God Makes Me Sing in the Night

By Ruth Gao

When Ter­mi­nal Ill­ness Came Upon Me

I could nev­er believe that I would con­tract a ter­mi­nal ill­ness. It was extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to accept the fact, when I saw the glar­ing words “pres­ence of malig­nant can­cer cells” in the nee­dle biop­sy pathol­o­gist’s report. It was my wish­ful think­ing that the doc­tors had been mis­tak­en. After repeat­ed exam­i­na­tions of X‑rays, mam­mo­gram and nee­dle biop­sy, I still could not believe that it was for real. Noth­ing had been wrong with my health; there had been no symp­toms at all. There was only one harm­less lit­tle lump on my right breast, which could have been an ordi­nary occur­rence.

Most of all, I believed that the Father in whom I trust, who loves me and cares for me in every pos­si­ble way would not let me have can­cer. I had been so healthy, nev­er even as much as catch­ing a cold in more than eight years. I used to tes­ti­fy often that since I came to the Lord, God had tak­en care of me, heal­ing and sus­tain­ing my body, grant­i­ng me health and peace.

Even a week before the diag­no­sis was con­firmed, I was still giv­ing a tes­ti­mo­ny at a Chris­t­ian gath­er­ing: “I suf­fered poor health before I came to the Lord; I did have a num­ber of phys­i­cal prob­lems. But I was entire­ly healed after becom­ing a Chris­t­ian. I became stronger day by day. I have not tak­en any med­i­cine for a peri­od of ten years now, and except for the recent one I have not had a cold for eight years. The recent cold I suf­fered was due to sig­nif­i­cant changes of cli­mate I had to endure when I came back from the far south. The love of our Heav­en­ly Father not only saves our soul, but also keeps us phys­i­cal­ly well.” Firm­ly and loud­ly, I tes­ti­fied what won­der­ful deeds our Heav­en­ly Father had done for me.

But I had to tell the broth­ers and sis­ters in our wor­ship gath­er­ing this week, “I’ve got can­cer.”

Isn’t this an iron­i­cal con­tra­dic­tion, our Heav­en­ly Father would pull such a joke on me? He is the omnipo­tent God who has always tak­en care of me and has had mer­cy on me. He has per­formed mir­a­cles in my life every­day, just so that I would have facts with which to tes­ti­fy for Him. How am I going to give tes­ti­monies for Him now?

Does­n’t God Love Me Any More?

I should­n’t be the one to con­tract ter­mi­nal dis­ease, it should­n’t have been me, because I love my Heav­en­ly Father so much, and He so loves me. Ever since I cast myself into my Father God’s arms twelve years ago, He has watched over me. He has com­fort­ed my sor­row-filled and bro­ken heart and healed the chron­ic ill­ness­es I suf­fered. Unlike some believ­ers whose faith con­sists of more ratio­nal­i­ty than per­son­al expe­ri­ences, I have known God because one fact after anoth­er clear­ly tells me He is a real and liv­ing God, full of love, grace and pow­er.

I remem­ber when my son was about two years old when he was hit by a bicy­cle. He was knocked over and thrown out sev­er­al feet on the ground. I was so fright­ened that I kept scream­ing, “Lord, save him!” Then I dis­cov­ered that he was­n’t hurt at all. There was anoth­er time when he ran a high fever for a long time; nei­ther injec­tion nor oral med­i­cine had any effects on him. The prayers of broth­ers and sis­ters brought him back to health. My moth­er who is in her sev­en­ties, has fall­en down sev­er­al times. She either had a large bump on her head or had scalp lac­er­a­tion and need­ed stitch­es; but she enjoyed a speedy recov­ery every sin­gle time with­out any long-term effects, to the amaze­ment of even her doc­tors who mar­veled at the vital­i­ty of this old lady. What actu­al­ly hap­pened was that we kept on pray­ing, ask­ing our Heav­en­ly Father to sus­tain her and to heal her. God nev­er reject­ed our prayers; He has been so atten­tive, and so lov­ing to me and my entire fam­i­ly. There is noth­ing He can­not do.

