Increasing/Decreasing

This weekend Lisa and I are trying something new. I don't want to give any details of it until we've done it, but we'd really like some extra prayer on Saturday and Sunday.

I was really sick yesterday. I woke up feeling like I had a rock in my stomach and once I had tried to expel it I just felt horrible all day. I barely ate anything and then at dinner time I had some food and felt pretty sick again. Went to bed again and felt kind of the same this morning, but I got up and did some things and the feeling eventually faded. (As in around 1pm)

I think the chemo is accumulating. Who knows if it'll do anything other than turn my hair white and make me feel horrible... you know, in this whole process the "getting better" part has been the part that has hurt the most. I think that is opposite of the way God heals. When Jesus heals in the new tesitment people don't scream in pain for hours on end and then get up, shakily, and say, "I'm healed!" No. Jesus, or one of His disciples says, "Be healed..." and they are. From top to bottom. Healed. Better. No more sickness. Pain. whatever troubled them before, is no longer troubling them again.

In my previous post I wondered about if my story went beyond the sickness. What about all those people in the Bible? We hear about them getting healed, sometimes leading up to their sicknesses (He was crippled from birth, etc) but once God heals them we really don't hear about them again or anymore. The one leaper did go away and come back to say thanks, but I guess the narrative of the Bible is about Jesus, not about what happened to sick people who were healed.

Ultimately I think this is what made me wonder if I was healed what I was supposed to do with it. I think John's description and the example of the new testament are pretty good examples. "He must increase and I must decrease." (John 3:30) Either way, I die and live no longer, or I am healed and live X more years, the story is about how I come to know more about God and trusting in Him and what He is doing. In the end, HE must increase, and I must decrease. It's no longer about what Ben can do for God in the world, it's what God is doing in the world, and how YOU can help. I'm in the background, helping where I can. Ben is decreasing and God is increasing. If the best way for that to happen is the end of my life, then well, that answers that question. If God wills it then there are still things on this earth that I can do to help HIM increase in other people's lives, while decreasing my own.

This is of course counter intuitive to the way the business works. What do you want to do in business? Get ahead, make more money, be the guy at the top calling the shots. I think from a Christian perspective being given a position of leadership in a for-profit company would be really difficult. (Also not where I am gifted... so to each their own... and I won't say it's "bad" or anything to be an executive. God has gifted us each in many different ways and the story He has for you isn't the story He has for me.) John died so that Jesus could increase. I can't say as I am any better than John, or any biblical character, but this is my story. I can see a lot of ways that are exciting about what God could do in the future, and would LOVE to help be a part of that. But it's not about me. Which, really, is what makes this whole this so exciting.

I have a fight to fight right now, but it is my hope, my prayer, that after I have learned the things that God wants me to learn from this, that He would heal me and allow me to pursue HIS increase all the more.

~B.
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