Saturday, May 22: What's the most dangerous cancer?

Early this afternoon, I went to the dermatologist to have some precancerous spots frozen from my leathery skin. Working in the sun all day, every day, isn’t the easiest way to keep your skin soft as a baby’s bottom. Part of it is my own stupidity as I don’t use sunscreen. I was fortunate to have a tennis student with a dermatology practice, and she found many of those spots on my face, ears and arms.


It made me think deeper about cancer. I have read that doctors guess we each get cancer 7-10 times in our lives, yet most of the time, our bodies fight off the cancer with a healthy immune system, without any knowledge that cancer infiltrated the normally healthy cells. When those healthy cells turn into rogue cells, a compromised immune system has difficulty reversing them back to healthy. At that time, cancer grows and spreads, and kills a person from the inside out. There are treatments, such as chemotherapy and radiation that can help fight the battle. With chemotherapy, they slowly drip poison into your body, with the hopes of killing the cancer before killing the host!


Sin is a cancer. Similar to cancer, sin will kill us from the inside out. While the dermatologist has to freeze the precancerous spots over and over again, sin has only one remedy. When Jesus died on the cross, He carried the burden of all of our sins. That means our past, present and future sins! When we ask Him into our hearts and lives, that burden is removed forever!


14 But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. 15 Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.
James 1:14-15


My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 2 And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.
1 John 2:2


Propitiation is one of those three-dollar words. It means to appease the wrath of the divine judgment. The death of Christ fully satisfied all the righteous demands of God toward the sinner, as sin must be punished, but it must only be punished once.


How sad that the world puts more emphasis on the cancers that destroy our bodies than the cancerous sins that destroy our eternal lives! Don’t forget that you need not struggle with making an appointment. God will meet you right where you are and will take that deathly sin away from you immediately, if only you ask! Even if you are a Christian, walk in the freedom of having that burden removed by confessing your sins to Him.


If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
1 John 1:9