← The Wake-Up Call
The Wake-Up Call
I Have Cancer and You Do Too
00:20:47
Believe doesn’t mean just accept it. Believe means lean in with your whole weight.
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- [00:04]
A
Hey, good morning, friends. You know, I really, I missed you all over. The little two week interlude we had, we had such a great start to the year in Proverbs and now we're in Lent and you know, I just am so eager to visit with you every morning. I forgot and I forget to even stick with the program. Okay, so what is the program? Well, it is Friday, February 20th, in the year of our Lord 2026. I'm John David Walt and this is your wake up call. A lot of you may remember those days where when you would go to a hotel and you'd have to be up the next morning to do something and you'd call the desk and say, I need a wake up call at 6am and sure enough, 6am there the phone would ring. Well, that's what we're doing here. I'm calling you early every morning and we're waking up together. We're waking up to the core beautiful, powerful reality of Jesus Christ right here, right now. We're growing up into the fullness of his abundant life. In for it, with, for, in and through us. And then we're showing up in our homes, in our families, in our workplace, in our community, in our churches. We're showing up in our city, in our nation. We're showing up in the way that he shows up, which is different, which changes things, which is this beautiful, humble, yet authority, yet breathtaking love. That's what we're doing every day. That's what the wake up calls about. Are you ready to move forward this morning? On this Friday? Here we go. Wake up, sleeper. Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you. And we're praying in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Well, the title of today's entry is I have cancer and you do too. Our text is Joel, chapter 2, verses 12 and 13. Hear now the word of the Lord, yet even now declares the Lord. Return to me with all your heart and with fasting, weeping and mourning. And tear your heart, and not merely your garments, now return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in mercy and relenting of catastrophe. The word of the Lord. Now consider this. Yep. I always wanted to break the glass and pull the fire alarm in the chapel on Ash Wednesday, but I never did. I sort of did it once, and I never really recovered from the debacle it unleashed. I stood up before the chapel that day, and as I began my message, I said I had some bad news I needed to share first. I'm sad to tell you, I said, but I have recently learned that I have cancer. There were gasps and even a shriek, and some began to cry. I then tried to qualify my declaration by saying that I didn't have cancer, like they thought I had a different sort of cancer and that they had it too. I told them that we all have sin cancer. And yes, it is terminal. Isn't that the point of Ash Wednesday? We get the sign of the cross made on our foreheads in black ashes. We hear the words spoken straight into our souls. From dust you have come, and to dust you shall return. Repent and believe the gospel. That's more than a message that none of us is getting out of here alive. It's worse than that. We are already dead. We have sin cancer and it's terminal. We've had it from birth. However, there is really good news. That's what gospel means, good news. The gospel is that there is a cure, and it has a 100% cure rate. The cure has a name, Jesus. We will get into how the cure works in the coming days. But for now, you just need to know that Jesus cures sin cancer, and not just a little bit. It's not only an after you die, you will go to heaven cure. That's true. But the cure actually touches every aspect of your life right here and now. And what is the word that invites this transformational cure? It is repent. And it means exactly what the scripture text says today. Return to me with all your heart. And what about believe? The other command from our Ash Wednesday liturgy? Believe doesn't just mean accept it. Believe means lean in with your whole weight. Do you remember what the name Jesus means? It means, and I quote, he will save his people from their sins. That's Matthew 1:21. It means 100% cure. The prayer. Our Father, thank you for your son Jesus. Lord Jesus. The song is right. There is just something about your name. You are the cure for sin cancer. And as much as we hate to admit it, we have it. So instead of admitting it, we will confess it. We are sinners. I am a sinner. I have sin cancer. We need you, Jesus. I need you to cure me. But we want you to know this, Jesus. We don't just want you for the cure. We want you for yourself. Come, Holy Spirit. Praying In Jesus name, Amen. The journal prompts today. These are. These are big ones. Are you aware that you have a bigger problem than your pesky sins, which are merely symptoms? Are you aware of the sin cancer, tumor that is causing those symptoms? How does this metaphor help you better understand Jesus as the cure for our condition? And how does this differ from simply dealing with the symptoms of the sickness? Steep stuff, guys. This is. We're getting down into it. I have found in my life and in my work with people that we mostly don't understand this, that we mostly spend our lives thinking salvation was a transaction we entered into some time ago, and it created the ledger shift that will get us into heaven when we die. And for now, for the rest of the story here, we've just got to manage the symptoms. We've got to manage our sin. That's not a cure. That's hardly a medication. No, Jesus cures sin, cancer. He. He eradicates the symptoms, but we have to keep taking the medicine. The grace of God. And there's. That's. That's what Lent is about. It's about getting past our sort of thin and anemic understanding of what salvation even means. I mean, salve, it means healing. Okay? It's not a check the box, get your ticket punched, fire insurance from hell, all the things that the church has taught meaning. Well, just, you know, trying to give people some sense of assurance that this won't be it. Gosh, we've adopted a very, very thin, anemic understanding of salvation, of grace, of power, of love. Jesus doesn't want to just save us a little bit. He doesn't want to just get us over the line. He's not just trying to get us into heaven. He's trying to get heaven into us on this side, such that when we die, it's just a stepping through the thin veil into the fullness of his presence. But it's learning to live more in the fullness of his presence on this side while we're alive on this earth. That's what convinces other people that he's real friends. Not some preacher up there trying to scare the hell out of you.
