What Does The Bible Say About Cancer?

When Cancer Interrupts Your Plans and God Stays Close

What do you do when you wake up on your day off and find a lump that was not there yesterday? What happens to your faith when the diagnosis is worse than you feared? And how do you keep going when the treatment strips away not just the cancer but your sense of who you are?

In this episode, Matt sits down with Annie Odin — a friend, a Christian, and a cancer survivor — to hear her story. Joined by Chris and Sue Holcomb, a breast cancer surgeon and a nurse practitioner with decades of combined experience, the conversation is honest, moving, and deeply practical.

A Monday That Changed Everything

Annie's story begins on a Monday morning in January 2008. It was supposed to be a day off — the one day each week that she and her husband Tony, a church pastor, had to themselves. She was working as a chaplain in a women's prison at the time.

That morning, she noticed a lump on her breast. "This wasn't there yesterday," she recalls. Tony agreed they needed to see the GP immediately. The GP confirmed the lump and referred them to the Bart's Cancer Centre. A few days later, the tests began.

But it was that Monday evening, in prayer, that something significant happened. Annie felt a strong sense of God's presence and a clear inner knowing — not an audible voice, but what she describes as "that inner sense of knowing what is to come."

What she felt God say was stark: it is cancer, it has spread, she would need treatment, and he would not miraculously heal her.

"That was one heck of a Monday," Matt says.

Confused but Not Out of Control

Annie describes her state that night as confused but not panicking. She was in shock, but she also had a reassurance that she was not alone — that God knew exactly what was going on.

She told Tony that evening. His response was measured: "Let's not jump ahead of ourselves. Let's just get the results first." Good advice, as Annie acknowledges. But she had an inner conviction that what she had sensed was real.

By Thursday, the tests confirmed everything. Cancer. It had spread. Within four days, her life was turned upside down.

Matt highlights something important in Annie's words: "You were confused, but you knew it wasn't out of control." That tension — between the turmoil of a frightening diagnosis and the deep sense that God was present — runs through the entire conversation.

The Cost of Treatment

Annie's treatment included chemotherapy and surgery. The physical toll was severe. The chemo brought significant pain, particularly in the later stages. The surgery resulted in a serious complication — a severed lymph duct that caused her to lose far more fluid than expected. She needed additional surgery to repair it.

Matt visited her in hospital during this period. "I didn't look my best," Annie says with characteristic understatement.

The identity impact was profound. Chemotherapy took her hair — not just the hair on her head, but eyebrows, eyelashes, all body hair. For any person this is significant. For a woman, Annie says, it is "extremely difficult to face."

She describes the practical indignities — sweat running straight into eyes without eyebrows to catch it, the strangeness of how different you look without eyelashes, the vulnerability of being seen by your husband without a wig. "It was really difficult," she says simply.

Faith That Held

What is striking about Annie's story is what did not happen. Her faith did not collapse.

"It's quite interesting that it didn't," she says. She had experienced other crises in life that had rocked her faith more — moments where she had to wrestle with God and ask "why me?" The cancer, remarkably, was different.

On the day of her first chemotherapy treatment, her friend Becky came with her. Annie felt an inexplicable joy — "an excitement about what good God might do through all of this." She is clear that it was unnatural, not something you would normally feel heading into chemo.

"I can only testify that God was truly with me," she says. "I wasn't walking that walk alone."

What sustained her daily was Scripture. She read the Psalms, a chapter of Proverbs, and passages from the New Testament and Old Testament. Different verses spoke to her at different times. There was no single formula, no magic verse. Just the steady, daily rhythm of reading God's word and finding encouragement in it.

Coming to Terms With Mortality

Matt asks the question many would want to ask: how do you come to terms with the idea that your life could be cut much shorter than expected?

Annie's answer is measured. She is not sure she ever fully came to terms with it. But at some point, she reached a conclusion: "Whether I die or whether I live, I want to follow Jesus to the best of my ability — whether that is living well for a short time or a long time."

What helped most was the knowledge that death is not the end. "Jesus is there on the other side of death for me as a Christian," she says. "That was my comfort then."

When the diagnosis was confirmed as stage three but treatable, the relief was enormous. "It was like a ton of bricks falling off my shoulders," Annie recalls. There was hope — and the possibility of more years, depending on how she responded to treatment.

Lessons From the Other Side

Looking back over the years since, Annie identifies several things she learned. The first is the importance of Christian community. "We need others. We can't do this kind of life without brothers and sisters who pray, who are there when we need a meal or someone to come to an appointment."

The second is God's mercy. "He's a God who has compassion on us whether we've done right or wrong. If we call on him, he shows mercy — over and over and over again."

And the third is God's faithfulness — his willingness to step into desperate situations and, in Annie's words, "rescue me" in ways she describes as miraculous.

"God is not just someone who wants us to obey rules," she says. "He's a good father. Jesus is a good friend. And he cares for us."

How to Help Someone With Cancer

Annie offers practical guidance for those wanting to support someone through cancer. Every person is different, so the best starting point is simply to ask: how would you like to be supported? What would you appreciate?

Words of encouragement and cards make a real difference. She recalls a package from her prison chaplaincy colleagues and the prisoners she had worked with — handwritten messages about what she meant to them, along with a painted picture. "It was fantastic. It really made such a difference."

She also suggests being sensitive to what the person might need socially. They may feel insecure about being in public spaces, especially with a compromised immune system. Offer to sit with them. And importantly, do not make every conversation about the cancer.

"It's really helpful sometimes to hear about someone else's life, their problems and situations," Annie says. "It can become so inward-focused that it's unhealthy. Sharing your own life with that person can actually refocus them."

A Final Word

Annie closes with a message for anyone currently facing cancer: "Put your hope in a God who really cares for you. He cares. He knows what you are going through, and he can help you. Please pray to him and read his word."

It is a simple encouragement, born from lived experience. No platitudes. No easy answers. Just the steady testimony of someone who walked through the worst and found God closer than ever.

If you are walking through something difficult right now, what would it look like to invite God into it today?