My Experiences with God

My Testimony - Van W. Cottom

To know the road ahead, ask those that are coming back.. German Proverb.

On November 4, 2002, I was diagnosed with small-cell carcinoma of the lung. The cancer had spread to the left side of my brain forming a peanut sized tumor. The condition is described as “Extensive-stage disease.” I would be dead in two to six months and with no doubt (at least on the doctor's part) by spring of 2003.

Updated on February 18, 2008 - I "celebrated" my 50th birthday at Union Hospital laying in my death bed. I celebrated my "impossible" 55th birthday on a date with my wife, she paid! FIVE YEARS, FOUR MONTHS & TWELVE DAYS after diagnosis. I am an OFFICIAL Cancer Survivor! "55 And Still Alive!"

Update on December 10, 2009 – I celebrated my 57^th birthday, with my wife having dinner in favorite coffee shop, with well wishes from all my family. Seven years, one month, six days, cancer free! 7+50 and still nifty!

Update on December 10, 2010  - Fifty Eight and doing great!

Since we all like numbers and seemingly the bigger the better, since the day I was diagnosed with small cell carcinoma (cancer) of the lung, 84 months ago, 1,209,600 other Americans have be diagnosed with the same. Over 1,149,120 of them have died, only about 60,480 of them remain alive today. Five Percent.

Without treatment, this type cancer has a median survival from diagnosis to death of only 2 to 6 months. Patients with tumors that have spread beyond the chest have a worse prognosis. Long-term, meaning two-year, survival is very rare. I have been healed for over seven years, held the bosom of a very loving God.

The doctor took my wife and I to a private conference room. In a heart felt compassionate manner informed of his diagnosis. A baseball-sized tumor filled the left side of my chest and was pressing on my bronchus, and esophagus nearly cutting off the ability to breathe and eat, wrapping around the nerves to my voice box, paralyzing my vocal cords, and around my aorta, the main artery leaving the heart. X-rays showed the pipes that were supposed to be in the middle clear over on the right side!

He explaining that without treatment, I would survive two months, and they could keep me relatively pain free until death. With aggressive treatment, survival would be about six months.

At home later that night my wife tried her best to comfort me, at times the “mother” in her was expressed, at other times it was the Nurse part of her, knowing, lovingly, yet firm and truthful with me.

I sat on the edge of our bed, just silent. She asked, “Van don’t your realize that you have cancer, and that your are going to die?” Yet there was the peace that could only be the presences of God. To this day, I feel that peace, and long for it to be eternal. My only comment was “I could back out of the driveway and be killed tonight.”

A few days later the doctor’s nurse called saying the doctor would like to see us as soon as possible. He offered an opportunity to enter a clinical trial of a new chemotherapy developed by the Japanese. He said, “You meet all the qualifications.” (What I think he meant was, “You have cancer and you are going to die anyway.”)

Unless you have been there, describing your thoughts at that moment just cannot be explained. The only thing I could think of was that I was giving my body to medicine, hoping that somebody else in the future would not have to face what I was facing.

Luke 6:38 says "Give and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be given to you. For with the same measure you measure it will be measured back to you." I believe, that because I was willing to give my body for the benefit of somebody else, God has measured unto me that which I gave, good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over.

Genesis 6:3 says "his days shall be one hundred twenty years." and I am claiming every one of my years!

___________________

During all this, I felt a peace, and was so glad that for many, many years I had filled my mind and my heart with the Word of God, instead of the Cartoon Channel. I knew that I had some “ammo,” it was not just the cancer and me. I had something to shoot back with. I had hope. I had a hope that does not come from HBO or ESPN.

Proverbs 17:22 says, “A merry heart worketh a good healing”

Proverbs 4:20-22 - My son attend to my words, incline thy ear unto my sayings, let them not depart from thine eyes, keep them in the midst of thine heart, for they are life unto those that find them and health to all their flesh.

Isaiah 53:5 - He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon Him and with His stripes, we ARE healed.

Matthew 8:17 - That it might be fulfilled that which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet saying Himself took our infirmities and bear our sicknesses.

