What Does The Bible Say About Cancer?

well good evening and welcome to crowd church my name is matt edmondson and beside me oh well what can only be described as very beautiful people chris and sue holcomb chris and sue good evening how are you doing good you can hear me now uh which is which is a blessing really well i might not be i don't know so welcome to crowd if this is your first time with us we are an online church uh it's great that you're here dude join in uh in the comments on facebook or youtube or wherever you're watching this if you're watching it live be great to hear from you if you're watching this on ketchup as i know many folks do you can still also write in the comments um and we would love to see what you've got so you can also reach out to us via the website www.crowd.church on that website you can connect with us you can email us and you can even uh whatsapp us which is great so yes welcome uh welcome one and all so uh what's matt crew here oh you're echoing matt oh am i echoing badly that'll be a something that we'll resolve during the talk not quite sure why it's doing that okay so um as you may or may not know we are well we're in a bit of a crisis at the moment aren't we where the ukraine is concerned and what is going on over there and so we want to take a little bit of time at the start of the service to pray for the ukraine before we get into the main section of stay where we talk about what does the bible say about cancer so uh before we go too much further uh let's john if this is okay john by the way is behind the scenes doing production so uh be kind to john uh john let's do the video uh that is a prayer for ukraine and then chris sue and i will be back after this but do join in with this prayer here we go father god king of all nations we cry out to you now for the people of ukraine we ask you to rescue those who are vulnerable from the hands of their enemies that they may live life without fear before you all of their days lord have mercy lord of lords and prince of peace our politicians are predicting the biggest war in europe since 1945 and we simply cry out to you urgently to write another story in our time for the dark mations of evil men give wisdom beyond human wisdom to peacemakers seeking an equitable and less violent way may politicians exercise the wisdom from above which is peaceable gentle willing to yield and full of mercy holy spirit we pray for the church in ukraine a nation in which 70 percent of the population call themselves christian give our many brothers and sisters in that nation courage in this crisis that they may proclaim the good news of your kingdom bind up broken hearts and bring comfort to all who mourn you lord make war cease to the end of the earth you break bows shatter spears and burn shields with fire and so we ask you now to save the lives of many people in ukraine make a peace that is strong and not weak de-escalate this crisis we hear of wars and rumors of wars but you lord are our rock our fortress and our deliverer our hope is in you and so we address the nations now in the name of jesus we say be still and no god he is exalted among the nations he shall be exalted in the earth lord have mercy okay well then we've got john [Laughter] hold on so there we go so that was john just making a brief interlude into the crowd stream service uh do bear with us it's the first time john's done production uh by himself flying solo so uh that's quite funny and you're doing a great job john keep going but keep going it's great uh so and we've now got chris and sue back which is awesome so welcome chris and c so the ukraine um and the war and the invade the invasion of it um we're hitting we're not here to make political statements but we are here to pray for people which is why we ran that prayer and it is a wonderful prayer we are going to put it on social media and pete greg from 24 7 uh did that prayer so you can join in uh with that chris and sue i don't know what you make of what's happening in the ukraine at the moment have you got any thoughts on this whole thing and then just in the space of a couple of days everything has changed you know like and everyone's basically good but actually evil is a thing you know just just listing the stuff he's done over 10 or 15 years yeah it's it's crazy isn't it and it's it's one of those if you're joining us on the catch-up and you're watching this you know beyond the broadcast and we don't actually know what the future holds um we don't know where it's going to lead to or what's going to happen but this week was the week that putin decided to invade the ukraine and so i think it is crazy and as christians we we pray and that's what we do because we believe that god changes things and it's not just right to say it we do believe in the prayer power of prayer so do pray for those in the ukraine and look for ways to help and we'll we'll be doing more on this uh in the coming weeks i've no doubt um but i just wanted to touch base at the start here and say yes we are standing with our brothers and sisters in ukraine and also with our brothers and sisters in russia who are obviously very anti the war there's a lot of anti-war sentiment over there um and so it's not great we know it's not great and yeah just keep praying just keep praying so with all of that said today we are asking what does the bible say about cancer and uh very different track to what's going on in the ukraine and chris and sue have joined me again if you remember if you're with us a few weeks ago chris and sue were actually with us talking about health and what does the bible say about health today we are talking about what does bible say about cancer and i wanted chris and sue back for for what i mean apart from you know your smart sparkling smiles and your amazing personalities you have a you have a specific skill set uh that i certainly don't have that i thought would really help us do you want to let the good folks know what that is um i'm a breast cancer surgeon