Will such a Heav­en­ly Father leave me alone now in despair? Can it be that from this day on, He will no longer pro­tect me or love me? Has He with­drawn His pow­er­ful arms?

I Have Left Every­thing Behind

I love God. There is no turn­ing back. I love Him with no regards for any­thing else. I see myself as one who is like His first dis­ci­ples who left every­thing for His sake. In my own words, I would say that I “threw” myself into my Father’s arms.

This could be described like these lines in a Chi­nese poem, “Seek­ing him hun­dreds and thou­sands of times in the dream; sud­den­ly, I turned around; he was right there, in the dim light.” I had been des­per­ate­ly seek­ing Him. Once I returned to the warm home of my Father, my heart was tru­ly com­fort­ed and sat­is­fied. The Lord has become every­thing in my life. He is pre­des­tined to be my Father God, my Sav­ior, the Lord of my life, the only one I can lean on in my dis­tress­ful life, my only help and my only home.

To fol­low the Lord Jesus, I gave up the bless­ings of a fam­i­ly. I know that God wants har­mo­ny between hus­band and wife, and that the two should not sep­a­rate. But after I came to the Lord, the fun­da­men­tal changes in my think­ing and con­cepts, my view of life and the ways I han­dled things all became intol­er­a­ble for my hus­band. In his opin­ion, God broke up his fam­i­ly by mak­ing us as incom­pat­i­ble as water and fire, ice and burn­ing coal. He stern­ly demand­ed, “Do you want God or me?” I told him, “I want both. God wants me to love you more than I ever did.” He said, “No way. You must choose between us two.”

I love God. He has changed my life. My joy is to pur­sue his holi­ness and right­eous­ness. I don’t want to be like the pig which, after being cleaned, rolled back into the mud. Nor could I aban­don my hus­band and my fam­i­ly on my own voli­tion. I want­ed to ful­fill my share of duty; not only to repent of my own sins, but to lead my whole fam­i­ly to Christ.

Nev­er­the­less, my hus­band would not budge. He left me with no choice. He chose sep­a­ra­tion, and left me with our one-year-old child.

It has been more than nine years since he left our fam­i­ly for a life of free­dom. In these nine years, my child, my sev­en­ty-year-old moth­er and I groped for­ward in our life togeth­er in great dif­fi­cul­ties. Words can not begin to describe how we have depend­ed entire­ly on God’s grace one day at a time. As of this day, my son is eleven, my moth­er is sev­en­ty-nine, and we are still pray­ing for my hus­band.

To fol­low the Lord, I also left behind a steady job. I had been a teacher, but after becom­ing a believ­er, I nat­u­ral­ly began to share the gospel with my stu­dents and col­leagues. What I did vio­lat­ed “the four basic prin­ci­ples.” The leader of my depart­ment thought that believ­ing in God was in direct con­flict with the belief of Marx­ism-Lenin­ism and Social­ism. Worse still, not only did I open­ly con­fess my faith, I also spread the gospel. They were con­vinced that some­one like me was unfit as a teacher who was sup­posed to be a mod­el for stu­dents; I was the black sheep that brought dis­grace to the group. They gave me the ulti­ma­tum: “Do you want to keep believ­ing in God, or do you want your job?” At this time, the Lord had called me to for­sake every­thing and fol­low Him. Since I had to choose only one of the two, I turned in my res­ig­na­tion, and left my posi­tion at work.

To fol­low the Lord, I gave up the right­ful pro­tec­tion a cit­i­zen deserves, and lost my nor­mal niche in the soci­ety. In response to the Lord’s call­ing, I entered the full time min­istry. I set up church­es, spread the gospel and nur­tured His sheep. This aroused the hos­til­i­ty of gov­ern­ment offi­cials. They claimed that my evan­gel­i­cal work was ille­gal, that I vio­lat­ed the gov­ern­men­t’s pol­i­cy of reli­gion, and that I com­mit­ted a crime against the admin­is­tra­tion. As a result, my house was ran­sacked, my belong­ings con­fis­cat­ed, and I was arrest­ed.

