary task to unify everything: birth and disability, sacred and profane, transfiguration and tragedy, cancer and Christmas.  But, as Leo Tolstoy observes, “All the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.” Samwise Gamgee agrees: “It’s like in the great stories, Mr Frodo. The ones that really...

The ancient Hebrew songwriter of Psalm 116 sings with joy, I love the Lord because he has heard          my voice and my pleas for mercy. . . . The snares of death encompassed me;          the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me;          I suffered distress and anguish. Then I called on the name of the Lord:           “O Lord, I pray, deliver my soul!” Gracious is the Lord, and righteous;          our God is merciful. . . . You have delivered my soul from death,          my eyes from tears,          my feet from stumbling. (Psalm 116:1–8) This is the collective testimony of God’s people — he loves us, and we love him. And because he loves us, our Savior has promised that when we pray for anything according to his will, he will answer us (John 14:13–14). In two previous articles, I wrote about how I prayed for my daught...

Sometimes, as you watch the hand of God’s providence draw some picture in your life, the pencil suddenly turns, and what you thought would be a flower turns into a thorn. The unanswered prayer seemed finally heard, the hope deferred seemed at last fulfilled — but no. You reach for the daisy and get pricked, instead, by a thistle. C.S. Lewis’s marriage to Joy Davidman strikes me in this regard. The couple married later in life when Joy appeared to be dying of cancer. After a prayer for healing, however, Joy recovered unexpectedly and perhaps miraculously. The love they thought they were losing came back to them, a precious gift, it seemed, from the hand of a healing God. But soon, cancer returned with a fury, ending their brief marriage. In the rawness of his grief, Lewis wrote, “A noble hunger, long unsatisfied, met at last its proper food, and almost instantly the food was snatched away” (A Grief Observed, 17–18). Experiences like these can shake the soul. More than a few have lost fa...

Darrell Carman was a member of my church who died of cancer six months ago. His wife, Ann, had died six months earlier with COVID (I wrote about her in another article, “Real Churches Commune with Dead Saints.”) As I thought about Darrell during the days after he died, and of what he must’ve been experiencing in heaven, I began thinking about what it means to “beat cancer.” We’ve all seen T-shirts and bumper stickers that say, “I beat cancer.” And of course, by beat, they mean survived. That’s how you “beat” it. To live is victory; to die is loss. (To be clear, I rejoice for anyone who survives cancer.) But by that definition, Darrell didn’t beat cancer—cancer beat him. At one level that’s obviously true, but it’s not the whole truth. Because as followers of Jesus, we walk by faith, not by sight. That doesn’t mean we close our eyes to the painful realities in front of us, but it does mean we open our eyes to the bigger picture God paints for us in his Word. That’s what it means to walk...

So, we are faced with a certain amount of fear and anxiety that is media-induced to one degree or another. There is also, however, fear and anxiety caused by actual frightening events. Strong cyclones or bushfires are frightening to experience. Other natural disasters such as floods and are frightening. Diseases are frightening, especially when they spread across the world—as the coronavirus has done so far. Wars and terrorist activity are also frightening. Complicating matters is the lack of trust that many have in the news media. We know that fear sells because it keeps people glued to their screens and that is profitable. We know bias exists in news reporters as it does in everyone.  Due to factors such as these, however, many people have lost all trust in the news media to accurately report events. Social media has intensified this problem because friends and family share stories without always checking the sources. This can cause problems when a truly dangerous event is unfold...

It’s only a matter of time before life falls apart. The loss of a job, a diagnosis of cancer, an unfaithful spouse, abuse from a leader, the betrayal of a dear friend. It doesn’t matter how suburban our lives are at the moment, if we haven’t already, we will all come face-to-face with the tragic. Suffering is the common human experience; our ability to relate to each other’s grief and lament binds us together. The Old Testament character of Job—the man who loses everything—isn’t a person to pity. We are Job. Truth be told, most of us would rather not be Job. We’d prefer a more triumphant character to identify with. Perhaps David who, despite some significant sin, is still heralded as a man after God’s own heart. Maybe out of humility we choose a lesser known character, like Gideon. A little afraid. A little timid. But ultimately one who rises to the challenge. Job tends to be the last person we want to align ourselves with. Identifying with Job means one thing: We know suffe...

Image via Wikipedia Keeping Promises in Context At this point, I need to sound a warning. In our day, many people have rediscovered the power of prayer . This is a good thing; there’s nothing more thrilling in the Christian life than to pray specifically, to express a desire, to make a request or a petition to God , and then see Him answer that request specifically and clearly.  It’s nice to receive what we pray for, but the added benefit is the assurance we gain that God hears our prayers and answers them. However, some carry this to an extreme and jump to the conclusion that prayer is something of a magic wand , that if we do prayer with the right sound, in the right manner, with the right phrases, and in the right posture, God is obligated to answer.  The idea seems to be that we have the capacity to coerce God Almighty into doing for us whatever it is we want Him to do, but God is not a celestial bellhop who is on call every time we press the button, just waiting to s...