I Peter 2:24 - Who His own self bear our sins in His body on the tree, that we being dead to sin should live unto righteousness. By whose stripes ye WERE healed. PAST TENSE!

Psalm 107:20 - he sent His word, healed them, and delivered them from their destructions.

Jeremiah 30:17 - For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith the LORD.

________________________________

If God said it once, He was serious; if He said it twice He was very serious. Personally, I believe God is saying, “HEY….This might be important. Listen up!

Think on this the next few days. There are 1189 chapters in the Bible; God chose this one chapter to introduce a precept, a subject so serious that God presents the same precept 10 times in one chapter? That chapter is the FIRST CHAPTER of the FIRST BOOK of the entire Bible.

Ten times, first book, first chapter of the entire Bible; Genesis Chapter ONE it is written, “And God Said….”

We are created in the image of God. Our words have results, just like God saying “Let there be light,” we can say “let their be life,” or we can speak death, just as easy. (By the way, as a matter of personal revelation, our Earth is created in the image of Heaven)

What goes into your mind through your eyes or ears will go into your spirit and WILL come out of your mouth, eventually.

Whatever is spoken, it is brought into existence or set into motion.

What you are today, what I am today, is the total of our talking!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Within a week, I started the clinical trial.

• The first session was OK; I thought this was going to be a real push over.
• The second session made my so sick, that death would have been welcomed.
• The third session was doubly wicked.
• I cannot remember ever being so sick for so long.

Because I could not eat, my muscles atrophied (AT-tro-feed), or wasted away. My body was “eating” my muscles to feed itself. I lost over 60 pounds in just a couple months. (I weighed 195 pounds the day I finished my Air Force career, by the time chemo was done I was 145! Today, hmmm, I'm 240 pounds)

While taking the chemo I also had a DAILY radiation treatment for my brain. Sixty-two doses of atomic bombing. The initial radiation doses are administered to the whole brain, then they target down to the tumor. This peanut size growth being located in my “short-term memory” area presented some trying problems for me. I would be in the middle of a sentence, and then forget what I was talking about, even who I was talking to.

I want to praise God that problems caused by the brain tumor has been healed, leaving no more difficulty remembering than any other old man.

Oh… I need to tell you something, in case you haven’t heard.

The doctors also said I would never be able to speak again!

GOD HEALS PEOPLE TODAY THE SAME AS HE DID YESTERDAY AND THE SAME AS HE WILL TOMORROW. IT IS ALWAYS GOD’S WILL TO HEAL. Period! I do not care what your denomination says, I am telling you what GOD says.

The chemo shut down my immune system, so every germ that come within a mile of me got to attack. Hospital visitors would have to wear masks, not to protect them from something I had, like many of them thought, but to protect me from what ever they had.

If I were exposed to a normal cold, I would have to be admitted to the hospital. They would give me IVs, and in a week or so, I would go home. A couple weeks later, I would be back in the hospital; they would bring me back and send me home again.

All this does wear on your mental system. During my military service years, I remember hearing stories told by those wounded in Vietnam. They told me that as you lay there waiting to be rescued "as long as you could hear the helicopters, you were going to be OK." I had an IV pump that was the noisiest thing I have ever heard, but it sounded like the blades of a helicopter. I lay there in the middle of the night, alone, and yes scared, listening, knowing, I was going to be all right, I could hear the "helicopters!” You see, it is not just the "religious" words you speak to people that have an effect on them; it is all the words you speak. Even sounds have effect, not only on the sick, but also on the well, you.

I was still losing weight because I could not eat. The doctor told me that if I had not gained 5 pounds in two weeks he was just going to stop treating me. I was not worth his time. I still do not believe he really meant it, but his words certainly had effect.

I had a G-Tube, or feeding tube, inserted. It is somewhat neat, just open your shirt, pull your garden hose out, but a funnel in the end, and pour your breakfast in while reading the newspaper, both hands free while you eat!

In the 12 months of 2003, I spent 9 months of it in the hospital, generally 1 or 2 weeks at a time.

I lay in my hospital bed and cried out to God, I was weak, I could not eat, I could not walk, I could not talk, and I could not maintain a straight line of thinking. My faith was being beating down one inch at a time. I was tired.

