God Makes Me Sing in the Night

 

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.