GETTING ON WITH LIFE: #1 Picking Up and Going On

By Dr. Gilbert W. StaffordScripture: Philippians 3:13-14

DEALING WITH CANCER WHICH OTHERS INFLICTED ON HIM 
Alfred Debus is 73 years old. He lives in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. About four years ago he began having chest pains. After X-rays, a biopsy, and more analyses, he finally heard the devastating news: lung cancer. But why him? He had smoked only a few cigarettes as a prisoner of war during World War II. His doctor asked him about second-hand smoke. Yes, he had worked in plenty of that for more than 20 years. And now, he was having to pay the heavy cost of a cancer-ridden life because of other people’s smoking habits.

What to do? Alfred had developed a Christian philosophy of life which served him well at this point of crisis. He picked up from where he was and kept going. Instead of throwing in the towel, so to speak, he decided to do what he could. He researched and read everything he could get his hands on so that he would be able to talk intelligently about his condition. He conversed with fellow cancer patients to learn from their experiences. That’s what he could do.

When he went to surgery for removal of one lung, the surgeons found the cancer had spread under his breast bone and into the lymph nodes. So they closed him up and said, “Go home and live it out.” That very same day a social worker came to begin preparing him for death within five or six months.

But Alfred kept getting up and going. Even though he had received what seemed to him like a death sentence, he decided to go through with some painful radiation and chemotherapy treatments. That'’ what he could do. The treatments left him incapacitated for almost a year, but he got through them and now swims up to 40 lengths a day at a YMCA, and lifts 10 lb. Barbells at home to build up his strength. That’s what he can do.

That doesn’t mean that all is rosy. “Some days,” he says, “I get so depressed [when] I think I will not live much longer.” His emotions are like a yo-yo, going up and down all the time. “Some days,” he confides, “when I get...depressed I sit by my bedside and cry my heart out.” Since his is a picking-up-and-going-on way of life, he gets into his car and drives over to the home of friends to visit for a while. That’s what he can do.1

It was at a family camp where I met Alfred Debus. Instead of staying at home and nursing his fears and his broken heart, he decided to spend several days in a camp with fellow Christians. That’s what he could do.

Among those diagnosed with cancer at the same time he was, he is the only one who is still living. Instead of the predicted five or six months to live, he has lived for over four years. That’s why when his doctors see him coming for his check-ups, they say, “Look, here comes the miracle boy.” Just maybe it has something to do with his attitude. Alfred didn’t cave in to the circumstances of his life.

DEALING WITH THE DIFFICULTIES OF LIFE SPRIPTURALLY 
Mr. Debus is a modern example of the approach to life which Paul in Philippians 3:13-14 talks about: “Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”2

Paul was convinced that the whole meaning and purpose of life are in the hands of God, and that this meaning and purpose are revealed in Jesus Christ. Because of that conviction, he was able to let whatever was in the past remain in the past and to move on to that which was in the future. He was convinced that God was leading him, and that whatever the future held was in some way connected with what God was accomplishing through his life of faith in Christ.

TAKE ANOTHER LOOK AT JESUS 
So, my friend, when the circumstances of life crumble about you, take another look at Jesus who is always out there in your future. He does not crumble in the crumbles of life. He is victor over them. He knows how to use the crumbles for making a brand new reality.

Throughout my life, whenever I have experienced the crumbling of that which I thought was so secure, it has always been the looking again at Jesus that has saved the day. For over 33 years, the one in my life who reminds me of that truth is Darlene. In the darkest hours, she always, with a convincing smile on her face, says, “But God has better things ahead.” And even though I can’t always see how that could be, what she says inevitably proves to be true. In that sense she is the bearer of the word of God to me. It is a word that surely does not originate with us; neither does it come from some scientific explanation of what is going to happen. It comes as the word from beyond. It is the word of hope that is centered on Christ. It is because of that divine word of hope that along with Paul, I, too, am able to say: “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”

Regardless of what circumstances of life come our way—whether illness or disappointment or personal disaster or whatever—the heavenly call is still the same. It does not crumble with the crumbling situations of life. That’s why Alfred Debus and so many others like he can pick up and go on.

