Christian Faith and OCD Episode 217 (1)

Carrie: Welcome OCD Warriors to the Christian Faith and OCD podcast where we are all about reducing shame and stigma of struggling with OCD as a Christian sharing hopeful stories. And replacing uncertainty with faith as you develop practical tools for greater peace. I’m Carrie Bock, Christ follower, wife, mom, and licensed professional counselor in Tennessee.

I pray you are blessed by today’s episode. Last time we recorded way back on episode 76 and now we are recording together again on episode 217. So it’s been a little while. Wow. Yeah. It’s good to have you back though. And last time we were focused on joy in the midst of your cancer trial, and since we have many new listeners, can you just give us the cliff notes version of like when you were diagnosed and where you are now on your cancer journey?

John: I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, which is a blood cancer that is considered now to be treatable for most people, or a lot of people that’s not curable. It’s still considered technically a terminal cancer. It does kill many people, but they’ve come a long way. So I was diagnosed in May of 2019. I have been on some pretty intense treatment for the first year and a half and had some surgeries and different things, and then I’ve been on a maintenance treatment up until today actually.

So currently that kind of helps keep the cancer at bay because most of the time studies have shown 80 to 90% of the time multiple myeloma comes back. So you have to fight it again. So this has been almost seven years that I’ve had this disease, and actually I’m very thankful to be alive. When I first was diagnosed, they really didn’t think I would probably be alive at this point.

But the treatments have come so far that I’m actually still here and doing better than I thought I would be able to be doing at this point. It’s definitely been a journey, but God has been incredibly faithful and as I mentioned, just the advances in the treatment has. I’ve come so far in the seven years that I’ve had the cancer, that it went from being a virtually a death senate several years before I got the cancer, to now being something that people can at least continue to have, hopefully a good many years of life after they’re diagnosed.

I think

Carrie: that’s really helpful to know is that especially with medical things, sometimes people project into the future, and the truth is God is the only one that really knows. We don’t know what the future holds. And so I’m always a little cautious when people say things like, well, the doctor said there’s only this much time left, or this terrible thing could happen, or that thing could happen.

We just have to really trust God in those hard moments. Like, okay, well, you know, and you hold the future in our hands at that point.

John: Definitely, and I think with this scenario, God has really used it in my life, and I talked about that in our first podcast a lot, but he has worked in my life so much to bring me closer to him.

And he gave me the ability to really embrace this after I was diagnosed. Of course, it’s a scary thing to find that out, but I felt like God was telling me, look, I ordained you to have cancer. This is what I have for you. And so I decided I was just gonna embrace it and I haven’t always done that with things in my life, but I decided I would do that and roll with it.

And it has turned out a lot better than I thought it was gonna, really didn’t think I’d still be alive right now. Much less doing as well as I’m doing. So you’re right. I think you can’t predict the future when God is involved and if he’s in in it, even if it doesn’t turn out like you want it to, it still can be a real blessing and that’s definitely what’s happened for me.

A good thing I didn’t get all depressed and really get. Mad at God and hopeless because it would’ve been a shame I would’ve wasted so much time that I’ve had, and I’ve had a lot more time than I thought I was gonna. So you’re right. Sometimes it’s best not to prejudge, I guess, the future, and especially with thinking about the negative things that could happen or the worst case scenarios.

Carrie: I wanted to have you on because I consider you a spiritual expert in suffering. Dunno if you knew that or not. Oh gosh. Uh, I don’t think I live up to that, but I appreciate the, well, so I surveyed our listeners several months ago, and the majority of people that are tuning in to this, I would say, have been struggling with OCD in some way, shape, or form.

I mean, it can wax and wane under stress, so they may have had some periods where it was lighter or maybe not at all, but then some periods where it was very bad. They’ve been struggling for a good 10 to 15 years. And so it’s one thing to go through a suffering for a short period of time. Someone has like a broken foot and then they recover.

And it’s another situation for someone when you’re in it for the long haul. And so that’s what I really wanted to address today on the podcast is like, how do we keep going when we know that there’s going to be some type of pain, whether that’s physical pain. Or more so for our listeners, like a mental and emotional pain that they’re dealing with.

