A cancer diagnosis is never convenient. The timing of mine seemed especially strange to me. It was January 2025, and I had joined the seeJesus staff only seven weeks earlier, eager to begin developing A Praying Life for Students. Why now, Lord?
“A cancer diagnosis is never convenient. The timing of mine seemed especially strange to me.”
Paul Miller's A Praying Life first found me when I was a weary youth pastor in 2009. My copy is as worn out now as I was then. It felt like Paul was describing my heart and ministry when he wrote, "You've done a wonderful job describing the doctrine of Sonship. Now tell me what it is like to be with your Father ... to talk with him." So I started asking God questions about how to do life and ministry with him. Will you make me a praying man, husband, dad, and pastor? What do students need to hear most from your Word? Will you help me be quick to listen and slow to speak as I meet with this parent? I was beginning to stop bearing the weight on my own.
Jimmy and his wife, Christine
Ministry moved along and I found myself serving as a Senior Pastor. My prayers became more desperately childlike. Jesus was training me in helpless dependence on his Father for the work of shepherding. Change hearts through your Word, Lord. I can't do it. Please strengthen this dear suffering saint. Help me see my own faults first. Make us a praying church, Jesus!
In the summer of 2024 my friend Robert Row invited me onto the seeJesus staff with the task of adapting A Praying Life for students. Ten years ago, I'd never have believed I'd be able to do this – but I can see how God has prepared the way – and me.
“I thought a year of colon cancer treatments would get in the way of my new mission. Jesus thought it was the best way to equip me to do life even more deeply with him through prayer.”
So with those years of training in prayer, I was ready to dive in when I joined seeJesus in November 2024! I had big ministry plans. Turns out Jesus did too. I thought a year of colon cancer treatments would get in the way of my new mission. Jesus thought it was the best way to equip me to do life even more deeply with him through prayer.
His on-the-job training program included an emergency surgery, large tumor removal, ileostomy bag placement, and six months of intense chemotherapy, another major surgery to reverse the ileostomy, weeks of recovery, then twenty-eight rounds of chemo and radiation. One night after the first surgery I added up the three-hundred days of treatment doctors prescribed. So much for sleeping. And what about my work at seeJesus?
Eventually I prayed, "Jesus, how am I going to get through this?" He brought Psalm 68:19 to mind, "Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears us up. God is our salvation." "Each day has enough trouble of its own," Jesus said in Matthew 6:34. Job training module number one: We are going to get through this one day at a time – one procedure, side effect, and needle at a time.
Still, I had to ask, "But Jesus, will Your bearing match my burdens?" In Hebrew the very next verse, Psalm 68:20, reads, "Our God is a God of salvations, and to God, the Lord, belong deliverances from death." There's plenty in those plurals. The storehouses of God's heart are fuller of salvations and deliverances than my days are filled with troubles and deaths! Training module number two: Whatever each day's burden, thorn, loss, or pain, I can trust that the strong grace of the resurrected Jesus is enough.
I risked one more question. "Jesus, you say You're able to carry me day by day, but are You willing?" I was drawn to Isaiah 53. Jesus was grieved, stricken, smitten, afflicted, pierced, crushed, chastised, and wounded – all to bear me up under my greatest burden: the soul-crushing weight of guilt and the never-ending death my sin deserves. On the cross, Jesus bore the heaviest burden, the sharpest thorn, and the most excruciating relational loss there is to bear. His empty tomb proves he is both able and willing to carry me because he cares for me. Training module number three: "Cast your cares on him because he cares for you" (1 Peter 5:7). "If you're anxious about anything, pray about everything" (Philippians 4:6). Do all of life day by day with Jesus through prayer.
“Do all of life day by day with Jesus through prayer.”
Praise God, doctors say my scans are stable, my cancer numbers are "undetectable", and they see "no active disease!" And Jesus has opened the ministry floodgates these last few months: teaching A Praying Life to two college groups; preaching at a local church; beginning to adapt A Praying Life for students.
2025 was training I had not expected, but Jesus knew it was what I needed. I am more passionate and prayerful than ever about helping students and student ministry leaders live a praying life.
Pray with us that the Lord will use this ministry to equip a generation of students to do life with Jesus through prayer!
Author: Jimmy Davis
Jimmy Davis served in ministry for over 36 years before joining seeJesus. Jimmy and his wife, Christine, live in Signal Mountain, TN. This story is adapted from an article originally published by Jimmy Davis here. All rights reserved by author.
