God’s Glory in the Story

May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 15:5-6

God can’t get the glory, if you don’t include Him in your story.  @darrynzewalk

In order not to bore you with all the details, I want to offer God the glory in a five year battle with cancer.

The patient is my husband. The culprits are 2 kinds of cancer that have come in uninvited. He has had one robotic surgery, 1 round of chemotherapy, 2 rounds of radiation, and many alternative efforts to heal him.

For some extra excitement, as he was to start the radiation that he just completed, he got kidney stones. A lot of kidney stones. The medical professionals (or Google — one of those medical experts) say may have been caused by the chemo. They took a month for him to suffer through, endure a couple of more surgical procedures, and lithotripsies,

He completed his last radiation of 37 straight (except weekends) treatments last week. For this we are praising the Lord.

Successful completion is only a part of God’s intervention in the story.

My husband put these treatments off for a while because of the warnings he had received about the side effects. (You do not want the details!) He was in the middle of some projects that he wanted to complete. As they watched the cancer markers increasing, it was obvious he needed treatment.

So, bracing himself for the worst, he kept waiting for the terrible side effects. They did not come. At the end he was fatigued, but less than we were prepared for.

None of the awful things he was warned about came to pass!

He had some spiritual battles to fight that were not related to the treatments. He is working on the conference that the Mid-Atlantic Reformation Society is sponsoring in Reading in Oct. He works full time and serves our church part-time.

And God protected all of that by keeping him from experiencing the side effects. They would have, at the least, slowed him down, or at the worst, stopped him in his tracks for a few weeks.

Only God could provide this kind of protection from that kind of medical treatment.

Truly, as Romans 15 points out, He is a God of endurance and encouragement, and with one voice my husband and I are glorifying God for the work He has done for us lately!

We will not know the effectiveness of those treatments for a few more weeks. We know God was with him as he went through them. We know that God provided a great staff that cared for him at Reading Health. We know that God allowed him to meet work deadlines and not miss a single week ministering at our church.

So, that’s our story and we want our great God to get the glory.

In what story of yours, will you give God the glory?

 

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