I think a lot of people who are suffering are ask why. In my situation, I’ve been through some sufferings, whether that’s been like loss of my foster children, loss of my parents at what I consider to be a younger age, and I haven’t really necessarily found the question of why to be helpful. It’s almost like this sidewalk that just cuts off and ends, it hasn’t necessarily gone anywhere for me.

Is that something that you’ve seen just in your own suffering or dealing with other people who are suffering?

John: It’s a good question because it can wear you down over time. We hear the saying that it’s more of a marathon than a sprint, and I think when you’re dealing with something, you have to pace yourself.

Realize that you just take it one day at a time. Don’t look too far in the future and don’t try to take on too much too quickly. I think that has helped me to deal with my situation. My attitude has been, I just thank God I’m alive today. I get to live today, and if I can focus on today, it makes a huge difference.

I don’t have to think about what treatment may be coming up down the road or et cetera, et cetera. I’ve also noticed that people that may support us, maybe it’s family, friends, people at our church. Life group or Sunday school class, they don’t know how to deal most of the time with a long-term situation, if it’s a disease or a struggle, if, like you said, if you broke your foot or you’re gonna be in the hospital for a surgery, everybody’s good to go.

Pray for that, and you get better quickly and you’re through the surgery. And then. You’re on the way to healing. I have found that people don’t really understand and they don’t know how to deal with a long-term cancer like I have. So I understand that and I try not to get offended or feel like they don’t care, but they’re good at praying for things for a short period of time, and we all are.

I’m the same way. And so I’ve chosen to focus on, this is a part of my life. I’m not gonna expect people to continually be praying for me or asking me about it or whatever. And that’s okay with me. I’m fine to move on from that ’cause I don’t wanna focus on it all the time. But I think some people might get discouraged with a long-term challenge because even their best friends are probably not gonna be consistent to be asking them constantly about it or.

Know how to deal with it, and maybe they don’t know how to even understand how something could keep going on. It’s kinda like, well, we prayed for it. We’ve talked about it. It’s time to move on. But there’s certain things in life you just can’t do that with. It’s not only maybe patients with ourselves, but patients with our friends and our support group as well.

Carrie: Yeah, I have had different people tell me that I’ve been through deliverance ministry for my OCD, or I’ve had people in the church lay hands on me. I’ve begged God for healing from this situation, and it can be really hard when that doesn’t come or when other people don’t know how to respond to you.

Like in the midst of continued suffering.

John: Yes, I noticed that with my friends, my closest friends, they reached out. In a major way when they first found out about my diagnosis, but then when I didn’t die quickly and I kept moving forward, they didn’t know what to do. We don’t really talk about it a whole lot more, which is fine with me, but you still need your close confidants that you can share if there’s updating your situation or if it’s OCD and you’re having an episode that you really need to talk to somebody about, or with me, if I have a situation with my medical.

Team, that team, I need to discuss with someone. You still need those people to go to, but it’s different with a long-term illness. It really is. It’s a different scenario and who knows why. God allows us to have some things that we just don’t get over completely or we get somewhat better, but. It’s never fully healed.

I guess that’s what heaven is for really. There’s certain things in our lives that may not heal until we get to heaven, and that’s okay, but it’s very difficult to understand. It’s not a formula. We prayed for it. We went to this seminar, we did this, and all of a sudden it’s fixed. That’s just not always.

In real life.

Carrie: Yeah. Talk to me about your perspective on heaven now. How has that changed?

John: Heaven and death is a lot more exciting to me now than it ever was before, and I hope that doesn’t sound too weird, but I’m not afraid to die. I’m ready to go at any time. I think I had some fear before I had a terminal cancer diagnosis, but I had to face that I might die and that I might die fairly quickly.

We didn’t know how aggressive the blood cancer was gonna be. It’s so individual with different people. I chose to accept that this could be it for me. I may not be around that long once I accepted. I guess the worst thing technically that could happen is it kills me. It’s amazing the freedom that I had.

Mm-hmm. After that. And don’t worry about it anymore. Things that scare other people don’t scare me. I, I know I was telling somebody, this is a really strange situation too, but I was with the police officer that I know and we were eating in a restaurant, and police officers tend to always like to sit.