here in liverpool and i've been so for several decades now so i'm a breast cancer surgeon here is nurse practitioners i've worked with patients with breast cancer and in the diagnosis of breast cancer for um so probably about 20 years in that area and tenured more or less 10 years or seven to ten years before that on looking at clinical trials based on treatments for breast cancer um you know i guess both of us have this knowledge of a little bit a few decades worth of experience both as a a surgeon and a nurse and we'll maybe argue out later who who knows the most whether it's the surgeon or the nurse i don't know we'll talk about that in a little bit but today is a little bit different and i'll tell you why because um today we don't actually have a talk per se now if you're a regular to crowd um what we tend to do is we have like a 20-minute talk uh where someone brings some teaching from scripture and then we talk about it in conversation stream it stays a little bit different because um the person that in theory is doing the talk wanted to do it as an interview and and it just works super well where i get to sit down with a beautiful lady called annie odin and uh get to talk to her about her story with breast cancer now she is a christian she is the wife of tony odin who was on the on the podcast on the live stream uh on the church service a few weeks ago talking about the church annie is tony's wife she is a beautiful lady annie and i have been friends for a very long time and a few years ago she had struggled with breast cancer and i really wanted to hear from her and hear her story about this whole thing about what the bible says about breast cancer so we're going to roll this interview with annie we are then going to have a worship song that will play straight after the talk after that chris and sue and myself will be back to talk about this whole thing around cancer so without further ado john do you want to roll the interview with annie when were you diagnosed with cancer it was in uh 2008 um quite a number of years ago now um thank god i'm still here and uh i'm well now but it was in 2008 in january and do you remember what happened yeah i do of course um on a monday morning which is normally the day off uh with tony because tony is a pass obviously so monday is our only day off and i was working as a chaplain in h p holloway at the time which is a what was a female prison and yeah that monday morning i woke up everything was fine was looking forward to my wonderful day off when i noticed a lump on my breast and and i thought this this wasn't there yesterday yeah it was just a total surprise um yeah and then uh then we went to uh to show tony tony thought yeah we need to go to the gp um we went he confirmed that there's definitely a lump and um sent us to well referred us to the bart's cancer center and that was a few days later actually that i was able to be seen but on that very day on that monday evening i was praying and i was i was obviously i was quite shocked uh to have found a lump at that point in time i didn't know you know was it cancer what was it yeah um but i prayed and i really felt such a sense of god in that moment okay um and and i felt that god was saying to me uh not with an audible voice or anything like that but just that inner sense of uh knowing uh what is to come so um and what what i felt god say was um that it is cancer and that it had spread and that i would have to go through treatment um that he wouldn't just miraculously heal me those were the things um that i felt god speak to me and that was on the monday night that was all on a monday night that was that was one heck of a monday jeez it was uh not my best day off i must say so thank you geez and so i'm really fascinated to know what your what your mindset was like at the end of the day where you after you felt god say to you you have got cancer it has spread and you're gonna need treatment i mean there are three radical things that you know that god speaks where are you at monday night when you when you sense this um it's well obviously i was completely confused in some ways and at the same time i i did feel that it was i wasn't out of control um so i wasn't totally devastated i was obviously in shock but just that reassurance that almost um that that conversation that prayer with god that that i wasn't alone that god knew exactly what was going on and that that reassured me intensely did you tell tony on monday night what you felt god had said to you yes i did and and that's why i mean his response was uh well let's not jump ahead of ourselves and you know let's just get the results first not pre pre-end kind of things which is good advice um but i wasn't i wasn't panicking or anything like that i was obviously yeah i was stunned but i wasn't panicking um and then on the thursday when we went to the hospital they did all the tests i had the mammogram had scans i had a biopsy and by the end of thursday i knew i had cancer i knew it had spread so i mean within the space of four days your life is turned upside down quite a bit the thing that i like what you said there was that you were confused but you knew it wasn't out of control as in you were confused you're in turmoil um this thing is is is heavy duty but you you sense that god was with you and it wasn't out of control it was this something you thought no i've i've got to fight for this um way of thinking it definitely uh it didn't come just you know at ease and i did pray a lot and i read the bible that that night and and different passages and and you know yes it was something to to come to um you know after really searching myself and and also thinking i i had so many different plans you know and i thought god had these plans for my life and suddenly it was interrupted that the you know the plans we had were completely interrupted how did you come to terms with the idea that actually life could be cut a lot shorter than you'd expected it to yeah come into terms with the whole idea