Conversation With Chris and Nancy
Tom Shrader shares a filmed interview with church members Chris and Nancy Christensen, who recount Chris's sudden brain tumor diagnosis, emergency surgery, and the shifting prognosis from terminal to potentially curable. Both Chris and Nancy speak candidly about finding God's grace sufficient in the moment, drawing on James 1:2-4 to frame trials as the means by which faith produces perseverance. Tom closes by urging the congregation to number their days wisely, to pray for the Christensens without overwhelming them, and to receive the lesson that God is sovereign and purposeful in every trial, large or small.
“God gives you this grace as you need it, when you need it, in the midst of all of that.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Standalone Teachings
Recorded: 2001 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 41 min
Themes: suffering, trials, grace, perseverance, faith, prayer, sovereignty, hope, facing terminal illness, waiting for medical results, spouse of someone ill, feeling afraid, cancer diagnosis, middle aged adult, caregiver, struggling with uncertainty
Scripture: James 1:2-3, 2 Corinthians 12:9, Psalm 90:12, Romans 8:28
Theological Themes: theodicy, sovereignty of god, sanctification, perseverance of faith, biblical sufficiency, divine providence, trials producing faith, james 1
Full Transcript
Introducing Chris and Nancy's Story
Many of you know that three weeks ago today, Chris and Nancy Christensen discovered that Chris had a mass on his brain. They discovered it was a tumor — a malignant, cancerous tumor. We've heard a lot of things circulating, the way it happens with news like this. You hear that it's nothing. You hear that he's dead. You hear the whole gamut. I wanted to do two things: first, I wanted you to hear from them directly what had happened and what the future holds, so that you could be put at rest and at ease. You'd have it from them, and you wouldn't have to guess what was going on. Second, I wanted you to listen to their story and see if somehow it didn't apply to your life — if God couldn't use this time to speak to your heart.
Now that presented some challenges. There's no way that Chris and Nancy, who were here this morning at eight, could be here and do five services. That's pretty demanding and pretty difficult. So we thought about it, and what I decided to do was to take a camera or two out to their house and simply interview them. Let me tell you a couple of things up front. We do not possess internally the technology to do this at a "60 Minutes" quality. Josh Cass is here, and Josh did a remarkable job — literally pulling together sound without the proper equipment, and editing without the proper editing equipment. I just saw it this morning for the first time, which takes some nerve. I figured it would be good, and Josh did a great job.
My hope is that this will work. In person it's one thing; on screen it's different, especially for a length of time. The interview is about 25 minutes, so I'm going to ask you to listen closely and attentively — to get the update, and at the same time to know that maybe God will use these few minutes to teach you something.
The Interview Begins: A Ferocious Headache
We were out at their house last Wednesday afternoon. Thanks for allowing me to come in and intrude into your house. We have so many people at East Valley Bible Church who have heard about you but may not know you personally. On campus, you and Nancy are part of the CTO ministry, part of the counseling ministry, and the adult ministry. What we really want to talk about today is not so much the ministry at East Valley Bible Church, but what God has done in your life in the last couple of weeks in a pretty significant way. Tell us what happened.
On Sunday, April 22nd, I was awakened about one in the morning with a ferocious headache that made me ill to my stomach, with my eyes a little cloudy. I woke Nance up and said I didn't think I was going to be able to make church that day. This had been going on for several weeks, off and on. I'd seen a couple of doctors and been taking migraine medicine, but the migraine medicine wasn't working. We thought it was a sinus infection and had been treated for that. But Nance said, "I've had it — we're going to the emergency room." Somewhere around 9:30 or 10 o'clock, she loaded me into the Suburban and we started down Greenfield Road toward Desert Sam emergency room. I got very ill on the way to the hospital, and I was just glad to be someplace where they could figure out what was going on.
The CT Scan and the Diagnosis
So you get in there thinking it's a sinus infection, and they come out and tell you something different. What did they tell you, Nance?
The doctor came out, examined him, and said he felt Chris's sinuses were inflamed, so we were hopeful we were there to get some help. He said Chris looked a little dehydrated — I'd been nagging him about drinking water — and I said, "Well, if that's the only problem we have, then I'm happy." Then the doctor left, came back, and said they were going to do a CT scan. They took him away and gave him something for the inflammation, and he felt better. Then the doctor came back and said, "I've looked at your CT, and there appears to be a mass in your right frontal lobe of your brain." We just looked at each other. It was pretty surreal from that point forward — quite shocking, actually.