With their backs away from the door so they can watch the door. ’cause they’re trained to always watch and be on guard and everything. And I told this police officer, this is gonna sound weird to you, but I said, if somebody came in here and started shooting at us, I would certainly try to defend us and I would do anything I can.

And I certainly hope that doesn’t happen. But if they shoot me, I’m really not worried about it. I’ve gotten another day of life. And maybe it’s just, it gets down to gratefulness too, of what you do have. Because you realize you could lose it all, and I was prepared for that. So every day that I get is such a blessing that I’m freer now.

I have more joy now than I had before, but I’m not cured. I’m like a lot of your listeners, I’m not fit right? My situation has not gone away. It’s just that I’ve learned to be thankful for what I can do and what I do have, and that even if this cancer never gets cured. That’s okay. It’s still a blessing every day of life that I have.

Carrie: Yeah, I like this verse in Corinthians four 17 for this light, momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. And I think sometimes we look at our life and we say, okay, this is not light momentary affliction. This feels really heavy. And really hard right now, but it’s like the word tells us that the sufferings that we’re going through right now are gonna prepare us for one day.

There’s gonna be no suffering at all, and only joy. I remember after my husband got diagnosed with his neurological condition, and I remember looking at him one day, we were talking, somehow it came up in small group about heaven. And he, prior to diagnosis, had an active life where he was skateboarding and we were hiking together and he’s done all these physical things and I said, do you ever think about running again?

Like do you think about like running in heaven? And it was interesting. Sometimes he’ll have dreams even about things that he used to be able to do, like surfing or running or things like that. And I just. Think that that’s kind of a, a beautiful picture, that we know that there’s hope on the other side, and no one knows how long we have, but we know that our end destination is good.

John: Somebody told me one time, we pray for people, just talk about people that have some kind of sickness and we pray for them and ask God to heal them. And I had never thought about this, but some people he chooses to heal by taking them to heaven. Yeah, and it was a whole different concept for me when I started thinking about that because I’ve always thought, well, you know, God needs to heal this person, but then he lets them die, but he heals them by taking them on to heaven, which is the ultimate healing.

And so either way, it’s gonna work out great for us, whether we’re healed on this side of heaven, just like anxiety, OCD, whatever somebody’s dealing with. They may not get completely healed on this side of heaven, but they will be healed when they go and meet Jesus face to face in heaven. If they’ve accepted him as their Lord and their savior, the healing is gonna happen.

And something else that I’ve realized is that every person that Jesus healed. His ministry eventually died. Wow. Yeah. He didn’t heal them and they never had any other sickness as far as we know. They all died. And so even if we get healed from something, then still there’s gonna be death in some way.

Whether in a, a physical death, and I know some of your listeners may not be dealing with a physical illness or it may manifest itself physically, but maybe it’s emotionally or. Mentally in some ways that are, you know, that’s blocking them. But everybody has things that they’re struggling with and some of us get healing for a period of time, but eventually we’re all gonna die anyway.

I guess when you think about things that way, it gives you more patience to not have to have everything fixed right now. I mean, our bodies, as we get older, they break down more, just things happen. So it’s okay that people don’t get everything fixed in their life. None of us are perfect if we can grow some and get somewhat better.

I think we have to embrace that and just realize that we’re human beings.

Carrie: It’s interesting. I think a lot of what you’re talking about is perspective. You could have the perspective of, I get outta bed today and I have terminal cancer and I’m going to die. Oh, that’s awful. And I don’t want to do that. And almost like this internal fight against.

Where you’re at. But you’re saying, I wake up every day and I’m like, Hey, God gave me another day. How can I make a difference for him or love people better? Tell us a little bit about that. Like I’m reading this book called On Getting Outta Bed, and it basically says we all have to answer this question of why we getting outta bed in the morning, even on the, the really hard days.

Mm-hmm. When we don’t wanna get out of bed, we’re sick, we’re suffering, we’re in pain. We think, is this ever gonna end for you? How would you answer that question? Like, why do you get out of bed in the morning?

John: I know that God has left me on this earth for a purpose, and one of the purposes is to be a witness for him and to people.

I feel like he’s called me to be an encourager that motivate, pray and ask God people that I can be witness to, give people that I can encourage each and every day. One of the things that I deal with is fatigue. I have some pretty extreme fatigue because of all of the treatment I’ve been on for all these years.