of dying young i i mean i'm not sure if i ever came to terms with that because obviously i was still waiting for news of what what the results of the tests were but at some point i i came to the conclusion whether i die or whether i live you know i want to live for god or i want to you know i want to yeah i want to follow jesus to the best of my ability whether that is you know living well for a short time or for a long time and um here on earth um i think the the what really uh helps me or helped me was just to know that you know if i died that's not the end you know there is there is uh heaven to be gained and you know um it says that we die once and then the judgment and you know but then jesus is uh is alive you know and he he um he gives us another another chance he he saves us from the second death and i mean that's a complicated uh theological thing but i i just uh i just love the fact that i know you know jesus jesus is there you know on the other side of of death for me as a christian jesus going to be there waiting for me and that that's my comfort and that was my comfort then when you found out that it was treatable the stage three was there a sort of a sense of relief that was with that it's it it was amazing um because i just thought okay this is it's going to be difficult it's hard but you know at least there is hope um that you know that i will have a few more years um it depends how the the treatment or how i would respond to the treatment but but it was definitely a great relief yeah i felt yeah i was a bit like a ton of bricks falling off my shoulders yeah i can imagine i mean in this take this goes back to that whole first night you were praying where you felt god say it is cancer has spread and you are going to need treatment to get out of this yes in some ways you know you you you believe these things and you hear you you may have a sense of god in at one point and then you know i don't know life takes over and and there's a lot of doubts and difficulties and because you don't have results back there's still that sense have i really understood this right yeah yeah have i really heard god i'm making this up myself but i i did have an inner sense that i did but you know you just don't know do you i mean you know we are human and we have a lot of wishful thinking too so yeah yeah you mentioned annie that when you found out you're gonna have to do chemo that there was a whole lot of identity things tied up in that what did you mean by that statement well because i mean obviously um the side effects of chemotherapy um were to lose all one's that's hair very british way to say it to lose all of one's hair it is yeah you're definitely british now annie it's it's it's not just uh you know my my hair here it's the eyebrows it's the eyelashes it's all bodily hair yeah which is just such a weird thing initial stages you still have the eyebrows with this particular chemo and that's okay but then when they go then and the eyelashes it you just look so different and it cannot you know it's quite makeup can't make up for it because you know it it helps but um but yeah it's it's just very difficult killed you know when you when you're sweating the the sweat runs right into the eyes it's it's those kind of things that it's just it's just hard it's difficult to explain if one hasn't experienced that but um but yeah having no hair obviously is a huge thing for anyone but i think for women particularly uh extremely difficult to face and you know and and having a husband who sees you in you know when when you've got the wig on or when you don't um that was i didn't know quite what to make of it it was really difficult as the hair fell out you know it's such a shocking thing it actually happened much quicker than i thought it would happen and were there any other side effects of your treatment yeah uh i had uh in the with the chemo i had a lot of pain uh in the last stage of the chemotherapy a lot of pain then during my surgery i had a complication which was actually very very serious complication i was okay it was a case study in the ends i was losing a lot of lymph fluid like yeah it's not nice to talk about but far more than um every day far more than someone else who who would after 10 days be finished with you know they would after 10 days have not lost as much fluids as i did in one day um and so that yeah it was a very serious complication where the lymph duct had been severed and i needed to uh have um surgery to have that repaired and i think you actually came and visited me matt in hospital after that surgery and um yeah i didn't look my best i believe neither did i any to be fair yeah it was um yeah i was very unwell when he came and visited me and it was probably my lowest period of time because i'd been already in hospital for such a long time and this complication just totally threw me my body was so weak i was in agony in absolute agony for a long time so yeah this whole process annie i mean we we were friends before the cancer we've been friends since the cancer it's one of those things isn't it when you're when you're sort of going through life you have an experience or an expectation of god you have an understanding of god and a kind of theory as to how your life's going to progress in some way do what i mean and then you're hit smack in the face like you know like a train has just come and walloped you sideways um and you realize actually it's not quite like you said at the start you know it's not quite as you planned it did that challenge your faith did that rock your faith um in christ during that not really uh it's quite interesting that it didn't um because i think i've had some other crises before in my life they rocked my faith a bit more uh in a you know in a sense that i had to really wrestle with god you know why me this situation um with the cancer didn't um and yeah i didn't in terms of it didn't um undermine my faith it didn't make me doubt god in fact there were so many situations where i just saw