My Journey With Cancer, One Year Later: By David Maddox
This journey began on January 6th of last year with an annual physical that revealed a mass in my stomach. Having just retired from the practice of law so I could be full time with Time to Revive, Janet and I were waiting to leave for Indiana in a few days where the next Gospel effort was to be made. We never made it to Indiana and now one year later with a stage four diagnosis I am no longer full time staff with Time to Revive because of the physical limitations caused by the cancer and chemo treatments. Not being able to be a part of what God is doing through Time to Revive has been the hardest thing emotionally for me as I really believe I was called to that ministry to help lead their discipleship effort with which we had been involved for many years previously. However, I have learned over this past year not to question God but to trust Him for Scripture has many examples of people called who are first led into a time of testing and teaching to prepare them for what God has for them. That is why I have labeled this time as my “detour in the desert” or my time in the “University of the Desert”. If God were finished with me and there was nothing more for me to do I would be home, but I am still here and so I am seeking to hear and to learn and to serve as God directs in His power and for His glory. It is a different ministry, but of great importance as I get to share my journey with you and others – and write. God has been gracious to produce much eternal fruit during this year and to walk with me every step of the way – supported by your prayers for which I am eternally thankful. He continues to carry me as I walk through what would be impossible for me alone.
Medically this past week coming off chemo was for a time more difficult and now it seems to have lifted some and be less hard. Thursday and half of Friday were really uncomfortable. Thursday was the emotional difficult day – there is always at least one following chemo. The battle for a cancer patient is really more difficult between the ears than in the body where the intruder inside battles to take your life and health. Attitude is everything and for the Christian it is focus – focus on God and not on this enemy – trusting that the God who has provided for your eternity has also provided for these times right now – and that if He has not called you home that means there is work for you to do and you need to be about it.
Spiritually God has really helped me to understand and even appreciate (yes appreciate) where I am right now. Yesterday I completed another read through the Bible and God is using those times before Him to answer my prayer for a new revelation of who He is. This has been one of the blessings of this past year. Without cancer I would never have had the time I have had to read and pray through the Bible. I can invest whatever time I need every day except for the worse of the chemo side effect days. What a blessing.
God has shown me much from the life of Paul this year. I really identify with him in many ways – obviously not in the magnitude of the works God did through him or his Apostleship -, comparatively I am nothing. But the purpose of the thorn in the flesh with which he suffered – and which he asked be removed and it wasn’t – I believe is similar to the purpose of my cancer at this point in my life (2 Corinthians 12:7-10) – “to keep me from exalting myself” and to keep me totally dependent on the Lord and His power. I have not yet come to Paul being “well content” with his weakness for God has not said to me that I will not ultimately be delivered from this cancer as he told Paul about the thorn in the flesh – so I still pray for healing and enablement, but seek to live as if this is His will for it is at this time or it would be gone.
I also identify with Paul in that he was called to a specific ministry and then sent into the desert for years to learn and be prepared for that ministry (Galatians 1:11-24). Paul remained in Tarsus for years until Barnabas went there to search for him and brought him back to Antioch – from which the Holy Spirit sent the two out to fulfill the earlier call (Acts 11:21-26). How frustrated he must have been in those years. Some of what God has done in this past year is clearly preparation I needed. I don’t know what God intends for the future, but I do know that if the Time to Revive call is still to be fulfilled, they will have a much more useful servant than they would have had if I had been allowed to join them immediately as we had planned. Whatever God has for the future will be better because of this time with Him and in His Word.
The final identity with Paul I would share is the jail house years where he was a prisoner of Rome chained and unable to go where he wished to encourage and build up the churches and to preach the Gospel. Early this week as I was reading through some of his letters God revealed to me what a tragedy it would have been had he been able to go and share what he did in Ephesians orally and in person to the church in Ephesus. They would have heard the message, but then others would argue over what he really said and two thousand years later I would have no idea what he had said. Paul’s greatest contribution to the advancement of the Kingdom is arguably the letters he wrote because he could not go and share in person.
God continues to show me writings I need to finish which have been in process – some of them for decades. So I study and pray and post on Facebook and elsewhere as God opens doors. During this year God has provided a publisher for the book God began in 2007 and with the cancer, the time necessary to complete the editing process. It will be a trilogy and the release day for the first volume is tentative October 1st. That would have been impossible had I been on the road with TTR this past year. I have also been working on discipleship materials for TTR and others I have a desire to make available to anyone anywhere for free on the internet – as well as a revival series and numerous teachings on single subjects God has opened to me over the years. For now and until I get different instructions I am a writer in my cancer “prison” and where possible a contributor to Revive Arizona as we seek to take the TTR model and see churches (Believers) in Arizona unite to share the Gospel and disciple Believers. I know that as in Tupelo last year God will enable me to be a part of some of the Time to Revive events. This is certainly not what I expected, but it is exciting to see what God can do with what He teaches me – and to know that even with stage four cancer – I can still be used.
Special thanks for your participation in the journey this past year. May God richly bless you in this New Year. My prayer for you is that revival may come to you so that your heart will be changed so that God can use you to change others’ hearts – and that you will be given a new revelation of who God really is in His holiness.
About David Maddox – After a legal career in both Texas and Arizona that spanned over 40 years as a civil litigator, God called David to leave his law practice and work full time as Discipleship Director for Time to Revive. That call is really the fruit of decades of prayer for revival and teaching God’s Word, writing discipleship materials and seeking to make disciples. David married Janet Whitehead in 1976 and they minister together from their Phoenix home. God has blessed them with four children and thus far seven grandchildren.