And the maintenance treatment that I’m still on, it causes a lot of fatigue. So I can’t do the things I used to do. And you’re talking about your husband, Steve. My abilities are drastically reduced from what I could do seven years ago. Not just because of my age, but because of all the treatment and drugs that have gone into my body to help kill this cancer, to help keep it down, to help me survive.

And so there’s been a cost paid for that. I don’t have the energy, so I have to focus more. And when I get up in the morning, I’m not just jumping out of bed like I was a few years ago. Now it’s more difficult and the fatigue hits me about midday and it’s difficult for me to make it push through the rest of the day.

So it’s not easy. But I think what does motivate me is I still have a purpose. I could just say, well, gosh, I’m just too tired. So like doing anything. And some days there are definitely days like that when I have to just rest. So I’m not saying we don’t have those times when we have to step back, but there is the motivation that I’m alive today so I can be a blessing to somebody and for myself.

I’ve got a new platform to encourage people. ’cause when they find out I do have a cancer diagnosis, it does seem to help them to get things more in perspective because I think, well, gosh, what am I complaining about? This guy’s got a terminal cancer. It’s a platform just like your husband, Steve, how motivating he’s to people.

Because he doesn’t let his disease and his physical challenges get him defeated. That can really inspire people. But I also have to, I was talking about pacing yourself earlier. I have to pace myself. I can’t do as much or reach as many people, or I don’t have the energy to see as many people or whatever the opportunity may be today.

So I have to prioritize more, but I still have those things every day that I wanna do, and I wanna make a difference. And God does use me. I believe in some capacity every day. That’s really a neat opportunity. So it keeps me wanting to get up ’cause I know he’s not done with me yet. He may have slowed me down some with allowing me to get this cancer and the treatments I’ve been through, but he’s still using me.

Matter of fact, he’s probably using me more than he ever has. It’s just I have to prioritize more and maybe more impact less volume in that I can’t do as many things. But I think with some of the things that I’m able to do. There’s more impact than I did have before. I’ve been through this last seven year battle with cancer.

Carrie: Yeah, we’ve got you on the volume ’cause you’re going out to lots and lots of countries right now. So we have people that listen on Australia and the UK and Canada and America, of course. Uh, all over the place, so, oh, awesome. Yeah, I think this is very encouraging. I think focusing in on today and the moment and really asking God, okay, what is your purpose or will or who do I need to reach out to today?

Who do I need to encourage? And I think all of that is great. And I see we can, in our pain, we have like two options. We can go really inward and focus on ourselves and say, this is awful. Why me? I can’t believe that I’m having to go through this. I’m frustrated, like you said, angry with God. Why would God allow this in my life?

Or we can accept that it’s here and say, okay, I heard somebody say, instead of asking why, ask what. Okay, what are you doing, God? What are how and how? How are you going to use this? For your good and your glory. Like that’s what, uh, Romans 8 28 tells us. So I think that those are questions that people can lean into in the hard times.

We know that Romans five, three through five tells us that we rejoice in our sufferings knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character. And character produces hope. And hope does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured into our hearts. Through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us in the beginning of James.

It also uses that word endurance when it talks about having joy in various times of trials. Tell us a little bit about your thoughts and perspectives on endurance on keeping going.

John: I was gonna refer to that verse in James when it also breaks out and it says, and let Endurance have its perfect work.

That verse has really spoke to me a lot because that’s why I think we go through something and why we don’t try to avoid it with challenges. Because if you let endurance have its perfect work, in other words, don’t try to run from. Try to embrace it, see what God’s gonna teach you for it, from it through it, that gives you that perfect work of Christ where he uses that to the Nth degree and you don’t wanna waste any of it.

You don’t wanna waste any of that endurance that you learn because that is what gets you through the hard times in life. If you can continue to jump back in there. And I’ve found that what I have learned with cancer. Of you deal with it every day. You go through the fatigue, you go through the treatment, but you just keep on rolling.

You don’t let it knock you off. Of course, some days are tougher than others, but you just continue to move forward. And as I’ve done that, I’ve found that other challenges in my life are really not that difficult for the most part because I’ve learned so much. Of endurance and keeping on. Keeping on and not letting this get the best of me, and keeping your attitude where it needs to be.