god's hand in my life i mean the day i went to that my first chemo treatment my friend becky came with me and i like this is becky that went wig shopping becky yes the one i went shopping with and and i had such a joy in my heart that i couldn't explain that was so weird and just an excitement in that sense what good god might do through all of this and it was just so unnatural just not something that you would would ever feel normally and so so i do i i can only testify that god was truly with me that there was a i wasn't walking that walk alone i had obviously my friends i had my husband and my family from afar supporting me um but you know god being there was was the biggest support and and not just in terms of just having a feeling but but also you know throughout those weeks and months you know there were lots of scriptures lots of bible verses that really helped and i and i wouldn't say it was one specific verse that really that was the formula that got me through it but actually so many bible verses so many passages and reading the bible regularly every morning and you know so i love the psalm so i would read a number of psalms one chapter in proverbs and then different passages from the new testament the old testament and different things spoke to me and and kind of encouraged me at different times looking back then um you know over the sort of the last eight to ten years what did you what did you learn in this whole process about your about god's journal from a christian point of view what what are some of the big takeaways that you you've you've sort of gleaned um i think probably a lot um just how important christian community is um that we need others uh we can't do this this kind of life without without brothers and sisters or christian friends who pray who are there uh when we need a meal or need someone to go to to a an appointment or things like that um yeah we're just you know we're interdependent i think that's one big lesson that we need uh our brothers and sisters in christ uh the fact i i think you know god is merciful god is merciful that he's a god who has compassion on us whether we've done right or wrong you know god is a god who has mercy on us if we call on him and that that's something that that's one of the big lessons you know i've done lots of things wrong and i've not always had the right attitude and you know nevertheless god has shown me mercy over and over and over again um yeah so just the faithfulness of god in uh in in just being there and um and stepping into situations when we're desperate and there were so many more situations would take a lifetime not quite lifetime but there is a lot of other situations where uh where i just saw god's miraculous hand in some ways uh to to really rescue me out of situations just the fact that god is not just someone who wants us to obey rules but he's uh he's a good father and jesus is a good friend and um and cares for us how do we help someone who has been diagnosed with cancer if we don't have cancer if we stand on the outside it knowing what to say or what to do it everyone sort of goes into a cold sweat about it jeremy is like how do we do that so you you i mean you shared some of the stories there but how can people help people that have been diagnosed with cancer that's a good question i think um i think there are so many different ways and every person is different and that's why i think is the best thing is to actually ask ask how they might want to be supported what they would appreciate would they appreciate someone to visit what they appreciated left you know those kind of things have conversations but also i think just words of encouragement cards one thing that somebody did for me when because i used to work in the hospital in in the prison and um they got one of the chaplains got all the colleagues and and prisoners to write things um to me what you know what i meant to them and somebody painted this lovely picture and uh and they sent it to me as a package and it was fantastic it really made such a difference so i think there are so many creative ways of of helping someone um uh which with physical needs but also to look out for them if they are christians who are coming to a church service they might be really quite insecure when they're you know when they're in that phase and might not want to be in public spaces at the moment it's even more difficult with the covert situation where where people are at risk of infection and obviously the immune system is is compromised when somebody has cancer so just navigating that in a sense sensitive way is is really important i think but maybe if if they do come to church and they want to be in church um to to ask them if they want someone to come in with them or to sit with them and not always just to ask about how how the chemo is going or how this is going but actually sharing your own life with your own kind of situations life problems with with the person because i think sometimes it can become so inward focused that it's unhealthy for a person to really just dwell on on uh on what's going on in their own life it's really helpful sometimes to hear oh someone else's problem someone else's issues and and that really can refocus you and and uh it's helpful annie listen it's been great thank you so much for for sharing your story uh um i i appreciate you doing that and i know it's not always easy to to relive some of these these times but i think you know people will watch this and and maybe struggling with the same thing um as we close out is there anything that if maybe someone is watching this that has cancer what would you say to them yeah i i think i would say put your hope in a god who really cares for you um he cares and uh he knows what you're going through and he can help you please pray to him and and read his word and i i'm sure that will be of help uh it there is no magic formula but uh but god is is a personable god and uh reach out to him and he will reach out to you he's a god who's with