And things moved very quickly then. Within 24 hours you're at Barrow's Neurological Center, and they're saying they're going to go in and do a biopsy on the brain.
From Biopsy to Miracle
The intent that day, as I understand it, was to go in and do a biopsy — but it ended up being something different than that, didn't it?
Yes. When the surgeon sat down with us that morning, he told us it was malignant — they had found that out in the MRI they had done, and that was an eye opener. He had no idea what type it was. He went through the four levels of cancer and said, "I have no idea which one it is, but I know it's aggressive and it's grown very large. You have a very large tumor. We're going to go in and take a couple of snippets — that's all we're doing today — and we'll figure out what we've got and then tell you how we're going to treat it."
So he goes in to do the biopsy, but something more than that happens. What happened?
We feel it was a miracle. The tumor had accumulated into just one localized area. When they got in and opened up that lobe section — because the tumor was not on top of the brain, it was inside, down within the lobe — they found it localized. And frankly, another miracle is that it was in the only place in the brain that will replenish itself, which is pretty amazing in itself. When the surgeon came out to tell the family what had happened, he was elated, because they were able to extract 90-plus percent of the tumor.
After Surgery: The Initial Diagnosis
The tumor was large — about the size of a tennis ball, as Nancy confirmed. When the surgeon came out, he was very enthusiastic and said they had gotten a large portion of it. He was very encouraging. He did, however, confirm that it was cancer, which was a little to swallow at that point. And even if they had gotten 90 percent of it, that still meant there was 10 percent remaining somewhere inside.
They had seen the films, and from what they could see, it did not appear that a great deal remained. The surgeon had actually prepared them beforehand that the tumor had attached itself to some major arteries in the brain, meaning there were possibilities of motor skill problems on Chris's left side, since the tumor was on the right side of the brain. But as Chris came out of recovery, it was obvious there were no motor skill problems, and they were really excited about that.
Meeting with the Radiologist
The next significant piece of news came on Wednesday, when they were scheduled to meet with the radiologist. The medical team had indicated they were likely going to treat this with radiation, so Chris and Nancy went to speak with the radiologist. They asked a direct question: what does this look like, with treatment and without — what is the prognosis?
The radiologist shared that, on average, without treatment they would give Chris a year and a half. With treatment, they could probably prolong that two to three times as long. He also said plainly that this was treatable, but not curable. That was pretty much the bottom line.
Hearing the Prognosis: What They Thought and Felt
Most people, at some point in their life, know someone who has been through something like this, and they may have imagined what they would think or do if it happened to them. When Chris heard the prognosis — perhaps a year, a year and a half — the first thing that came to his mind was that God is in charge of his days, and he was very much at peace about that. He also thought about how short that period could be to spend with family, friends, and ministry, and how much there still was to do.
For Nancy, the experience had been building for days. Chris had been in surgery for around ten hours, and those are thoughts you have to fight off. Truth would enter her mind, because there is a tendency to become anxious, to want to control the situation, or to deny that it is happening. You want to be strong, but you are not, and Chris had been a great encouragement to her prior to surgery. They had a chance to talk at that point, and they were faced with the fact that perhaps that was the last day — they had no way of knowing. As Nancy reflected, we never do know from one minute to the next; our life is very brief.
A New Prognosis: The Word "Cure"
Then, a day or so later, came a different piece of information. On Thursday morning, the neurological oncologist came to visit them. He explained that the surgeon, the radiologist, and the neurological oncologist had all gotten their heads together, and given how much of the tumor they had been able to extract, combined with the tests they had run on the cancer itself — because they actually take the tumor and test it to see how it responds to different treatments — they had reached a new conclusion. He said they believed they could get a full cure at this point.
Cure — not control, but cure. The idea was that they could go in and knock it out entirely.
The Treatment Plan
The treatment plan that has been laid out involves radiation targeted with great precision. They have taken an impression of Chris's face in mask form, and each time he goes in, they place the mask over his head and lock him down on the radiation table. For 30 minutes, with brief 60-second intervals, they radiate a specific spot that has been marked out on the mask so that they can keep it targeted and avoid killing too many healthy cells at the same time they are killing the cancerous ones. That will happen five days a week for six weeks.