The offi­cials in charge of my case asked me if I would choose to repent of my crime, give up my faith in God, and stop spread­ing the gospel. If I insist­ed on keep­ing my faith, choos­ing to be the ene­my of the gov­ern­ment, I would have to accept the legal penal­ty. Again, with­out any hes­i­ta­tion, I chose God; because the Lord had said, “He who dis­owns me before men will be dis­owned before the angels of God” (Luke 12:9). The Lord is the way of eter­nal life. Who else should I fol­low? Since then, my new life style was to become a fugi­tive who was con­tin­u­ous­ly pur­sued.

In the past decade, I lost every­thing most peo­ple cher­ish in life, one thing after anoth­er. Nei­ther the loss of my fam­i­ly and job, nor the gov­ern­men­t’s per­se­cu­tion could make me yield. Rather, I became more deter­mined to fol­low and serve the Lord.

Clouds of Doubt Cov­ered My Faith

Today when can­cer crept upon me, I could no longer choose bold­ly as I had done before. This time, I had no ground on which to make my choice; I had no author­i­ty to choose. Although I wished it was not real, the demon­ic dis­ease attacked me, catch­ing me off guard. There was no room for doubt; this was the harsh real­i­ty. Any denial would be com­plete­ly futile.

Not only was it con­firmed that I had breast can­cer, it also spread rapid­ly. Two weeks after my surgery, my back was in sharp pain. The result of a bone scan indi­cat­ed that can­cer­ous cells had spread to my spine and oth­er parts of my body. The pain spread to ribs in my chest, my skull and the bones of my legs. My entire body was invad­ed by malig­nant can­cer cells. There were lumps on my left breast, just like the ones in my right breast. Under my arms and on my abdomen were also painful swellings. My life was com­ing to an end.

I des­per­ate­ly prayed for heal­ing, hop­ing that the Lord would lis­ten to my prayer as He did in the past, and that my dis­ease would just dis­ap­pear by itself. But Father God did not seem to lis­ten to my prayers; or it seemed that He could not do any­thing about it, either.

From the apex of hope, I was pushed off and fell into the deep val­ley of despair. For the first time, my faith, which had been as firm as a rock, was now fac­ing chal­lenges. I lost my equi­lib­ri­um in a twin­kling of an eye. Con­sid­er­ing all things that had hap­pened to me in the past, by the strength giv­en to me by the Lord, I had always been able to coura­geous­ly accept and calm­ly over­come dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances. But now, fac­ing the hor­ri­fy­ing can­cer, unlike any­thing I had expe­ri­enced before, I felt fright­ened and depressed, as if I had been aban­doned by my Heav­en­ly Father.

As my mind was so full of doubts, I began to ana­lyze and exam­ine one by one the char­ac­ter of God against the events that had hap­pened to me.

If He is omni­scient, and I am His child, the one He promis­es to love and care for; how can He not know my cur­rent plight and allow the demon of can­cer to tor­ture me under the shad­ow of death? If He is omnipo­tent, can He not pre­vent this dis­ease from occur­ring upon me?

If this is the assault of the Dev­il, does God not have the pow­er to resist it and pro­tect His own child? If He is lov­ing, how does He have the heart to let His daugh­ter expe­ri­ence this grave calami­ty? As a moth­er, I do every­thing I can to pro­tect my chil­dren from suf­fer­ing. He is my Heav­en­ly Father; His love exceeds that of human par­ents; why does He not care about my life and death? Has He not promised that He would pro­tect me like the pupil of His eyes? Has He not said to me, “Can a moth­er for­get the baby at her breast and have no com­pas­sion on the child she has borne? Though she may for­get, I will not for­get you!” (Isa­iah 49:15)

If He is faith­ful, will He pun­ish my sins with can­cer? Has He not declared, “If we con­fess our sins, He is faith­ful and just and will for­give us our sins and puri­fy us from all unrighteousness”(1 John 1:12)? He has promised to for­give me, not pur­su­ing my wrong doings. Can He go against His own words, and be faith­less in what He has spo­ken?