us god emmanuel awesome and on that bombshell annie thank you so much yeah wonderful to be with you thank you matt for asking and uh it's been a real pleasure thanks how deep the father's love for us how vast beyond all mention that he should give his only son to make her wretch his treasure how great the pain of searing laws the father turns his face away as wounds which mother chosen bring many sons to glory behold the man upon the cross my sin upon his shoulders ashamed i hear my mocking voice call out among the scarface it was my sin that held him there until it was a complex his dying breath has brought me life i know that it is i will not boast in anything no gifts no power no wisdom but i will boast in jesus christ his death and resurrect why should i gain from his reward i cannot give an answer his wounds have paid my answer but this i know with all my heart his wounds have paid my ransom well there we go thank you annie for sharing your story uh i loved my interview with anyone let me tell you that was a 20-minute excerpt from uh about a 55-minute conversation so there's a lot of stuff we had to leave out which we will be putting the full interview on the new podcast which is coming out very very soon so you'll be able to hear the whole of annie's story uh that the whole of the interview the bits that we that we had in the bits that we didn't have in the podcast coming up so thank you annie chris so what did you make to and his story i'm sure it's something that you've heard a number of times over the years yeah yeah i'm in a very human story isn't it a very common story and yeah i guess a couple of things stood out immediately it's that it's that patients um feel a lump in the shower at eight o'clock in the morning they pretty got much got the funeral planned by nine o'clock um yeah assume the worse and actually important to say that most people who find a breast lump it's not cancer it's very important to say about 1 in 20 1 in 30 of those who come to us actually have cancer but another thing she um said which something i often say something similar to my uh patients that is if i sent you over a glass of wine or a pint or whatever will you live forever you would say well what a stupid question obviously not but actually we live our lives day by day as if we will we sort of expect that our children will get married that we'll see grandchildren that will will do all of those things and what breast cancer does it it's right right there in your face and says oh hang on all of a sudden maybe that's not gonna happen you know you know actually i am i'm not immortal um maybe these things won't happen so it's that sort of existential threat which of course is where faith and knowing god absolutely comes in and you know again as annie so clearly showed um it's the time when you can you know really rely on your face that threat yeah that's very good so i mean one of the things that annie said was right at the end there there's no magic formula uh and one of the things i think the christians and you know depend on which church you hang out in as i suppose um in the in the brief time at which i've been a christian one of the things that i've noticed is there is a little bit of a formula that goes around where if i pray this and i have faith then x will happen journaling and um and one of the things that struck me about anna's story that she said there's no magic formula and she didn't get in instantly healed it i mean there was a lot of prayer going on for any but she didn't get instantly healed and there was a journey that she had to go through um is that is that something that you see amongst christians who maybe that they there is this formula in their heads that they they're struggling with and it depends it depends on awful lot as you say it depends an awful lot on the church that you go to and there are we are faced with so as many of us are different there are as many different responses by christians the questions that face them the formula that they believe in their head so why am i not healed why didn't this lump disappear overnight because you know i know that god can heal those sort of questions do come up and people are often at the mercy of whatever the teaching is in their church so i think sometimes you have to if you get the chance an opportunity to unpack what people believe could be possible it's good to unpack it it's also good to say to people well god gave us doctors that know how to treat these things sometimes that's a really amazing way forward for people because there is so much that can be done particularly for breast cancer it's not true of all cancers but it is particularly full of breast cancer where you can have a bit of surgery and i mean a bit and you can have a tablet and you'll find that you never have another problem so the variety of wonder variety of things that people believe from what they've been told in their background what they've experienced in their lives so there may be people that have had sisters that have died of breast cancer or you know there's a genetic problem in the family which is not the most common situation there's only about three percent of breast cancer caused by gene thoughts or they've got a minister that says you know we must all pray that you're going to be healed and some people come to us saying oh i feel that god is telling you not to have any and you kind of feel i i can honor your decision to have trust and faith in god but i think god would say don't not listen to the other around you that may be able to help you on this journey because that's what it is and as chris said you know life doesn't offer us any guarantees no matter who we are you know that that we don't know how long we've got what our time is like what it's going to be like if we have a really good journey and he seems to have had a mixed journey because the treatment's so ruthless you know when you're having your chemo and your hair falls out and you're spending your head time with your head down the