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No.
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No. It's people around you who are full of God, who love you into the kingdom of God. It's interesting. This is the actual New Testament vision of the Christian faith. We just haven't heard it that much. We've heard something else. It's not entirely wrong what we've heard. It's just not entirely right either, really. I think you get me today. Well, we're, we're moving, guys. We're early in. We're. We're hardly in the first week. We're just in the, what, fourth day and we got miles to go before we sleep. But what we're going to do right now is sing. So Dad's with me. Here we go. All right, dad, thanks for joining me here today again. And everybody out. Who's going to be. Who's with us today on the wake up call. We are on Friday and we're on the third day of Lent. And it's. It's a season of focus. It's a season where we really trying to get to a place where we can get our eyes focused on Jesus, where we can just get up close and watch him and listen to him. And he's the one that can, can actually transform us, make us who we most want to be.
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He can. He can help us have a spirit led life.
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That's exactly right. He is the one because he. He. He is the spirit led life.
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All we gotta do is follow him
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and see what page he's on and go to it. That's exactly right. What page is he going to lead us to sing today?
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340.
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What's the name of the.
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I need the Every hour I need two or words were never spoken I
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need the need the Every hour Most gracious Lord we know we need him
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every day, but in a day, we need him every hour, every hour.
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And in an hour, we need him every minute. Every minute. And so he's glad to hear that. He's like, well, that's. That's where I want to be. Listing all five verses.
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All right.
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And let's, let's put some pace to it. You want to. Yeah, we don't want to drag it out. We want to. We're trying to wake up here. All right.
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I need the Every hour Most gracious Lord no tender voice like Thine can peace afford I need Thee oh, I need Thee every hour I need Thee O bless me now, my Savior I come to Thee I need Thee every hour Sing aloud. Nearby Temptations lose their power when Thou art nigh I need thee oh, I need Thee every hour I need Thee O bless me now, my Savior I come to Thee I need Thee every hour Enjoy your pillowing. Come quickly and abide for life is vain I need thee oh, I need Thee every hour I need thee O bless me now, my Savior I come to thee I need Thee every hour Teach me Thy will and Thy Thomas is in me fulfill I Need thee oh, I need thee Every hour I need thee O list me now My Saviour, I come to thee I need thee every hour Most Holy One O make me thine indeed Thou blessed Son, I need thee oh, I need thee Every hour I need thee O bless me now, my Savior I come to the
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Amen That's a classic, isn't it?
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That's a good one.
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You know, every Sunday in church, we always lift up our needs and the needs of the community. People who are sick, struggling, grieving. All of us are a bundle of needs. But, you know, I've learned to pray. At the end of that prayer, I say, jesus, you know how much we need you'd. But we want to make sure that you know how much we want you. And that's really the turn that we want to be making as we head to the cross.
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We want him to want us.
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He wants us, and he wants us to want him. We do, and we do. You know, it's one thing to need something, but it's another thing to want something. And so this is a way that the Holy Spirit. You mentioned the Spirit led life. The Spirit wants to draw forth our deepest desires, and he wants to show us that our deepest desire actually is for God.
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Amen.
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And Jesus wants to fulfill our deepest desire.
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And he'll help us with it.
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He will. He will clarify it and crystallize it. You know, what we're trying to do in these days, return to him with all of our hearts.
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You know, some people get a little bit nervous when they're called on to say a prayer in a group of people. But this is just between you and him.
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That's right.
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And he's. He's listening to every word you're saying.
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That's right.
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If your voice is shaking, so what?
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That's good, dad.
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He's there.
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That's good. That's what he's. That's exactly right. Couldn't have said it better. Well, we got seed to sow today, and we got to get out on the fields for The Awakening. I'm J.D. walt.
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And I'm David Walt.
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Walked. We'll see you on the field.