If He is right­eous, why did He allow this scourge to fall on His child who has fol­lowed Him and served Him? Why does He not pun­ish those who have done many evils, those who have resist­ed Him, and antag­o­nized Him? Why does He allow this world to be com­plete­ly top­sy-turvy, those who do good suf­fer, while the evil­do­ers enjoy good for­tune and health?

If He is mer­ci­ful, how can He let a frail woman who has noth­ing, and has depend­ed only on Him, to lose her health and her life after she has lost every­thing else? After depriv­ing her of her place in fam­i­ly, work, and soci­ety, will He again deprive her of mere exis­tence? What is left for her? Is there a place for her to stand at all before God?

For some­one who has sub­mit­ted and offered up every­thing to fol­low the Lord, if what awaits her is ter­mi­nal dis­ease, would­n’t peo­ple laugh and jeer, “Where is her God?” Would­n’t this allow the Dev­il to get his way, “Look at you; this is the reward you get for fol­low­ing God. Why don’t you come and wor­ship me?”

A series of ques­tions were shak­ing my faith, test­ing my belief.

God Is Nev­er Mis­tak­en

Nev­er­the­less, even if years of expe­ri­ence in fol­low­ing the Lord left me no room for such doubts, I must give it some thought. Unfold­ing before my eyes is God’s grace and every one of the deeds He has done in my life. God is nev­er mis­tak­en. He is a great God; there is no doubt about it. But how am I sup­posed to com­pre­hend this afflic­tion of ter­mi­nal ill­ness?

Per­haps, God is so great that He only minds the great mat­ters. I am too triv­ial, too insignif­i­cant to be wor­thy of His atten­tion. He cre­at­ed the uni­verse and every­thing in it; He con­trols the macro- cosm, the move­ment of the uni­verse, and the laws by which all things oper­ate. He does not put His mind to the micro­cos­mic, minute, or spe­cif­ic things. As for what hap­pens to indi­vid­u­als, there are bil­lions of peo­ple in the world going through bil­lions of hap­pen­ings; He can not attend to so many details.

Can every­one explain every­thing that hap­pens to them? Can every believ­er find out from God why this or that hap­pens to him or her? Bil­lions of peo­ple are bob­bing in the bit­ter sea of life. Every­one’s sto­ry appears to be so for­tu­itous, so help­less. No one can con­trol or mas­ter his or her own fate. Although we have entrust­ed our­selves to the one true God, yet even God can­not be both­ered with our lit­tle lives or deaths.

But this is not the fact of faith that I have been telling peo­ple day in and day out. The God I believe in is a real and liv­ing God; there is no place where His love does not reach. Every­day, He seems to be right at my din­ner table. Every moment, He seems to be lis­ten­ing to our con­ver­sa­tions. He knows the slight­est move in my mind. Just like it says in the Scrip­tures, “Where can I flee from your pres­ence?” (Psalm 139:7b). He is able and will­ing to tend to every­thing con­cern­ing me. Then why does He not do some­thing today?

Per­haps, it is because all the dis­eases and dying in the human world are brought upon us by the fall of our first ances­tors. It has become the iron­clad rule from which no one can escape; Chris­tians are under the grip of the same rules of ill­ness and death. God can only hold His breath and watch His chil­dren, along with oth­er peo­ple of the world, stum­ble in the plight of dis­ease, because He can not go against His own laws. The time of break­ing the bondage of dis­ease and death has not arrived; we must wait until the time the Lord comes again, when the dead come back to life. Only then will we break the bondage of these rules. At that time, we will receive new bod­ies; and only then is the time for our bod­ies to be redeemed.

Then again, the Bible tells us numer­ous times that those who are cleansed by the Son of God are no longer under the law of sin, because God has set us free in Christ. The law of sin brings about ill­ness and death; and we have bro­ken the bondage of this law. Are those who have free­dom and new life in Christ still bound by sin? Do they suf­fer just like oth­er peo­ple of this world? Are we still manip­u­lat­ed at the mer­cy of unknown and unpre­dictable fate?