At the end of four weeks, they will take another MRI, and Chris will meet with his surgeon to review things and make sure everything is going according to plan. They have also talked about possibly using Gamma Knife treatment, which is a very high-intensity radiation focused on one particular area. If they go that route, then another surgery may follow — which is one outcome Chris would prefer to avoid.
God's Grace Is Sufficient
I would say God's grace is sufficient for the moment, because I would never have thought that I could handle it either. But it was just so incredible to sense God's grace. You can read about it, you know about it, you learn about it, but there's nothing like living in it. It's just incredible.
I agree. I was reading about Paul, and when he was saying that God's grace is sufficient in the middle of the affliction he was going through, I thought I understood that. I didn't understand that at all. Now I can relate just a tiny bit to how He supplies the grace that you need for the moment — not any more, not any less, but just right at the right time.
Corrie Ten Boom tells a great story. She was going somewhere and was so worried about what was going to happen, and her father said, "When I send you on a trip, I give you a ticket the day you're going to go. I don't give you the ticket ahead of time, I don't give you the ticket after you're on the train — I give you the ticket when you're going to go." And that's what God does. God gives you His grace as you need it, when you need it, in the midst of all of it.
The Practical So What
I believe through encountering this trial that God has shown me a couple of real key issues. As I've said previously, I wasted a lot of time not giving Him His due. You have people tell you, "Well, I didn't see it," but this is God we're talking about — He knows my thoughts before I think them. I'm not fooling Him for one second.
He just overwhelmed me with the sense that I had been wasting a lot of time not giving Him the glory and the honor that He is so deserving of, and that hit me right in the face. I don't think I had the spiritual eyes to see it until now. I'll tell you, I'd go through this in a second again for those lessons. I'm just sorry I had to do it that way, but that's His choice and I'm glad He gave it to me.
Don't Waste the Day
Nancy, this could be one of those life-changing experiences that lasts for a year, or it could be one where everything is suddenly clear and then six months in we forget the lesson. How do you take it and make it real on an everyday basis?
I think just remembering that today has enough trouble of its own — don't worry about tomorrow. Not that we don't plan, but being willing to allow God to direct our lives. We've talked about this with our daughter, and in her mind it carries some significance for the future. We told her that is something to think about, but that's not where we're at right now. We're here today, and we need to make the most of the day.
If we spend today worrying about what we will or will not have in the future, we've lost the day. And all of a sudden a day is wasted, and then pretty soon another day is wasted. You can lose a thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars and go make another ten thousand dollars. But you lose today — I can't go get that back.
Can This Lesson Be Learned Without the Trial?
Here is my question, and maybe it's the big question here that doesn't have a clear answer. How do I communicate this lesson to somebody without them having to go through brain surgery? Every person I know understands they're going to die, understands they're going to have hardship, understands that loved ones face trials. Chris, you said you'd go through it again. How about the person out there who says, "I don't want to go through it — I just want to learn from this"? Is there anything you can tell them that they can take away and say this is real and this is profound?
That's a hard question. I've tried to think about why I didn't get this before — where was I? Because I knew the Bible, I knew the verses, I knew His truth. But it's like reading scripture and just moving on. You read "live with your wife in an understanding way" and you just sail right over the top of it.
But this is coming from the Creator of the universe. This is coming from Someone who formed my very substance, who knows me intimately. He deserves more than just a passing thought over His commands — He deserves my fullest attention, constantly. And I think, if anything, that's what we have to do. We have to pay attention to the Almighty God, to the great I Am. He knows what's best. He is causing everything to work together for good. He either put that tumor
Trials Have a Purpose
Remembering that God is working in those trials to conform us to be more like His Son is essential. You don't have to have a brain tumor to be woken up. There are other issues that God can bring into your life to help you pay attention. Those trials are there for a reason — they are not just little nuisances. God has brought them into our lives for a reason, and we can learn a lot through small trials as well as through large ones.
These trials also keep in mind that life is brief. Life is like a vapor — something Chris and Nancy had discussed before, even driving to school with their daughter Blythe. But they had never actually had to come face to face with it until now.
The Mind as a Battleground
As Chris shared, it overwhelms him how powerful the mind is and how you have to stay on top of it all the time. As he put it, the mind is the sentinel for the soul. When he speaks about how powerful the mind is, he does not mean it as a thinking object — he means how powerful a tool it is for good or evil.