So, when the circumstances of life crumble about you, take another look at Jesus who is always out there in your future.

TAKE ANOTHER LOOK AT WHAT YOU CAN DO 
In addition, when the circumstances of life crumble about you, take another look at yourself and ask what you can do. Too often we concentrate on what we cannot do. That approach is never very productive.

Mark York is a twenty-something-year-old university student. When he was a high school athlete he was in an automobile accident that left him a paraplegic. Being paralyzed from waist down he gets around in a wheel chair. Last January, he went with a group of other university students to France and Italy. One of our daughters was on the trip, too. Upon their return, I had the privilege of picking her and three other students up from the Chicago airport. On the four hour trip home they told me many stories about their trip. They visited Nice in France, Monaco, Florence and Venice and Rome in Italy. They were awed by the Sistine Chapel, and by St. Peter’s. They went to Leaning Tower of Pisa. “What was the high point of the whole trip?” I asked. They replied immediately that it was the way Mark handled himself in countries that do not provide special access to publish facilities for the handicapped. Mark did not allow that to hinder him. He was able to roll his wheel chair down steps. He had to take taxis when others in the group could take a bus. No complaints from Mark, though. He maintains a muscular upper body that serves him well when he has to handle himself in difficult situations. He does not allow the special circumstances of his life to keep him from keeping on. He does not concentrate on what he cannot do. Instead, Mark gets on with life by picking up and going on. He concentrates on what he can do. What a wonderful characteristic in a person! Of all things which Anne and her friends saw in France and Italy, the most wonderful was to see how Mark go on with life under difficult conditions. His world had come apart but he does not allow it to get the best of him, and that was more awesome to these four young people than even the Sistine Chapel.

In II Corinthians 11:24-27 Paul tells about his world coming apart: “Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked.”

Nevertheless, in spite of all these trials and tribulations, Paul did not allow them to defeat him. He remained focused on Jesus who was always out in his future, and he was always thinking not about what he could not do but about what he could do. For example, when the authorities under command of the governor of Damascus tried to seize him, he didn’t sit in Damascus bemoaning his predicament. Instead, he escaped by having his friends “let him down in a basket through a window in the wall” (II Corinthians 11:33). He figured out what he could do.

My friend, when the circumstances of life crumble about you, take another look at Jesus who is always out there in your future. When the circumstances of life crumble about you, take another look at yourself and ask what you can do.

TAKE ANOTHER LOOK AT THE DIVINE POWER GIVEN YOU 
Third, when the circumstances of life crumble about you, take another look at the power which God gives you for pressing on. When Paul says, “I press on to the goal,” it is neither merely Paul’s power, nor merely God’s alone which enabled him to press on to the goal. It is God’s power infusing Paul’s. In Philippians 2:13, he reminds the Philippians of the truth to which he was so deeply committed: “It is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

You see, it is we who must exercise the will to press on. And it is we who must actually do the work of pressing on. God does not do the pressing on. We do. But, it is God at work in us who enables us to will and to work at pressing on.

Our power without God’s power becomes pure torture. God’s power without ours lies dormant in us. God at work in and through what we will do makes the difference. When we take another look at God’s power at work in us, then we can confess with Paul, “I can do all things.” It doesn’t stop there, “through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13).

My friend, if your life has crumbled about you, I urge you to pick up and go on. Take another look at Jesus who is always out there in your future no matter how dismal things look at the present time. Take another look at what you can do; never mind what you cannot do. Take another look at God’s enabling power. It is sufficient for whatever it is you need to do.

PRAYER

Let us pray:

Gracious Lord, we thank you for life and hope and inner power. When life gets to be more than we can handle, speak to our hearts and minds, and remind us that with your help we can pick up and go on. In the name of Christ, we pray. Amen.

1 (Kitchener, Ontario) Record (January 14, 1994).
2 New Revised Standard version used here and throughout.

Script 2584 (GWS)
July 7, 1996
SERIES: GETTING ON WITH LIFE
1. “Picking Up and Going On”
Scripture: Philippians 3:13-14