Job and I

In God’s plan, noth­ing hap­pens with­out a cause or a pur­pose. I thought of Job. Satan accused Job, say­ing that Job did not real­ly fear God, that he served God only because he had received His bless­ings. God allowed Satan to attack Job to put his piety to a test. Overnight, Job lost all his pos­ses­sions and his chil­dren. In spite of this heavy blow that came to him out of the blue, Job held on to his integri­ty, con­sid­er­ing all that he had lost as but exter­nal things to him. “Naked I came from my moth­er’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has tak­en away; may the name of the Lord be praised” (Job 1:21).

After obtain­ing per­mis­sion from God to make fur­ther assaults on the per­son of Job, Satan afflict­ed Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. At this time, although he still did not dare to sin by charg­ing God with wrong­do­ing, Job cursed the day of his birth in express­ing the pain he had suf­fered. He longed to die.

About what had hap­pened to him, Job was full of ques­tions; he poured out his grief to God, “What strength do I have, that I should still hope? What prospects, that I should be patient? Do I have any pow­er to help myself, now that suc­cess has been dri­ven from me?”(Job 6: 11, 13). He did not under­stand what God had done to him.

How sim­i­lar are Job’s ques­tions to mine. I can real­ly relate to what hap­pened to Job! The only dif­fer­ence is, at that time, Job did not know that God had cho­sen him to bear wit­ness for Him; to tes­ti­fy that, under any cir­cum­stances, men are oblig­ed to give God His glo­ry.

The rea­son God chose Job to shoul­der this mis­ery was that He trust­ed that Job could over­come this afflic­tion in order to bear tes­ti­mo­ny to His glo­ry. Man fears God because of God’s own great­ness, author­i­ty, pow­er, hon­or and glo­ry, not mere­ly because of the bless­ings he can receive from God. It is not mere­ly to prove that Job was tru­ly pious. Even­tu­al­ly, Job won and Satan lost. Try and imag­ine: had old Job been weak and fall­en, and thought that his piety brought him noth­ing but calami­ty, had he aban­doned God in his dis­tress, what would God say in response to Satan’s chal­lenges? If this were the most God-fear­ing man in the world, what would oth­ers be like?

Obvi­ous­ly, if Job had failed, Satan would have won. And he would say that God is not worth wor­ship­ping under all cir­cum­stances, that He used bribery by giv­ing us bless­ings to win man’s wor­ship. If so, what dis­grace would be brought to God’s glo­ry, and how proud Satan would be! Satan dreams day and night to dam­age the glo­ry of God, to rob God of His glo­ry, so that peo­ple in this world will wor­ship and fol­low him instead. This is why he spares no means to attack God’s chil­dren.

For­tu­nate­ly, although Job did not com­pre­hend, although he was so fee­ble, although he cursed his life and want­ed to die, he nev­er turned away from God. In the long run, Job fell down before the great pow­er of God, praised Him, exalt­ed Him, and gave Him full glo­ry. In this dan­ger­ous bat­tle-on the one side, the tru­cu­lent Satan, on the oth­er side, Job: weak, pow­er­less and duly fright­ened. The win­ner, in fact, had long been deter­mined. God knew that Job deserved the lead­ing role in the big play and that he would not mess up the show. God had con­fi­dence in Job, there­fore He allowed him to car­ry this bur­den.

Today I know clear­ly that in every era, God wants to choose His faith­ful chil­dren to bear wit­ness for Him. God’s glo­ry is tes­ti­fied to by His chil­dren in their expe­ri­ences and cir­cum­stances. It is all the more impor­tant to glo­ri­fy Him and thank Him in the pres­ence of suf­fer­ings. It is an hon­or to be cho­sen to car­ry the bur­den of dis­tress and suf­fer­ing because of His con­fi­dence in us. We don’t know how much we can bear, but God does. He will pro­vide a way out for us when we can not bear it any­more (1 Cor. 10:13).

