When God feels distant during cancer, most of us quietly land on one of two conclusions. Either He has walked away from us… or we have done something to push Him away. However, I want to offer you a third possibility tonight. And I believe it is the true one.
He is right there. You just cannot feel Him yet.
I HAVE BEEN IN THAT SEASON, AND SO HAS ALMOST EVERYONE I TALK TO
I want to be honest with you, because I think honesty helps more than tidy answers. There were stretches of my own cancer journey when I prayed and heard absolutely nothing back. In fact, of all the people I get to talk with about their cancer journeys, I can honestly say this is one of the most common things they tell me.
So if that is where you are, you are not the exception. You are the rule.
And here is the part that matters most. Feeling far from Jesus and being far from Jesus are two completely different things. We tend to treat them like the same thing. But they are not.
WHEN GOD FEELS DISTANT DURING CANCER, YOU ARE IN VERY GOOD COMPANY
There is a man in Scripture who slept through one of the most important nights of his life without knowing what was happening. His name was Jacob, and you can find his story in Genesis 28.
Jacob was running. He had just deceived his own father and stolen his brother’s blessing, and now his brother wanted him dead. So he left. He traveled until the sun went down, and then he stopped in the middle of nowhere, took a stone, put it under his head, and went to sleep.
Picture that for a second. No home. No plan. No comfort. Just a rock for a pillow, in the dark, alone, running from the mess he had made.
That night God gave him a dream — a stairway reaching to heaven, with angels going up and down it. And God stood there and made him a promise: "I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go." (Genesis 28:15)
Then Jacob woke up and said the sentence I want you to carry with you: "Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it."
HE WAS NOT LOOKING FOR GOD, AND GOD SHOWED UP ANYWAY
Now here is the detail I absolutely love about that story, and it is easy to skip right past.
Jacob was not seeking God that night. He was not praying. Moreover, he was not exactly having his finest spiritual moment — he was running away from the consequences of lying to his dying father.
So he did not earn that visit. He did not qualify for it. Jesus does not wait for us to get our act together before He stands in the room with us. Let me say that again, because I believe somebody needs it tonight… He does not wait for you to get your act together first.
And notice something else. God did not become present when Jacob woke up. He was there the entire time Jacob was asleep. Consequently, the dream did not create His presence. It only revealed what was already true.
THE PROMISE IS HIS PRESENCE - AND THAT IS BETTER THAN IT SOUNDS
Look carefully at what God actually promised Jacob. He did not promise an easy road, and He did not promise the trouble was over. Instead, He promised this: I am with you.
I want to be very careful here, because this matters. Nobody is telling you that enough faith produces a clean scan. That is not how He works, and I would never say that to you. Some of you have prayed with everything you have and are still waiting, and you are not doing it wrong.
But hear what you DO get. You get Him. In the room. Tonight. Whatever the report says.
Jacob’s road stayed hard for years afterward. Nevertheless, he was never once alone on it. And neither are you.
SOMETHING SMALL YOU CAN DO TONIGHT
When God feels distant during cancer, we usually try to fix it by feeling harder. That almost never works. So try this instead.
Pick one ordinary thing from the past year and ask Him to show you where He was in it. A person who showed up. A phone call that came at exactly the right hour. A bill that got paid. Something that seemed like luck at the time.
Our guest Brittany did exactly this, and it changed how she saw her whole first diagnosis. She could point at a book she happened to pick up in a Costco, and at the fact that she and her husband got out of debt one year before she needed to stop worrying about money. She could not see any of it while it was happening.
You may not feel a thing while you do this. That is fine. Sometimes we do not get the feeling first — sometimes we get the evidence first, and the feeling follows later.
YOU ARE NEVER ALONE
So if you take one thing from all of this, let it be this. When God feels distant during cancer, the distance is in what you can sense, and it is not in where He actually is. He is not far off. Sometimes we just have to turn our heads ninety degrees to see that He is standing right there beside us.
No matter what you are facing on your journey with cancer or in life, remember this. You are NEVER ALONE. Jesus and the Holy Spirit are always with you and ready to help. All you have to do is ask, give it all to Jesus, and let Him go to work.
And if you do not have a relationship with Jesus — or if yours has gone stale, or weak, or you are just plain angry right now — I would strongly encourage you to visit our Accepting Jesus page. It will walk you through it and give you a prayer you can pray tonight, right where you are.
I would also love for you to hear Brittany tell this in her own words. Her first episode, Brittany’s Story Part One, is live on our podcast now, and it is the first of three. I think you will be very glad you started with it.
May God bless you, and thank you so much for reading.
Listen to the Podcast: Brittany's Story, Part One - I've Got This