One that serves Christ and one that trust in him. It has taught me and is still teaching me in ways that help me in other areas of my life. But. You do have to let endurance have its perfect work. I’ve mentioned on the podcast before that when I went through a stem cell transplant, I was nauseous for 30 days straight in the hospital, and that was very discouraging.

After about two weeks of not wanting to eat anything. Anything that resemble food made me think of, of being sick. I just didn’t enjoy it at all. I went through that and I mean, what was I gonna do? I couldn’t give up, right? I had to keep going and I had to just force down some food because I had to eat enough where I could survive, even though I was losing weight.

And I finally found I could eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I may have mentioned that last time. Yeah, it was the one thing that didn’t completely make me sick to my stomach, so I tried to eat some of those and it finally gotta, where that’s about all I ate is to survive. I remember talking to the doctors, I’m like, how long does this go on?

They said, well, it doesn’t normally go quite this long, but we’re not really sure when it’s gonna stop. I’m like, oh my, and this like day 29. I was like, okay, this has been a long time. You know what, four weeks? And they don’t know when it’s gonna stop. It’s miserable. Every time they mention breakfast, lunch or dinner.

It just a horrible thing for me. Yet I was losing weight and I was eating what I could. It was just not a pleasant experience, and I didn’t know that the 30th day was gonna be the last day of that day. 31. Yeah, out of nowhere. All of a sudden I wanted to eat again. In that situation, I didn’t have a whole lot of choice, but I had to let endurance have its perfect work.

But that 30 day period was a long grind for me. I think a lot of times God allows us to go through those long grinding times. We don’t know when the end’s in sight. We don’t know when things are gonna get better, but wouldn’t it have been a shame if I had completely given up on day 29 or day 30, because then the next day I was gonna get my appetite back and things were gonna get much, much better.

I remember too, after I had the stem cell for a good while after, if I ate any food from a restaurant, it had to be put in the oven. At a certain temperature for 30 minutes. And so the food was already cooked. When somebody would pick it up for me from the restaurant and we had to put it in the oven for 30 minutes and just baked it to a crisp because they had to kill every possible germ, and it just wasn’t good.

It kind of ruined it. But eventually I got through that and then I could. Eat food that was from the restaurant without having to worry about that. For the longest time, I couldn’t go out to lunch, and this was during COVID and all too, but even before and after that, because of my condition, my immune system was so weak I couldn’t be around people very much.

And I thought, man, I wish I could go to lunch. I think for two years I couldn’t go out to lunch and be around people and now I can go out to lunch. It’s like I did get through it. Every now and then I have to pinch myself and remember how good it is that I can’t eat, that I do have an appetite. Remember how good it is that I don’t have to overcook my food to try to kill all the germs and remember what a blessing it is that I can go out to lunch and sit with my wife or.

A friend or a family member and not have to worry about, oh my gosh, if I catch anything, I’m gonna die. Some of it is maybe looking back on the things that God has brought us through and reminding ourselves because I like everybody. I forget those things, but I hadn’t even thought about those things in a good while until we were just disgusted.

So. What a blessing it is that I can go out to lunch. Yeah. And things like that. A lot of people take for granted. I know I’ve talked to people that have foot surgeries and ankle surgeries and things like that, and we talk about how, gosh, you never realize what a blessing it is to be able to walk until you can’t.

And you’ve got all your body weight on this part that is extremely sore or broken or whatever. And I know Steve, your husband deals with some of that. We forget how blessed we’re. So if we can think about those kind of things, it kind of overwhelmed. The downside. And I think praising God and thanking him is always an antidote for depression.

I’ve gotten knocked down with this situation, but I can’t say I’ve really gotten depressed or stayed down. And I think the real key is not anything super that I do other than just I’ve gotta turn to praising God for what I do have. As somebody once said, find the good and praise it. And I’d say find the good and praise God for that good.

That will eliminate. And if you look at it, you don’t have to look very far to find somebody that’s a whole lot worse off than you are. Number one, and you don’t have to look very far to see a ton of blessings. You may have some challenges and you’ll have them because we all do. But if you look at all the blessings that you have to go with that challenge, God’s not gonna just give us the dirty laundry.