Unty­ing the Knot In My Mind

The clouds of doubt in my mind dis­persed. Suf­fer­ing and dis­ease come from Satan, but God allows them to take place, so His name may be glo­ri­fied. His chil­dren will be test­ed and edi­fied, and life will be more beau­ti­ful and per­fect!

God has cho­sen me to bear the duress and to wit­ness to His glo­ry. Since God has cho­sen me, He will not let me fail. It is all right that I do not under­stand it all, because vic­to­ry is sure­ly in His hand. He is not mis­tak­en, He has His plans; He can only suc­ceed.

I heard Satan accus­ing me before God, “She has over­come the desire for world­ly fame and for­tune, even the temp­ta­tion of flesh­ly love, but can she over­come the tor­ture of dis­ease and mis­ery? Skin for skin! She will give all she has for her own life. Stretch out your hand and strike her flesh and bones. Let her have can­cer and she will sure­ly curse you to your face” (Job 2:4–5).

Satan knows human weak­ness­es very well. In the past, I con­sid­ered fame, for­tune and flesh­ly love as worth­less rub­bish; they are extrin­sic to my exis­tence, I can give them up. But my body is essen­tial­ly intrin­sic to my exis­tence; it should be val­ued; it should be under God’s spe­cial care. There­fore, when dis­ease struck me, I lost my stance of equi­lib­ri­um. I thought that I was aban­doned by God.

In fact, our bod­ies are also extrin­sic to our exis­tence. When we are in the world, we take lodge in this tent of flesh. And yet, “Though out­ward­ly we are wast­ing away, yet inward­ly we are being renewed day by day” (2 Cor. 4:16).

The grace of redemp­tion of our Lord Jesus was not yet revealed at Job’s time. Peo­ple did not under­stand the mys­tery of spir­i­tu­al bless­ings. They val­ued world­ly for­tune and phys­i­cal health, and regard­ed them as pri­ma­ry bless­ings from God.

Today, the stan­dard of our faith is high­er than that of Job, we know that for all the prices we pay, the reward we will receive is not on earth, but in Heav­en. This life is tem­po­rary, but God’s bless­ing is ever­last­ing. If we were still like Job, curs­ing our lives and want­i­ng to die because of dis­ease, and failed to com­pre­hend God’s deeds, we would only be like babes in our faith.

Paul said, “I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is bet­ter by far” (Phil. 1:21). For Chris­tians, death is not a curse, because our Lord over­came death and holds the key of Hell. Death is a gate lead­ing to eter­nal life, a fron­tier pass lead­ing to infi­nite eter­ni­ty as we cross over our finite life. To die is to cease our labors, to be tak­en by the Lord to enjoy ever­last­ing bliss; death is a bless­ing.

If we have no fear of death, we have even less fear of dis­ease. With ill­ness comes pain, but since God allows dis­eases to befall us, he will also give us strength to over­come the pain: “Your strength will equal your days” (Deut. 33:25).

What God Wants Me to Do

What Does God want me to do? This is the ques­tion that every child of God asks when he or she faces an unfa­mil­iar sit­u­a­tion.

What does God want me to do? He wants me to obey Him at the pres­ence of dis­ease, active­ly obey Him. He wants me to praise Him because of my suf­fer­ing, He wants me to rejoice! I can rejoice even when I am ter­mi­nal­ly ill!

I can rejoice, for God has found me trust­wor­thy. He has cho­sen me to defeat Satan’s onslaughts. He has entrust­ed me with such a great mis­sion. I am like a coura­geous gen­er­al head­ing for the bat­tle­field as I received my com­mand.

God has led me to an instant under­stand­ing that in the past twelve years since I became a believ­er, noth­ing in my expe­ri­ence was for­tu­itous or mean­ing­less. Rather, God espe­cial­ly arranged suf­fer­ing for me to tes­ti­fy for His name. This is His extra­or­di­nary grace, His extra­or­di­nary love. He knows that not every­one can sus­tain such great stress­es; He has select­ed me, a weak ves­sel, in order that His strength and pow­er might reveal through me and glo­ri­fy His name. Even if I had to go through greater suf­fer­ings, He would sus­tain me, walk through them with me.

