Proverbs 11

While statistics vary widely from place to place, it is generally estimated that more than seven million people around the world die each year from cancer. In 2019, nearly six billion dollars was spent on cancer research in the United States alone. I wonder how many times God has heard the prayer that a cure for cancer be found.

Do you know what cancer is, when it all comes right down to it? Cancer cells are cells that have stopped functioning properly. Instead of participating in the normal give-and-take processes of the body, cancer cells stop giving. They continue to take, but they no longer give. They become hoarders in the body, hogging resources, sucking the life right out of the body.

Photo © Unsplash/National Cancer Institute

Ironically, the more the cells feed off their host, the more they endanger the life of the host, and if they are not ultimately stopped, they kill the host—along with themselves. This is a life law: that which does not open itself in giving eventually self-destructs.

Did you catch that in today’s chapter? “One person gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty.” (vs 24) It is in giving that we receive. It is in hoarding that we lose even what we have. This is the cancer mentality. In hoarding what they have, cancer cells eventually lose their own “lives.” Jesus said it works the same way for us: “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” (Matt 16:25)

God is the cure for cancer. Yes, He can, does, and will heal physical cancer, but more importantly, He cures spiritual cancer. Only He can take the cancerous heart and make it healthy again.