[A note from our Managing Editor: Tim Shorey, pastor and author, is one of our Gospel-Centered Discipleship staff writers. Tim is also currently battling stage 4 prostate cancer. On Facebook and CaringBridge, he’s writing about his journey. We’re including some of his posts in a series on our website called “The Potter’s Clay: Faith Reflections from a Cancer Oven.” To preserve the feel of a daily journal rather than a published work, we have chosen not to submit these reflections to a rigorous editing process.]

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Dear Journal,

My recent cheerful updates don’t mean that “Tim must be feeling and doing a lot better.” I’m afraid that would misinterpret my circumstances. I am not feeling better at all; except maybe a slight emotional uptick at the news that my cancer is present but inactive for the moment. Honestly, I’m not seeing any light at the end of the long, dark tunnel of my cancer. The battle rages on through the everyday joys and sorrows of life. Each day is a new day to fight through extreme trials in order to taste real joy. My smiles are real, and for some reason, I don’t look very sick. But as happy as I am, and as healthy as I look, I am embattled and longing for rest.

Someone wrote me an encouraging note a long while back, thanking me for my cancer journal posts and adding that he hoped my journal would bring hope to many. He then added this:

“Tim: My mentor used to say, ‘When a man is pointing the way into battle, make sure he has the smell of gunpowder on his clothes. Those who do, those who know by experience, those are the ones whose words are most trustworthy.’

“Tim,” my friend added, “you write, not about battles, but in battle. The smell of gunpowder is on your clothes. We need more guides of this variety.”

Whether or not I’m a needed guide is certainly debatable, but when I think about my friend’s “smell of gunpowder” metaphor, I’d have to agree. After all, the smell of gunpowder must be on my clothes. How could it not be? These days, the smell of battle lingers all around me, and seeps into everything I say and do and write. So if my clothes (i.e., my words, thoughts, updates, and feelings) smell of it, it is no real surprise (or credit) to me. It is only the consequence of being called into the battle and of having a God-fearing commitment to report honestly the things that are.

That said, I wonder what makes my posts smell like gunpowder? What is that smell on my clothes?

It is the smell of danger. I know that Satan is a murderer and a liar and would have my soul if he could. If my posts communicate even a fraction of the peril I feel, then there will be the smell of dangerous warfare about them (John 8:44).

It is the smell of desperation. Fighting this fight of faith, and for faith, is beyond me. This means that God and God alone is sufficient to see me through, and it makes me utterly desperate for his presence, his favor, his help, his love, and his deliverance (2 Cor. 1:8–11)..

It is the smell of weariness—for I am beyond tired. I’ve had a headache every day for 36 years, plus now cancer for three and a half years; not to mention relentless physical, psychological, and spiritual attacks. No wonder a profound wasting away fatigue has set in—but praise God, he renews me day by day (2 Cor. 4:7–18).

It is the smell of bloodied wounds and sweat-drenched moments in the conflict. People may not know it to look at me, but cancer and temptation have ambushed me often. I’ve sweated out heated hellish assaults, and have been bruised and bloodied—and I bear the wounds and scars everywhere.

It is the smell of awesome and momentous weightiness. This isn’t a spiritual “food fight” in a junior high cafeteria. Eternal consequences are at stake in all this. Things that shall last forever are being fought over here and now. My spiritual endurance, followed by issues of death, heaven, and everlasting reward all hang in the balance, as I seek to fight the good fight of faith. And this is hardly even to mention how my battles are affecting the immortal souls of others. All of this cannot help but create what the good Puritans used to call a sense of “blood earnestness” in much of what I’m feeling and saying these days.

It is the smell of rapid-firing bullets as I empty round after round of biblical and theological ammunition. I am firing my gospel and Bible gun at will because the minions of hell have surrounded me. No wonder the smell and smoke of gunpowder grows stronger and thicker by the minute.

In short, perhaps I smell of gunpowder because I am in the battle every hour, and I’m reporting about it nearly every day. And these records are as honest about the battle as I know how. As best I can tell, there is nothing fake or imagined in these accounts of my battle for life, and against death and hell. I have recorded what has been, what now is, and what—unless my Great King suddenly rides into the battle on his White Stallion of triumphant grace—is almost certainly yet to come.

Indeed, I’d imagine that the smell of gunpowder is ever with me, and shall be until I die. And were it not for the promise of victory in Christ, and the hope of heaven, the choking smell would gag me to death.

But behold, he comes—and when he comes, the last battle will be won, and my gun-powdered clothes will be exchanged for garments of pure white, never to wreak again.

“The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels…

“And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, ‘Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death’” (Rev. 3:5; 12:10–11). 

* You can read all the posts in this series here.