This Is My Story: Bill Logan
In November 2007, my world crumbled… The doctor told me that I had Multiple Myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow. How could this be? I was physically active, reasonably athletic and fairly strong. Since I had seen my sister die from this very same cancer some ten years earlier, I thought that in a matter of months, I would die also. Having been raised in a Christian home, I was very aware of how the grace of God should be demonstrated in a believer’s life. The Bible shows us over and over the glory of God, but it was because of man’s rebellion against Him that the sentence of death was placed on all mankind. The Bible also tells us that Christ paid this penalty with His own life, and took my sins upon Himself. Though I had received Christ as a young boy, I had been living my life “my way.” I believe that God brought this cancer into my life to show me that I had not yet fully embraced Christ as the Lord of my life. I started not only reading His word but studying it as well. As I studied, I started highlighting passages that seemed to be speaking directly to me. These passages revealed promise after promise of God’s mercy, wisdom, joy, and peace. As treatments progressed in early and mid 2008, a stem cell transplant was recommended. My wife and I knew that this would involve a lengthy hospital stay. We went back home and started memorizing the verses that I had highlighted in my reading. Through those verses, Christ-honoring music, and the prayers of numerous faithful Christians, God in His mercy saw fit to bring me through this ordeal. These were times of anxiety, pain, hallucinations, hospital-borne infections, blood poisoning, and long dark nights. Through all of this we were able to recall the verses that we had memorized. We realized that it was because of the Lord’s mercies that we even have the quality of life that we do. Lamentations 3:22, 23 says that “it is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning, great is Thy faithfulness.” From the beginning we had prayed for the Lord’s direction and asked for wisdom. Psalms 90:12 says, “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” A “multitude of thoughts” were racing through our minds. Using II Corinthians 10:5 and Psalms 94:19, God helped us to put those thoughts in order. We needed to bring “into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” so that His Word could be a “delight our souls.” Through all of the trials of the hospital stay, all these Scriptures and more kept coming to mind. During one especially dark moment, Jeremiah 33:3 came to mind: “Call unto me, and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things which you know not.” We had no idea how the Lord would lead us from that point on. Not only did we see God’s promises through this trying time, but the more we claimed those promises, the more peace that He gave. Isaiah 26:3 states that God “will keep [a believer] in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Him, because he trusts in Him.” When I started to have hallucinations (because of a medicine), Joy put on some Christian music CD’s. One of the songs that played was “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” The third verse goes “Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth, thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide, strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow, blessings all mine with ten thousand beside.” The calm and comfort that those words and music brought were immeasurable. During the “night seasons” referred to in Psalms 16:7, God’s grace was so evident in the way that He sustained me. Another song that became precious was “He Giveth More Grace.” “When we have exhausted our store of endurance, when our strength has failed ere the day is half done, when we reach the end of our hoarded resources, the Father’s full giving has only begun.” The chorus goes on to say that “He giveth and
