Where is the hope when you have cancer, when life falls apart?
I grew up in an abusive ‘religious’ home, tried to kill myself as a teen. I had no hope and certainly no peace. For years I was too angry with God to want anything to do with him.
When cancer hit my husband it felt like the ground was falling away from under my feet and the oxygen was being squeezed from my lungs. I was well and truly beyond what I could cope with – physically and emotionally. Drowning. Again.
God’s love has no limits and in my darkest moments when I turned to him I found a peace that certainly didn’t come from me.
Jesus offers us a peace that isn’t limited to when life is good and circumstances are easy. It’s a peace that comes from knowing that he’s with us, that he loves us, that although things might be dramatically bad right now, one day ‘He will wipe every tear from [our] eyes’ (Revelation 21:4). So we can know peace deep down even when life is anything but peaceful. We can know peace in the face of fear, of loss, of crushing disappointment.
This peace doesn’t depend on circumstances and it doesn’t depend on us. We don’t have to be good enough, strong enough, to try to earn it. It is a gift: “my peace I give you … do not be afraid.” (John 14:27).
Life can still be scary but we’re not alone – God promises “I will never leave you or forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). There is hope – he is ‘the God of hope’ (Romans 15:13).
That’s why Jesus came: ‘God shows his love for us in that … Christ died for us’ (Romans 5:8), to pay the penalty for our wrongdoing, to offer peace with God in this life and forever for all who trust in him: “whoever comes to me I will never cast out” (John 6:37).
Fear is real and it keeps coming but I have learned that God’s peace is greater. When I focus on God’s promises, on what he’s done for me, on who he is and how much he loves us, it sweeps over the fear like the ocean covering rocks – what I fear is still there but it can’t harm me in the same way. God’s peace takes the power out of fear.
For those of you who have suffered at the hands of ‘religious’ people
I’m so desperately sorry. I have some understanding of that. I was raised by an abusive bully who claimed to be Christian but whose life was the opposite of everything that Jesus taught. We lived in fear, with emotional and sexual abuse.
If someone is consistently abusive they are living in opposition to Jesus’ teachings; their religion is to do with themselves, not Jesus.
Being abusive is the very opposite of what Jesus taught and how he lived. It is quite simply not Christian because it is not Christ-like.
Jesus challenged such religious hypocrites: “on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness” (Matthew 23:28). He warned: “Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.” (Mark 7:7).
My hope is in Jesus, in God, not in man-made religious rules and rituals
Jesus wasn’t just God’s representative on earth, he was God in human form: ‘the exact representation of [God’s] being’ (Hebrews 1:3). Jesus’ resurrection proves that he is God. There’s a huge amount of historical evidence to say that it happened and while not everyone wants to believe it, no-one has ever been able to disprove it.
What the Bible says about suffering and the hope God offers us
God created our world perfect – no suffering or death, humans living in harmony with each other and the natural world (Genesis 1 and 2). Right from the start (Genesis 3) man has rejected God, wanting to go our own way and we and our world live with the consequences of that. Our world is broken by sin: we see it in violence, abuse, selfishness. It is no longer perfect – we have suffering, sickness and death both in the human and the broader natural world (Romans 8:21).
We’ve all done things that are wrong. The Bible calls that sin and it separates us from God. If we don’t get right with God in our lifetime our sin will result in us being eternally separated from God in Hell (Matthew 25:46).
God knows we can’t earn a place with him in Heaven – he is a holy, perfect God and we are not perfect people!
God loved mankind so much that since we couldn’t save ourselves from the consequences of our sins, Jesus came to save us, to offer peace with God: ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life’ (John 3:16). Jesus came to die on the cross on our behalf, to pay for our wrongdoing (Romans 5:8) and was resurrected to prove that he has power to give life to those who trust in him (Revelation 1:18, John 10:14-18).
This life gives us hints of Heaven and of Hell. If we choose to reject God, to live forever separated from him, this life is the only taste of Heaven we will ever have. But if we turn to him this life will be the last pain and suffering and darkness we will ever know. Jesus promises, “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” (Matthew 28:20). There are so many promises like this in the Bible and the last few years in particular have shown me that they can be relied upon.
Jesus declared on the cross, “It is finished!” (John 19:30) – death and sin and the suffering they bring have been conquered. That is my hope, both now and for ever, a hope that Jesus offers to everyone: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28).