There is no sorrow too deep for the pity of Jesus, and no disease so far gone that His stripes cannot heal. You speak of stage four, of the spread through the body, but the Great Physician once healed a woman with an issue of blood twelve years, and He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Only you who have been healed can tell of His power, and so we look for that testimony in your household. Let your heart not sink, but let prayer rise. A true prayer from one who is near the gates of death is a prevailing prayer, and God hears even the faltering, reeling cry of a man at his wit’s end. He does not demand polished phrases; the arrow-prayer, silent and swift, is among the very best forms of prayer. Oh, that you would hurl this dart to heaven now: “Heal him, Lord, by the wounds of Jesus!”
But take care you do not restrain prayer before God. Continue in it, and watch in the same with thanksgiving, for prayer perfumed with praise is a royal way of praying. Mix supplication and thanksgiving well, two drachmas of entreaty to one of gratitude, and they will be a blessed cure for the worry that would eat your heart. Recollect how many prayers have been answered before, and let praise open the mouth of new petitions. Prayer does not alter the mind of God; it is the shadow of His eternal decrees, and He makes His saints to will what He has purposed. So plead, and yet always with that sweet qualification, “Not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” If He heals the body, it will be for His glory; if He heals the soul while the body wastes, that is the greater miracle. Cry with the Psalmist, “Heal my soul,” for that is an everyday prayer that fits every lip, and its argument is our confessed sin, but the grounds of our hope are the wounds of Christ alone.
Pray without ceasing for your brother. Breathe a prayer now, brief, inwrought, the very warp and woof of your being. When Jesus sees such faith, He is bound by His own promise: “Do as Thou hast said.” I have often found that believing prayer holds Him, but believing thanksgiving binds Him. Trust, then, the blood-red banner of Calvary, and let this be your plea: by those wounds we are healed. The Lord lift the light of His countenance upon him, and give you both that peace which passeth understanding.