Finding his value in God
One local missionary rediscovers the love of Christ when his own cross becomes hard to bear.
David Dowling, co-founder of Inheritance World Ministries, said he always identified himself with the merchant in the parable about the pearl of great price in the Gospel of Matthew. In the parable, Jesus tell his followers the kingdom of heaven is like a pearl of great price that a merchant finds and sells everything he has to obtain it. The pearl is our faith in Christ. But Dowling has come to believe it's just the opposite.The merchant is Christ who gives everything for us, even his death on the cross. We are the pearl of great price. But we are not valuable because of our own intrinsic value. We are valuable because God deems us to be valuable. A pearl has no value of its own. Its value is in what the merchant believes it to have.Dowling rediscovered this during his darkest days.In July 2010, the Polk Township man returned from a mission trip to Kenya, Africa, happy and healthy. It was one of many mission trips he had taken over the years. Three months later, he was having trouble swallowing.Stage 3 cancerBy December, the problem had gotten worse, so he went for tests in January 2011. The doctor discovered a large black mass at the bottom of his esophagus, above his stomach. It was stage 3 esophageal cancer. He was given 36 months to live without any hope of survival."I wasn't a smoker or a drinker. I didn't have acid reflux," Dowling said. "There wasn't any reason for me to have this."He walked out of there determined to fight the cancer and find a new doctor.He did, but by the end of January he could no longer swallow and was put on a feeding tube. By February, he was down by 150 pounds from his weight the previous summer.His new doctors removed the tumor, along with part of his esophagus and the upper part of his stomach. His stomach was moved up next to his lungs, and the intestines were stretched."It was nine days of the worst horrific pain I've ever experienced, even morphine wouldn't touch it," he said about the days following surgery. The pain was so excruciating he couldn't sleep.Dowling said he remembers praying to God to give him 24 hours of relief from the pain, just so he could get some sleep.It was 2 p.m. By 3 p.m., the pain was gone and he was pain-free for exactly 24 hours."Oh, I should have asked for two days," he said he remembers thinking. "I began to see that God was with me in this journey."The journey would be long.'Touch of God's hand'Just as chemotherapy was ending in October 2011, doctors discovered another tumor. This one was behind his kidney. The tumor was removed and fortunately not cancerous, but Dowling was back on another round of chemotherapy.He was weak and bedridden.The new position of his stomach placed pressure on his lungs, which made it difficult to breathe or even eat.To make matters worse, his breath began to smell like feces. The doctors thought maybe his food was getting into his lungs and rotting. The reality was worse.They discovered that his bowels and diaphragm had ruptured, and feces was spilling into his lungs. He had become septic. The condition usually kills people in a couple days.Dowling had gone weeks like this."It was another touch of God's hand that I didn't die," he said.In all, he had undergone about 14 months of chemotherapy, 12 surgeries and years of basically being bedridden. His contracting business was gone, and his wife had only a part-time job."The cancer helped me to understand who God is in my life," he said. "All of my self-worth was gone. All I had left was Christ-worth."Dowling said when he got to the point that he had nothing left, he realized that God still loved him anyway.In prayer, he would ask God how he was going to pay his mortgage. Where would they get enough money to pay their bills? Who would take care of his family if he died?"He just very quietly assured me with 'I Am,' " he said, which is the name God uses to refer to himself throughout the Bible.Indeed, Dowling and his wife found that help came to them through people they knew from church and many others. Each day, they were provided with just what they needed for that day.Dowling spent his bedridden days writing and completed three books, which he published. They are "Overcoming Depression in Less Than a Month," "Real Life Devotions for Real Life" and "To the Brink and Back Again (A Christian's Journey with God Through Cancer and What it is Like to Come Out the Other Side." They are available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.Today, he is cancer-free. Dowling continues to get stronger and enjoys speaking to people about his journey. He marvels at the love that God has for each of us.He said he realized that "God's thoughts about me outnumber all of the grains of sand in the world. If God is that interested in thinking about me, then I can trust him to know what's best for me."For people who are going through their own dark days, Dowling said the best way to find strength is to "keep your focus on God for however long the battle persists."More information about his ministry, mission trips and books are available on his website