With the exception of Patty, and a few others, I was tired of people in general. Believe me, there are many people you do not want around when you are clinging to life by a thread, and they make some insightful statement like, “God doesn’t heal any more,” or “we don’t believe in healing.” In addition, the best one, dear friends, “Has the doctor said when you are going to die?”

Your words can create life or they can destroy life.

(Matthew 12:37) For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.

Well, folks, I DO NOT believe God heals: I KNOW God heals.

_______________________________

I spent a lot of time at home alone the next few months. Patty had used up all of her vacation time, sick days, and Family Leave Act days. While it was lonely at times, the time I spent with God made every moment precious. It was wonderful to be able to talk to Him as my best friend, and hear back from Him in many forms. Through His Word, through His audible voice, through ministers, through Television, through the Internet, and for me, through music.

I met Pastor David Ingles while living in Tulsa, Oklahoma in the mid-80s, and developed a very special love for his music and played it with my portable CD player wherever I went. While taking chemo treatments, which required sitting for six hours at a time, I would just slip my headphones on, and drift off into his gifted music. As Solomon wrote, “incline your ear unto my sayings.” That poor CD player saw more use in a week than most people would give it in a year. I thank God for David, and his organization, and for the wonderful music God has given him.

One day I was listening to David Ingle’s “I am healed” based on Ist Peter 2:24 when something just empowered me to say aloud that I was already healed, totally and completely.

When I reached out and touched Him, He touched me.

I was healed when Jesus, hanging on the cross, uttered these words, “It is finished!” I have saved you, I have delivered you, I have healed you, IT-IS-FINISHED!

1st Peter 2:24 says I am healed therefore I am HEALED! I had confessed that many times a day for a many weeks when God spoke to me, saying; “Well, get up and act like it.”

____________________________

It was not very pretty, but I got up and sat on the edge of my bed, then got over into my wheel chair, without assistance, which was a first. After a few minutes, I tried standing up, and was so glad Patty was at work, because I collapsed to a ball on the floor, and laid there for an hour or more, but I was still singing, “I am healed, I am whole.” I made it back into bed before she got home, and never did tell her about it. The next day I was more successful, and the day after even more so. Today, I manage to move about anywhere I want, and do about anything I want to do.

Every instance of healing in the Bible took place when the sick reach out in faith, did something. The man with the withered hand, Jesus said (Matthew 12:13) "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out; and it was restored whole, just like the other. And the woman with the issue of blood... God only knows how much I want to meet her, and find out what was going through her mind.

Most of you know John 3:16 and 3:17 by heart,

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

But how many have realized just exactly what is being said?

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.”

That last little word – saved – sozo – means: to save, to deliver, to heal, to make whole. Salvation, Deliverance, and Healing are a package, paid for by Jesus on the cross. Just as salvation requires that you reach out to God, Healing requires you reach out first, then Jesus will take your hand and lead you through.

In Mark, chapter 5:23-34, the woman with an issue of blood, knew, she said within herself, “If I can but touch the hem of his garment, I know I will be healed. The Bible says she “pressed” until she finally made her way to Him. She knew in her heart that if she could touch Him, she would be healed. But the crowd would not let her though.

I can see her now, putting into action the words of Outlaw Jose Wales, “"When things look bad, and it looks like you're not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb mad dog mean. Cause if you lose your head and you give up, then you neither live nor win, that's just the way it is.”

The moment she touched Jesus, he stopped, asking “Who touched me?”

The Bible says, “She fell down before Him, telling all she had done.”

(This is so precious-) Jesus said, “Daughter” Your faith has made you whole, go in peace.

There is much more to this Biblical event, but what I want you to know, is you are going to have to “plumb mad dog mean” at Satan because he will block your healing, and continually try to take it away from you. “Cause if you lose your head and you give up, then you neither live nor win”

We must know how ever that God cannot save a person against his or her will; neither can God heal anybody against his or her will. You have to want to be healed! You reach out, and God will be there.

Reach out to God, and He will be there for you in a twinkle of an eye. Salvation, Deliverance, Healing; My Father is waiting on you. Reach out today.