That is the battleground, especially for someone who has been walking with the Lord for seventeen, eighteen, or nineteen years. It is the toughest place to stay on top of — not allowing thinking to go temporal all the time. There are always things that try to crowd in: duties, obligations, and even good things. But we have to stay on top of them, because that is where Satan wants to take us down.
Satan hates God. He does not want us doing the things of God. He does not want us, when we rise up in the morning, thinking about the things of God, praying, and devoting ourselves to Him — he wants everything but that.
Hope That Does Not Shift With the News
When asked what would happen if the diagnosis changed back to something worse on Monday, Chris answered without hesitation. Going into the operating room, his sense was that he could open his eyes and the next thing he might do is open his eyes in the presence of God Almighty — and that was an awesome thought. If that is what it is, then what an awesome thing it would be, to be absent from the body and present with the Lord.
When they first received the news that the tumor was not curable, they did not put their hope in despair or become doubtful. And when they later heard it was curable, they did not put their hope in that either. Although it was a comforting thing to hear, they continue to remind themselves that their hope is not in what the doctors say.
Nancy made the point plainly: Chris could walk out the door to have lunch with a friend and never come back. It does not have to be an illness that takes him home to be with the Lord. These are things they think about — not out of morbidity, but because you have to think about them in order to weigh the temporal against the eternal and put the temporal in its proper context. We are living for today, but we are here for a purpose, and that purpose is not simply to be happy.
James 1:2–3 and the Meaning of Trials
The verse both Chris and Nancy mentioned is James chapter one, verses two and three. In the NIV it reads: "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance." The New American Standard says it this way: "Count it all joy."
The word "count" — or "reckon" — is actually an accounting term. It means to consider, analyze, think about, and understand that it is joy when you encounter various trials. The word translated "various" literally means multicolored trials, which is why this lesson is so important for all of us.
The word "whenever" is even stronger in the New American Standard, rendered simply "when you encounter various trials." The implication is clear: in our lives, there will be trials. The word for trials itself means literally to put something or someone to the test. John MacArthur notes that the whole idea connotes trouble, or something that breaks the pattern of peace.
Trials as Spiritual Aerobics
Comfort, joy, and happiness in someone's life — that in your life, inevitably, come various trials. Maybe you aren't going to encounter brain surgery. In fact, maybe you're going to get one of the tougher trials, tougher than brain surgery. Maybe you're going to get the test of prosperity. Thomas Carlyle says for every hundred people that can pass the test of adversity, there's only one who can pass the test of prosperity. I think you're being tried all the time, not in these gigantic ways, but in small ways.
It's so important that we understand what James is saying. He says, "Consider it a prayer of joy, my brother, whenever you face trials of many kinds," because you know something. You're not guessing, and it's not speculation. If we put it in the form of an equation, it looks like this: faith plus trials equals perseverance, or endurance.
There's no better illustration, I think, than to go from the physical to the spiritual. I have learned, and you know it as well, that physically, when we take our body, when we test it, when we engage in aerobic activity, we produce endurance. Aerobics make us strong and give us physical endurance. Here you go: trials are spiritual aerobics. Trials are the things that test your faith.
I feel so inadequate in trying to communicate to you — and maybe because it's not possible — the truths that are in that message. I was talking just briefly before the service to Van and Maggie Dahlman, and Van has been through something very similar to what Chris has been through. You know what he said to me? They both said, "We live for today. We had heard about these things before, but we didn't know them until we went through them." Maybe that's it. Maybe there's no way to have you avoid the necessity of those trials. Maybe you have to go through them.
Numbering Our Days
I do think there's something to understanding how sensitive life is. I do think there's something to knowing that in this life, it is temporary. The psalmist writes this: "Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom." Wisdom isn't knowledge — wisdom is taking the things we know and making them practical in our life. One of the ways to gain wisdom is to number our days aright, to understand that this life is temporary.
Do yourself a great favor this week. Find a man or a woman who has been a Christian for forty or fifty years, take them out, buy them a cup of coffee, and just ask them what God has taught them in fifty years. Then be quiet. Just listen to them begin to speak. What you will see is that from day one to the present day, their faith isn't static — it grows. It gets bigger and bigger, and they trust Him more, and there is more confidence, not in themselves, but more confidence in Him.