toilet which isn't as much of a problem now because we have good treatments to stop that happening but it does happen and we then get anxious about am i ever going to get over this because i feel like death because of the treatments it's not even because of cancer you you have to then take stock and if you can have that hope and that peace in your heart that god is in control that that is so fundamentally the christians i've seen have had something extra that many people do i think that link between faith and uh and scientific medicine is often not there in that a lot of the scientific medics and the people in the nhs and doctors in the nhs wouldn't have the faith and then they're very into signs and would sometimes poopoo the faith side of things but but equally sometimes again depending on the church perhaps and the theology um christians were poo poo the scientific and the medical and actually bringing those together whereby each appreciates and realizes the value of the other and that they are complementary that you know that god has given us the you know the abilities and the knowledge and the scientific method etcetera to to do stuff but equally then prayer and relationship and the church family and faith to the individual is hugely important in the whole process and the treatment as well and i think that they're synergistic and i think they're often seen as you know um against each other you know yeah that's a good work i i like that word synergistic they sort of they they do sort of help each other don't they and i'm i'm assuming over the years you guys have seen all kinds of things from people recovering quite quickly to people um just not recovering at all even though they're expected to recover because the you know this illness is not predictable i would have thought um and all kinds of outcomes can happen yeah um cancer is in some way an unhelpful word um even breast cancer so so again something i would commonly say to my my patients is most people have a single box with the word breast words breast cancer written on the front i haven't got one box with breast cancer on the front i've got about 50 boxes and i know that they're all different depending on the exact type of cancer the exact type of patient the age of the patient the size of the patient their body habitus the size of their breasts um something so so that there are some who have sue said just a really very straightforward day case operation and a tablet uh perhaps for five years and nothing else um and are cured those at the other end might have radiotherapy surgery chemotherapy and a tablet and an injection and and the whole treatment is much much more involved and a much more difficult journey but we're very fortunate in breast cancer most most patients are cured and are fine in breast cancer so we're often at a somewhat positive end of a difficult experience and i guess as a as a christian and a doctor or a nurse in some ways it's a privilege to be able walk for a while with people on their journey and hopefully to do that yeah compassionately but but to be able to offer you know very real very real hope and i i suppose the other thing to say is that most breast cancer is in older women it isn't necessarily in that younger age group and i think we get that very mixed up in our heads because i think we think it's a disease of young women and in fact it's mostly a disease of women between the age of 60 and 75 and and upwards you know an old lady comes to us with a breast love we know it's breast cancer without even examining them if they're nice and they come through the door with a wrestler it's a breast cancer people with a 90 year old with the breast cancer has a very often very pragmatic view of the whole process i've got cancer i mean some of them say oh well don't treat me then because i'm going to die anyway so it's a bit of a tricky no no we can do surgery we can take it we can fit enough and if you get to 90 you're usually pretty fit and then you have those that turn their face to the wall and don't want anything you know really resistant because of their experience because of what they've seen in hospitals the fear and that was something annie talked about you know not having any fear it is a real bonus in it because the world is full of fear and the word answer as soon as you say that word are afraid and vulnerable and i guess that's winning that's when faith kicks in isn't it so i don't know sometimes sometimes you see christians or churches seem to have a rather trite view of faith and you know it's all it's all great while it's all marvelous but but actually it's in the difficult times that you know the rubber hits the road yeah it doesn't work and it's either true true or it isn't and it's either meaningful to you or isn't and yeah that's very much the case with cancer or eternal disease yeah i mean it's uh so what i'm one of the things i guess i've learned recently recently but one of the things i'm aware of is like you say cross cancer is a is a catch-all name given to hundreds of different types of cancer all with different outcomes and different treatableness i don't know treatableness is a word but i'll make it up if it is so you've got all these different types of cancers the the thing which you've mentioned the thing which annie mentioned is throughout all of them regardless of what it is you've got you can have hope um and you can hold on to hope this eternal hope as we like to call it in christians how have you how would you describe i guess if someone's watching this they're not a christian and they how would you describe that hope and what does that do for them so for me it's about the joy of knowing jesus i suppose that hope is fundamentally about that relationship we have with god and jesus that means that i have this other being that i i can depend on no matter what so it's not about how good or bad i am and in fact a lot of worries that people have because of past experiences you know that sin has been visited upon me that's why