God has giv­en me such unique hon­or, how can I not be grate­ful, not be joy­ful? The ice­berg of my heart has melt­ed; joy gush­es out like a spring. I have so many rea­sons to be grate­ful, to rejoice.

For me, the most ago­niz­ing thing was that I could not under­stand why my God treat­ed me this way; my great­est regret was that I could not bring glo­ri­fy to God with this ill­ness, that I brought dis­grace to His name instead. I was not afraid of pain or death. Once I saw God’s will, the com­fort I received was beyond words.

The end of man’s way is the begin­ning of God’s way. Man’s help­less­ness ush­ers in God’s help­ful­ness. I am espe­cial­ly grate­ful for God’s pres­ence and His com­fort dur­ing my mis­ery.

At this time, prayers become so sweet; it is just like Adam and Eve in the Gar­den of Eden, walk­ing and talk­ing with God in their shame­less naked selves, tru­ly Heav­en on earth.

I even see the beau­ti­ful scenery of Heav­en: the crys­tal clear water flow­ing in the riv­er of Life and the tree of Life with abun­dant, won­der­ful fruits. In that place, there is no more ill­ness and death, no more pain and sor­row; God has renewed every­thing. He Him­self will be with me, wip­ing off all my tears; I will enjoy the ever­last­ing bliss with Him in Heav­en.

Noth­ing would be bet­ter than for God to come for me now. I could shed all my grief and con­cerns and lay my labor of this world to rest, tak­ing off this old per­ish­able flesh to put on the new robe that will nev­er per­ish. I will be able to leave this tem­po­rary world and enter the eter­nal king­dom, to quench the thirst and ful­fill the hope for the pres­ence of the Lord. These are the most won­der­ful bless­ings for God’s chil­dren.

The tri­umphant song that Paul sang before his death will become the tri­umphant song every Chris­t­ian sings when they see Christ face to face: “I have fought the good fight, I have fin­ished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of right­eous­ness, which the Lord, the right­eous Judge, will award to me on that day” (2 Tim. 4:7, 8).

A Mis­sion of Christ to Can­cer Patients

If the Lord were to come for me now, I may not yet be wor­thy of it, though. I am not able to sing the tri­umphant song as yet. I am unlike those faith­ful ser­vants of the Lord. I have not exhaust­ed all my strength; I have not accom­plished what the Lord has entrust­ed to me. I still have unful­filled respon­si­bil­i­ties in this world; the mis­sion that the Lord has giv­en me is still on my shoul­ders.

Every year, mil­lions of peo­ple con­tract can­cer in Chi­na, if no one shared the gospel with them, they would not only suf­fer excru­ci­at­ing phys­i­cal pain before death, they would go to hell in their utmost mis­ery. God has placed me among can­cer patients; He wants me to bring His love and the light of the gospel to those peo­ple who are struck with ter­mi­nal ill­ness­es. I want to defeat Satan’s assaults, using my obe­di­ence, my faith, my greater love for oth­er souls, and my deep­er love for the Lord my God to tes­ti­fy for His glo­ry.

To the can­cer patients, the mes­sage of the gospel, when it comes from some­one healthy, is like attempt­ing to scratch an itchy spot on the foot from out­side the boot. Now God is using me to share the gospel with them. He wants me to expe­ri­ence their pain, to feel what they feel, in order to bring God’s sal­va­tion to them.

Father Joseph Damien was a mis­sion­ary who went to the lep­ers’ colony at Molokai to share the gospel with them. In his excite­ment and much emo­tion­al­ism, he declared, “You lep­ers, Jesus Christ is the only one who can save you…” But his words did not move any­one’s heart. Undis­cour­aged, he kept serv­ing among them with love; before long, he him­self con­tract­ed lep­rosy. Now his posi­tion changed, when­ev­er he shared the gospel again, he would say, “We lep­ers need Jesus Christ to save us…” His dec­la­ra­tion was now with pow­er; this pow­er came from his expe­ri­ence of life. Many lep­ers received sal­va­tion. He had the same dis­ease they had; they all need­ed the same heal­ing and sal­va­tion.