He gives us some wonderful, beautiful things. To go with it as well. And some of those things we wouldn’t have gotten. Some of the beauty we would not have received had we not had the hard stuff to go with it.

Carrie: Yeah. I mean, I can just remember times like going through my divorce and I’d go outside and like a flower would be blooming and that would mean a lot to me in that moment.

It was like the beauty of God, just like my life felt so. And then there’s this flower would be coming out of the ground. And it just allowed me to appreciate all the small things. And you were talking about looking backwards and recognizing like how far God has taken you out of specific situations. And I think it was very recently that I said to Steve, I said, do you remember that I had a young baby And people were telling me, your husband’s gonna be in a wheelchair.

Like you need to prepare now and understand like that this is gonna happen. I said that was so scary, obviously, and he lived in this crazy split level where there was no way to do wheelchair in that house and just housing market. Anyway, God’s been faithful to us along that journey to be in a different place now, and also that he’s not in a wheelchair.

That he’s actually walking really well right now, and I can only explain that via God and the work that he’s done in his life, and Steve’s positive attitude and willing to keep walking and keep going and keep moving. But he said, you know, Kerry, they weren’t wrong to tell you that. They just didn’t know, like no one knew.

They were just trying to prepare you for the worst case scenario. But we’re just thankful every day that he can walk with a cane and that he can get around. We feel very, very blessed that he’s involved in our daughter’s life. When we thought he was losing his eyesight, and I said, we were just praying that you were gonna be able to see your daughter born.

I mean, God’s brought us so far and we have to live day by day in a different way than you do, but we still just try to take things one step at a time.

John: Yeah, that’s a good point. I mean, I think a lot of times that a lot of things that we worry about or dread never happen, or they happen and they’re better than we thought they would be.

I mean, like for me, I mean my cancer, I would never have envisioned that I would be doing as well as I am today. Seven years ago, I didn’t think I would be here, number one, and I sure didn’t think I would be doing as well as I’m now, have I had struggles? Yes. Is the fatigue rough? Yes. I mean, there’s some challenging parts to it.

It’s certainly not a party, but it really is a party compared to what I thought it was gonna be because I knew what, how bad it could get, and I knew that it did get that bad with some people and with this disease, it’s amazing. Like I said, I think we waste a lot of energy and a lot of time maybe dreading things that never happen and so.

Very thankful. I did have, uh, one friend that was in the hospital with me when I got my stem cell transplant. He died in the room beside me. Wow. Had the same cancer I had, and we had gotten to be friends and he was going through the treatment and he died and they couldn’t save him. And that really was a shocker to me.

I was like, I’ve got the same thing he has. Well, God didn’t have the same plan. He took him on home and healed him in a different way. He was a strong Christian man, but if I had thought that was gonna happen to me and dreaded it, I would’ve wasted a lot of time being miserable when I’ve actually been unbelievably blessed to be able to do all I’ve been able to do.

So we can’t figure out God, that’s for sure. And we don’t need to. I think there’s some unique things in our suffering and our challenges and our problems and our conditions or diseases that we have that can really open up a lot of beauty in life and allow us to be used more than we would otherwise. To bless other people.

To be a witness to other people, to encourage other people, and certainly just to give us joy. It can help us not take life for granted as much. If everything went great all the time, would we seek God? Probably not. And would we find as much joy? Probably not. I think when you struggle and you go through some tough times, it makes you appreciate the good times and you also appreciate that God was with you through those hard times.

I can look back. I know he was with me every second through this whole cancer process, even when I felt like, golly, what’s going on here? He needed the future. He had a plan and it was a good plan. That’s true for each one of us.

Carrie: Steve knew that I was gonna be talking to you today and he said, John is on a mission to take as many people to heaven with him.

Do you feel that way?

John: I definitely would love to do that. One of the things that I do a lot is I’m a Gideon with the Gives out the Bibles, and so I try to keep New Testament Bibles with me all the time, and I’ve just gotten more bold at approaching people and talking to them about the Bible and about God’s plan of salvation and giving them that and encouraging them to follow Christ because one thing I don’t really worry as much about what people think after I’ve kind of faced death.