i've got cancer that's a very common you know misconception about you know often we get cancer because we get old and our cells don't multiply as they should for me if i can if i have the opportunity if somebody asks me i will often ask them do you have a faith do you have soul because in my experience the faith aspect is where people know that it's not all on them it's not all their responsibility somebody that's walking with them and i would say to anybody actually if i have the opportunity you know knowing that god loves you and cares about you and his son died for you at this time can mean the difference between a good life and even a good death you have to realize that we're all gonna die one day that you know that that's it isn't it you know and how i is sort of our choice in a way um and if we as christians don't have any comment or any sense of being able to say to somebody would you like me to tell you a little bit about my journey or you know can i help you or is there something you'd like to discuss about your spiritual side about your journey and that's something we are asked to explore but many are not bold enough to explore because when people are fearful they want to know about god i really want to know that there is somebody there and that's when people say you know would you pray for me even if they're not would you pray for me yes the answer is yes always yes but you know you can't you can make you can tell people what you can tell people with their permission unfortunately in the nhs we can't preach without really being invited into that position yeah and that's fair enough i i get that i understand that many have faith that they haven't visited for a long time so the other thing is to ask that question you know have you a faith had a faith now some people just say no and you know well actually this isn't going to go anywhere but so when i used to go to sunday school and then you can unpack that a little bit and say what what's into you and open open the door yeah to bring that sort of conversation of hope in yeah um what uh i'm one of the things that i touched on with annie which i think is an important thing is i mean i sit here in the comfort of my you know my man cave now and i as far as i'm aware i don't have any form of cancer i feel pretty healthy but i talk to a fair few people that do have cancer um and so beyond what you've shared already the fact there are different types of cancers that quite a few of them are treatable that there is this thing called hope uh in the gospel and he touched on a few things you know practical things that can help that i could do to help somebody with cancer but what have you seen in your years of experience you you deal with people that have cancer all the time what are some of the things that i need to be aware of when helping and talking to getting alongside people that have been diagnosed with cancer so i think people don't become a cancer and i need to remember that every day when i see a patient but but actually that applies for for you and everyone else so they're still a mum um they're still worrying about their kids and they're still doing the packed lunch um they're still a dad they're still a grandparent whatever it is so some of the stuff that that annie said actually about um actually sharing your own life and experience still don't don't suddenly turn this person into a cancer patient um but they're still a human being who is going through life's journey with a new different challenge and i think it's don't be afraid to talk ask questions ask sensitively you know be aware offer help but but don't don't don't retreat i think and people you know people can life hasn't ended you know don't bring a premium you know if it's a nasty cancer they can't be treated don't bring a premature death you know you can still laugh you can still have fun you can still go out you can still worry because you know your teenager's got a spotty youth who you you know is unsuitable you know you're still worrying about those things you can still talk about it still went to see the cinema went to the cinema and saw a good film or a bad film and so so i think just yeah for me people are still people and and you can laugh about the ball patch and you know where patients i will often uh comment on people's hair actually so so after the chemotherapy when the hair first grows back it's often curly so people who've always had straight hair will often have uh curly hair so quite a lot it suits quite a lot of women actually just when they've got really short hair which is only perhaps a long but and i'll often comment on it and i suppose a little bit of that to say rather than you know always be afraid just to oh you know that looks good or what's that like or yeah that's really interesting yeah yeah that's fascinating so we did some psychological studies on um what women did in response to having a diagnosis and without without fail most women were protective of their family so they didn't tell their family what was going on until things were quite a long way down now with annie her her situation is amazingly secure and sort of mature in faith and everything but if you're a new christian you may not really know your church very well you may want to protect all your family that you know suffer or feel bad if ill you know we are very naturally protective of family so it does make a difference when you can be a friend when i say you know if you have a friend don't not be a friend you know don't ignore or worry about what the right thing is to and this is a non-sequitur but it was it's a similar sort of scenario and a friend of mine was grieving because her best friend had had a down syndrome baby at the same time she'd had a baby and her friend with the down syndrome baby had no congratulations on the birth of your baby cards i suspect because people were ignorant and didn't really know how much that would hurt that mum but it's the same sort of thing that we do sometimes with a cancer diagnosis