I start­ed to share the gospel among can­cer patients. They were very will­ing to lis­ten to me, because I was one of them. Many received Christ, they said the sin­ner’s prayer with me to accept Christ, and turned them­selves over to the Lord, ask­ing the Lord for heal­ing of the body and sav­ing the soul.

Pray­ing to be Healed

I still prayed that I would be healed from my dis­ease; but after the surgery, my can­cer spread, my con­di­tion went down the deep bend and was beyond rem­e­dy of any med­i­cine, as if God did not hear my prayers. I knew that God want­ed me to tru­ly expe­ri­ence the pain of can­cer, to feel the despair of the des­per­ate. It would not be enough to just taste what it was like. If my breast can­cer could be cured sim­ply by surgery, I would­n’t have felt so deeply for this hor­ri­fy­ing dis­ease, nor would I have such deep sym­pa­thy for can­cer patients, let alone shar­ing the gospel or tes­ti­fy­ing with pow­er.

Lazarus was one whom the Lord loved. Instead of rush­ing to his sickbed to heal him, the Lord allowed him to expe­ri­ence death. Lazarus must expe­ri­ence death, real death, as well as the pain and despair of death, before he could tes­ti­fy to the Lord’s great pow­er of res­ur­rec­tion, and the pow­er of gain­ing new life.

Our Lord Jesus came to this world through incar­na­tion; the Word became flesh. He took the form of the ser­vant, and became obe­di­ent to God unto death, even death on the cross (Phil. 2:8). He endured the deep­est pain of the human world and expe­ri­enced the deep­est weak­ness of man. He loves us and has mer­cy on us, all because He Him­self was a man on earth. He has been through the deep mis­eries of this world. He could iden­ti­fy with us, because He was once exact­ly like us (Heb. 2:18).

By the same token, in my increas­ing­ly severe ill­ness, I have gained true faith from the Lord to over­come the real­i­ty and the cir­cum­stances. The knowl­edge that the Lord will lead me into life through death builds me up in joy and hope in despair. It enables me to hope in hope­less­ness. This knowl­edge gives me faith and assur­ance of what I hope for, cer­tain of what I do not see (Heb. 11:1). The foun­da­tion of this is based on the suf­fer­ing of Christ.

When every bone hurts in my body, I feel the nail’s wound in the Lord’s hands and feet, the wound of the spear by His side, the wound of the whip on His back, and the wound of the crown of thorns on His head. In every pain I suf­fer, the Lord is there with me, because He has been through it all. He under­stands me, pities me, has mer­cy on me, and com­forts me. With the Lord’s pres­ence, my strength and courage dou­ble.

Ill­ness stirs me on to pur­sue greater holi­ness in life. Once, in a prayer I had a pro­found fel­low­ship with the Lord. The Holy Spir­it guid­ed me, shed light on me, and made me see the many sins I had. Even in my min­istry, in the things I did for the love of the Lord, there were many things that did not please God. Once again I repent­ed before the Lord, sin­cere­ly asked for His for­give­ness, and for His pre­cious blood to cleanse me, so that I could per­fect­ly take on His life to reveal His glo­ry. Unless a ker­nel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it will not pro­duce many seeds (John 12:24). My “old self” must under­go com­plete death by means of this phys­i­cal ill­ness. God wants me to become His use­ful instru­ment through this tri­al of fire.

I ask broth­ers and sis­ters who read this tes­ti­mo­ny to pray for me. I hope that my expe­ri­ence and under­stand­ing will be of some help to you. I hope those who are ill will acquire more faith, and the healthy will cher­ish your life and the time you have more than ever.

-Ruth Gao is a Chi­nese min­is­ter cur­rent­ly liv­ing in Chi­na. This arti­cle is from Chris­t­ian Life Quar­ter­ly, Decem­ber, 1998, Vol. 2 No. 4, pp. 3–8.

Edi­tor’s note: Ruth went to be with the Lord in Sep­tem­ber 2001.