I’m not in a popularity contest anymore. I’m more of, I want other people to know Christ because. Having faced death, I know that it’s coming to all of us and I’ve gotten a little closer than I wanted to get to it. I know it’s a serious thing and I know it could come to anyone at any time, and I just feel like if I’m gonna be here, whether it’s another day or another week or another year or another, 10 years or more, I really wanna be about doing God’s work and reaching out with the love of Christ and with his gospel.

Because the main thing is we wanna be healed spiritually and we want people to know Jesus. The next thing is gonna be the healing physically and mentally and emotionally, but we’re all gonna die. So when we do die, are we gonna go and be with Jesus forever? And then if we get that right, he can help us with all the other things as well.

And it doesn’t mean though, that everything’s gonna go great, doesn’t mean we don’t have a lot of struggles, but we just keep getting back in there and. God has been so tenacious with all of us reaching out to us and loving us over and over, and I have failed him. I dunno how many millions or hundreds of millions of times in my lifetime.

Uh, but he still loves me. He still reaches out to me. He still cares for me. He still makes a way for me, and he does that for each of us. It’s such a gift. I want other people to know Christ, and I know your husband’s the same way too. He’s on mission trips constantly and reaching out. But I definitely feel a call that time is of the essence.

There’s a sense of urgency, especially me. I don’t know how long I’ll be alive. I’m fine with that. I’m not worried about it, but I wanna make. Every day count because when it’s all said and done, I really want to have been used for the Lord and we’ve all wasted time. I’ve wasted time. I’ve wasted years where I could have been closer to the Lord.

I could have been used more. I was focused on different things, just selfish things. But I think at this point in my life, I don’t wanna waste any time. I know. The main thing is for people to know Christ and to experience his love, and that’s the best thing I could give him. It’s very important for me to be focused on Christ and yeah, try to lead as many people to him as I can.

Carrie: Well, thank you so much for hopping on the podcast with me again. I think this is gonna be good for our listeners to hear and definitely prompt some thoughts within them.

John: Thank you. I hope that something I said, maybe God uses in some way to encourage somebody, but if anybody’s out there that thinks they wanna give up or they’re tired of trying, I can tell you God has a plan that he will bless you and he will work things out and he has a good plan for you.

You may not know what it’s gonna be. I don’t know that any of us know exactly what God’s plan’s gonna be, but we can know that it’s gonna be good ’cause he promises that.

Carrie: I just wanna say that this episode was so impactful to me personally that I kept chewing on it in the hours and days following the interview.

I was thinking about this combination of spiritual truth and things that we learned from secular counseling, and I was thinking about how. John’s story relates to what we learn in acceptance and commitment therapy, how he accepted his cancer diagnosis, even though obviously it wasn’t something that anyone would want, he accepted This has been ordained by God, and God is going to use this in my life and in the lives of others.

Then he is taking committed actions to move towards his values. He’s living in the moment. These are all different acceptance and commitment therapy principles that are helpful for us spiritually in our relationship with God to remain in the present moment and what he has for us right now in the here and now.

How can I love people today? How can I serve God today? How can I fulfill what he’s asking me to do in the here and now? And how these spiritual practices help us psychologically, because when we’re not super future focused, that oftentimes reduces our anxiety to be more in the present moment. And when we’re not borrowing distress from the past, that reduces a certain level of distress.

Acceptance and commitment therapy would tell people to take the suffering with you, so to speak, and as you’re moving towards your values, so. If you believe that God has called you, for example, to go on a mission trip and you say, oh, but no, I have OCD, I can’t do that. Acceptance and commitment therapy would say, you know, take that OCD with you.

It may be a struggle, but if that’s something that you value, that’s important that God wants you to do, know that you can move in that direction even if you’re continuing to struggle. If you wanna hear more about acceptance and commitment therapy, you can scroll way back to episode 65, where I had Ingrid or on to talk about this.

She has written a book about acceptance and commitment therapy from a Christian worldview. I’m so glad that you tuned in today. If this episode blessed you and impacted you, will you consider sending it to a fellow brother or sister in Christ who can benefit from hearing these encouraging words?

Regardless of whether or not they’re struggling with OCD, I think there are so many people who could benefit from hearing this. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Christian Faith in OCD is a production of by the well. Counseling opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or by the Well counseling.

This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.