we don't know what to say so we don't say anything and we're not the friend that we should be yeah so really what we need to do is be the friend that we should be and forget about our own fear of saying the wrong thing and be the person that listens and prays again yeah that's that's top advice here and i there has been many occasions where i've just looked at somebody again and just said i genuinely don't know what to say right now and i think that just breaks the ice um you know and usually good conversations ensue afterwards so i'm aware of like i'm aware of time and and we're quickly running out of it um but is there anything uh from your experience that maybe annie has not covered that may be worth sharing or that we've not covered here in conversation street um any sort of final though the one thing that's coming into my brain uh to say is we we did another research study asking slightly bizarrely and counter-intuitively to use a fancy phrase um whether people whether there were good outcomes from having cancer and perhaps surprisingly 70 or 80 of our breast cancer patients and again it's a particular group that there were positive outcomes from having cancer and it was often around life priorities and you know things like the cleaning why do i spend all this time doing the cleaning you know there's more to life than this and it's actually that whole business of that existential threat of well actually i am mortal i'm not going to be here forever no the breast cancer's gone now but actually i now suddenly realize in a real way that i'm mortal where are my priorities you know what do i really value what do i want to spend my time on so that for an awful lot of that they've actually had positive outcomes from you know what's clearly a difficult and worrying at times normalizing things for you your new normal getting used to what your new normal is in christian terms being thankful for who that has made who you are because you know because god has made us really and we can trust him for our rest of our lives if you like it's easy for us though it's always easier for us to sit at the other end of this and comfort people and talk to people and listen to people we're not on the end of having to live with it but we do we do recognize what what people have done themselves to progress their lives and to to go forward and hey should it be that like many of my little old ladies that died of other things not breast cancer but i knew really well because i'd be visiting them at home they were just always so grateful for somebody that came around and talked to them and you know was in their house and we talked to church this morning about loneliness and don't let people be lonely in their troubles you know whoever they are and however it is we need to be there for people that's what to do to walk it walk in their shoes if we can absolutely uh susan uh otton has put her in the comments uh i in response to not knowing what to say you show up and you shut up on always words which i think is very very fair um very very wise thank you susan for that chris sue i feel like as always we are just scraping the tip of the iceberg on such a massive topic um and i think probably it's worth saying if you have been affected by cancer and you would like someone to pray with you or stand with you we would love to do that you can reach us through the website crowd.church um and you can get hold of us by email or by the whatsapp um it it's such a hard topic because it doesn't always end well and that's the that's the thing but again we come back to this point that both you guys have made and that um annie made uh that as christians we always have hope um i had the very sad news today uh of a friend of mine who is just a beautiful person uh an elderly lady she passed away um and the daughter who was telling me about the fact that she passed away just followed it up with but she is now in heaven with her lord and savior jesus and that's the eternal hope that we have that this is part one that there is a part two uh and annie called it the second death we we do get to uh we do get to go to heaven um and as much as i'll miss this person and i will uh there is that hope and there is that comfort of knowing that um chris and sue thank you so much uh for being with us uh that's it from us here at crowd church as i said if you want to reach out to us if you'd like someone to pray with you or to talk to uh you can get a hold of us at crowd.church we would love to hear from you we will be back next week as we what normal service will be resumed as we go with our traditional format of a talk uh and then conversation street uh what does the bible say about truth sharon my amazing wife has recorded that talk we are going to get into that uh which will be uh well knowing sharon is going to be a bit full on so i'm really looking forward to it there'll be no no holds barred as they say so what does the bible say about truth we are getting into that next week do join us make sure you like and subscribe uh the stuff here at crowd church and we would uh we you'll get that little notification when we go live uh chris sue thank you so much we are going to close now with some worship and what a beautiful name it is at the end of this song uh the live stream will end automatically so i will see you next week chris sue bless you bye for now god the lord most high you're hidden glory in creation now reveal what a beautiful name it is the name of jesus christ my king nothing compares to this what a beautiful name it is the name of you didn't want heaven without us so jesus you brought heaven down sin was great your love was greater what what a wonderful name it is christ what a wonderful name it it is the name of jesus what a wonderful name it is the name of jesus death could not hold you the fail tore before you silence the bulls of sin and grave the heavens are roaring the praise of your glory for you are raised to life again you have yours is the kingdom yours is the glory yours is