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  • Keep Breathing
    • Keep Breathing: Introduction
    • Part 1
      • Stay Grounded
      • Keep Breathing
      • Gather Information
      • Feel What You Feel
      • Take in Support
      • Pray
      • Practice Surrender
      • Notice Your Reactivity
    • Part 2
      • Realize What Is Happening to You
        Is Happening To Everyone in Your Life
      • Take Inventory
      • Let Go of Shame
      • Extend Grace
      • Show Up
      • Learn Vulnerability
      • Make Amends
      • Stay Present in Times of Waiting
    • Part 3
      • Be Still and Keep Moving
      • Know You Are Not Alone
      • Ask for Healing
      • Seek Guidance
      • Meditate
      • Pursue Peace
      • Acknowledge Death
      • Grieve
    • Part 4
      • Express Gratitude
      • Stay Open to Joy
      • Make Room for Laughter
      • Celebrate Each Day
      • Let Yourself Be Carried
      • Be Who You Are
      • Know That You Are Loved
  • Desperate Hope
    • Shocked by the Diagnosis
    • Responding to Feelings of Fear, Anxiety, and Sadness
    • Ordering Desperate Hope
  • TLC Leader’s Manual
    • Group Leader Resources
      • Introduction to TLC
      • Meeting Format
      • Notes to Group Leaders
      • When a Group Member Dies
    • Strong Feelings
      • Understanding our Feelings
      • The Emotional Roller Coaster
      • Living With Fear
      • Dealing With Depression
      • Living with Anger
      • Grieving Our Losses
      • The Experience of Gratitude
      • Celebration and Joy
      • Experiencing Peace
      • Finding Hope
    • Challenges to Faith
      • Stretching Our Faith
      • Prayer
      • Examining Our View of God
      • Healing Prayer
      • The Lord Is With Us
      • God’s Healing Presence
    • Changing Perspectives
      • The Seasons Of Survival
      • Living Sanely in An Insane World
      • One Day At A Time
      • Positive Thinking
      • Accepting Our Need for Help
      • Building Friendships
      • Perspectives on Treatment
      • Coping With Pain
      • Repairing Our Self Esteem
  • Contact

Accepting Our Need for Help

As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Matthew 9:9-12

This is Matthew’s own account of being called by Jesus. He was an outcast because he profited from evil. The religious people saw him as a sinner, to be judged and rejected. Jesus did not argue about whether or not Matthew was a sinner. But he disagreed with the people about the implications of this fact. Jesus responded not with judgment but with love. He said that it was people like Matthew that he had come to call. Jesus came for people in need. He went out of his way to find such people and to spend time with them.

Of course, the truth is that all people are in need, but not all of us accept this about ourselves. In fact, some of us work very hard to cover and compensate for our neediness. We do not accept ourselves as needy.

Many of us are accustomed to being the person who helps others. We may have always been in the giving role. So the diagnosis of cancer hits us especially hard. We are required to step out of the role of always giving and learn what it means to receive. This can be a frightening and difficult change.

We do well to remember that it is when we accept the reality of our neediness that we are open to receive God’s grace and goodness. When we are independent and competent and righteous, we shut God out. We do not see our real need of the One who made us.

This story from Matthew’s gospel tells us that Jesus accepts us as we are. He knows our real needs, even when we deny them. Jesus does not want us to try to prove ourselves to him, but rather to depend on him.

As you struggle to accept your experience with the many needs that cancer has brought into your life, may you find hope and joy in knowing that it is God’s desire to meet those many needs.

May you understand that God desires that you learn mercy by first of all being merciful to yourself.

May God’s mercy bring deep healing to your body, mind and spirit.


Questions for Discussion – Session 1

l. In what ways is it difficult for you to be on the receiving end of someone else’s care?

2. What experiences have you had with this?

3. How have these experiences effected you?


Questions for Discussion – Session 2

1. How has facing the reality of your need for help effected your relationship with God?

2. How is it helpful to you as you live with cancer and face your need for help to know that God accepts you and is concerned about your needs?

3. What needs are you aware of having today?

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TLC Leader’s Manual

A photocopy-ready version of the TLC Leader's Manual is now available for download. If you are thinking about starting a Cancer Support Group, this might be helpful!

PDF version

MSWord version

Quote of the moment

"I think the reason we sometimes experience joy after the expression of gratitude and grief is that expressions of gratitude and expressions of grief both ground us in the truth and open our hearts. Gratitude and grief are both vulnerable states. They are states of grace. They are moments when we let down our defenses a bit, when we soften, when we are receptive to God’s tender mercies in ways that might not be possible in the more ordinary moments of life."
Juanita Ryan

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