Don't Waste Your Illness

Do you want to live your life well? Do you want to live how God wants you to live in the midst of your illness / suffering? Well, here are a few thoughts that might be helpful for you as you seek to do this.
The following has been adapted from John Piper's "Don't Waste Your Cancer". 

1. You will waste your illness if you do not believe it is designed for you by God. 
Illness can sharpen your awareness of how thoroughly God has already and has always been at work in every detail of your life.

2. You will waste your illness if you believe it is a curse and not a gift. 
Your faith becomes deep & real and your love becomes purposeful and wise.

3. You will waste your illness if you seek comfort from your odds rather than from God. 
The aim of God in our illness is to knock props out from under our hearts so that we might rely utterly on Him. We are 100% certain and Christ is 100% certain to meet us, to come for us, to comfort us and to restore life's purest joys.

4. You will waste your illness if you refuse to think about death. 
We will all die, if Jesus postpones his coming. Our illness is a down payment on our inevitable death.

5. You will waste your illness if you think that 'beating illness' means staying alive rather than cherishing Christ.
Satan's and God's design in your cancer are not the same. Satan designs to destroy your love for Christ. God designs to deepen your love for Christ. Illness doesn't win if you die; it wins if you fail to cherish Christ.

6. You will waste your illness if you spend too much time reading about your illness and not enough time reading about God. 
This is true in terms of what you talk about as well. So tell people openly about your sickness, seek their prayers and counsel, but then change the direction of the conversation by telling them what God is faithfully doing to sustain you with ten thousand mercies.

7. You will waste your illness if you let it drive you into solitude instead of deepen your relationships with manifest affection. 

8. You will waste your illness if you grieve as those who don't have hope. 

9. You will waste your illness if you treat sin as casually as you did before. 
Illness is designed to destroy the appetite for sin.

10. You will waste your illness if you fail to use it as a means of witness to the truth and glory of Christ.
Your illness is a golden opportunity to show that Christ is worth more than life.

May God help both you & me use our illness well, that he might be given the most glory and that together, one day, we might be presented blameless & holy, a sacrifice fragrant and pleasing to our God.