Everything Happens for a Reason
Men and women, we are right to believe God is in control. I saw Oprah last week, and here's what she said: "Everything happens for a reason." I think she's right. I think she has stumbled onto the truth. I don't think she believes all that goes with it.
Without a Bible, look how we can reason this through. If it is a true statement that everything happens for a reason, then there must be a purpose. If there's a purpose, there must be a plan. If there's a plan, there must be a design. If there's a design, there must be a designer — not designers, plural, one singular — or they could have mutually exclusive goals. And logically, we know that if everything happens for a reason, then that designer has to be all-knowing, otherwise He couldn't control everything together, and all-powerful, otherwise He couldn't take all things and make them work for His plan and His purpose.
What we realize is that there is a God. And for us, we know the rest of that story. We have the scripture. We know that God has a Son, Jesus Christ, and that Jesus came to this earth and lived and died so that we would have eternal life. When we sing, "When we've been there ten thousand years," we are not wondering about that. That's not idle speculation. We know that's the truth. If you took communion this morning and you are truly converted, you are as certain of heaven as the saints who are already there.
You Are Part of His Plan
But if all God wanted to do was get you to heaven, He would have taken you there at the point of conversion. He left you here for a reason. You need to understand that you have a finite number of days — I don't know how many they are. The younger you are, the harder it seems to be to understand this. But you have a finite number of days, and when you waste one, you can never get it back. God left you here for a purpose. You are part of His plan. If ever you wonder whether you are significant or have value, understand that God has a plan in the universe and you are part of that plan. Now live like it.
Every once in a while, the whole inertia of life will take our eyes off of the eternal. The deal that didn't get done, the room that didn't get cleaned, the job that never got quite finished, the volleyball game that needs to be played, the letter that needs to be written — all of those things come together. Pretty soon we can become so busy that we miss the plan God has for us. If I number my days aright, I have wisdom.
Praying for Growth Means Praying for Trials
When you pray, "God, I want to grow. I want to know You more. I want to love You more. I care about You, God, and I want to grow deeper and deeper," here's what God hears: "God, let me suffer." Because faith plus trials equals endurance. That's why James says, "Consider it all joy." That's an odd thing to say. Rejoice, he says, when trials come. Why? Because we know God is in control. We know there is a reason and a purpose and a plan and a design and a designer, and we know that eternal Designer in an intimate, personal way.
I always say there are three ways to learn.
Three Ways to Learn
There are two common ways to learn something. One is to read a book. The other is personal experience — the stove is hot, don't touch it, and yes, it is. But there is a third way: learn from somebody else as they go through it.
Chris and Nancy are walking through something right now, and at this moment God is right in the middle of teaching them something. We ran the video for a couple of reasons — one, so you could see them, and so you could understand their setting.
What Chris and Nancy Need From You
Let me tell you what they need from you. They need you to pray for them. They also need something else that is very important: they need you to leave them alone.
If you want to communicate with them, do so in a way that does not demand a response. Send them an email, write them a note. Do not go to the house — not even to take them a meal. If you want to work with us through the church as part of that, fine, but they need time to rest. When this treatment starts, he is going to get very tired very fast.
You need to know that they are doing okay and that God is working in their life, but you need to give them that time. And I will tell you what they would want from you more than anything: for you to understand that this is all about God, not about them, and that the circumstance or the outcome is not determined by whether God is good or not.
God Is Good Regardless of the Outcome
Here is the hard truth. God is good even if they go back in next Monday and discover they were wrong and Chris dies. God is at work. This is where our teaching and our faith moves from the classroom to the laboratory, and God has given us the privilege to know that He loves us and He cares for us.
We get to watch somebody we care about go through this, and we are so fortunate because God has given us a box seat to watch Him teach.
What God May Be Doing in Your Life
He is doing the same thing in your life — maybe in a less dramatic way, maybe not. Maybe He is preparing you for something very big. If Scripture says to count it all joy when trials come, and trials are inevitable, then that means you are either coming out of a trial, in the middle of a trial, or going into a trial. It would be good to learn this lesson right now.
Closing Prayer
Father, help us see the truth of this. Teach us this. Father, somehow let us learn this lesson without having to go through it ourselves. Maybe that is impossible. If that is the case, Father, have Your way. What I pray is that whatever You do in our lives, help us learn that truth. God, we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.